Album Review: Sanctuarium - Melted and Decomposed
Reviewed by Sam Jones
It’s always fun discovering new bands in extreme metal, and our newest find is Spanish death metal act Sanctuarium who are back with their second full length album: Melted And Decomposed. Formed in 2021 out of Barcelona, Sanctuarium was originally a one-man band with Marc Rodriguez possessing sole membership before taking on additional members, where they released their first Demo the year of their inception, which was soon followed suit by a Split in 2022 with fellow Spaniards Magick Howl. Last year last saw the band’s efforts pay off, unleashing their first full length work, Into The Mephitic Abyss, and just another year later, the band are back with yet another slab of death metal. Their work ethic certainly can’t be faulted as not only has every year seen the band release some kind of material advancing their name, but not even a fortnight on from this album’s release, Sanctuarium will release another Split alongside extreme metal stalwarts Jade. Having recently acquired a new Bassist and Drummer, it’ll be interesting to see what longtime fans will make of the changes. It’s evident already Sanctuarium are keen to climb the ladder and make themselves known, and this record is as good a starting place for us to become affiliated with them, due for release September 3rd on Me Saco Un Ojo Records.
This is the kind of death metal I adore: vile, cavernous, subterranean-level tones that bludgeon you into the grave. But Sanctuarium aren’t playing to keep us invested in one track to the next so the album has this continuously reinvigorating aesthetic, instead they prefer to write much longer tracks exhibiting an ever-developing pace that can speed up or soon slow down judging on what the band need to do in the moment. One may first believe the band are playing faster to keep filling the time they have prepared for you, but then the pace will dramatically decrease and the doomier, sludgy element will take over. Whilst I couldn’t outright dub the band’s style as death/doom, there’s a certain doom element oozing throughout the entire release. The riffs are vast but don’t seek to crush our skulls into dust, we’re allowed the full freedom to breathe and digest everything the band have on display for us. The vocals feel far away, as if their cries are bounding towards us across great mountainous gulfs and only the last echos are finally reaching us. Sanctuarium aren’t afraid to let their audience breathe easily during their onslaught because it enables us time to think and reflect on what is happening right now.
What has to be said for the guitar work isn’t solely down to the tone, but the variety of riffs on show. For a record that possess tracks consistently around ten minutes long, you can’t rely on a single guitar track or riff progression to engage the audience from start to finish, especially as the band personally slow their tempo down now and again. It’s why their songwriting never grows stale, even when the overall tone barely changes; the band give you a general idea of what the aesthetic is behind a track they’re playing, but that riff is by no means nailed into place. The riff can move, change, evolve, perhaps take on a new life as the songwriting progresses and the band undergo a new phase of the song. One can imagine walking into a darkened venue with the lights down, the band playing, and audiences tuning in to their performance for eleven minutes straight and fully know they’re on the same song still. As a result, a song played by Sanctuarium feels more akin to a journey than just another track on another album; with only five full length tracks written and recorded for this release, the band needed to make each one a small event and therefore grab your attention at every feasible moment.
Considering how cavernous death metal records often play out in the mix, it’s nice to hear just how clear the drums play on this album. If anything, they’re the instrumentation with the greatest clarity overall, and since the drum tracks aren’t playing all that quickly it makes for a performance that you can always pay greater attention to than other drumming you would heard from other acts of this calibre. Even when the band are playing amongst their fastest tempo, the drums never engage once in typical blast beats, and I believe they wouldn’t mesh well within the general aesthetic Sanctuarium establish for themselves herein. Blast beats would be totally offset against the band’s crawling chaos and you couldn’t possibly sustain such a rapid drum attack incessantly for the length of these tracks. Therefore the drums needed to be straightforward, and because they’re simpler it means we can follow the strikes of the bad drums and cymbals with greater focus than if the drums had been mere savagery. The cymbals are deliciously crisp but they don’t resound too loudly either, the same goes for the rest of the kit. Bass drums feel impactful without them trying to consume the rest of the drums as they play.
A curious thing with structure is most bands playing music this long would prefer to naturally segment it, breaking it up into more digestible sequences for their audience. What makes Sanctuarium stand out in this regard is they choose to write and play these lengthy tracks but forgo the typical methods of songwriting whereby their playing feels easily split into smaller chunks for us to absorb and appreciate; rather than write music that feels like we’re going to one piece then the next then the next and then the next again, Sanctuarium’s songwriting is much more open-ended and therefore the end of one riff or vocal sequence morphs seamlessly into the succeeding sequence without the band directly telling us they’re about to change it up. It’s as if the band have applied a “Show, Don’t Tell” philosophy into their songwriting where can piece together the changing rhythms of their music without the band needing to out rightly prepare us. I think that’s why their lengthy tracks don’t feel like such an arduous journey; instead of one sequence after another that’s been clearly signposted, Sanctuarium give us the freedom to determine for ourselves when the songwriting evolves and to just let the music play.
In conclusion, Sanctuarium’s second album is a death metal release that knows precisely what it is, and doesn’t attempt to shy away from what it continues to be. What you hear at the record’s beginning is the same vibe you’ll experience as the last minutes tick away; Melted And Decomposed doesn’t try and do anything revolutionary and you’re not going to experience anything that’s going to change the game at all. Sanctuarium understand what you’re there for and they deliver in droves with five tracks, each of which are considerably longer than your typical pieces. Anyone who is an avid fan of the dirtier side of death metal would do themselves a great service in checking out Melted And Decomposed and though it does approach the fifty minute mark, it feels just long enough to justify its songwriting and the attention require for it. With another Split already planned for release just after this record itself releases, Sanctuarium are clearly on the rise and I’m interested to see where else the band go from here.
