I
truly love this album. So much in fact, that I would rate it as one of
my
top favourite US privates.
Guitars like a rusty sawblade to your vertebrae and riffing that grabs
you by the neck and forces you to bang your fucking eyeballs out - in
each and every of the 8 songs! The vocal style of Mick Pendergast is yet
another thing I enjoy. His cool yet menacing voice comes off as a more
restrained young James Hetfield and blends perfectly with their Rock-hard
'Riff Metal'. On powerful-on-the-gigahertz-scale METAL pieces like "Vicious
Cycles", "12 a.m." and the incredible "The Jester" they almost come close
to BROCAS HELM-godliness (in the Frisco-trio's most straightforward moments)
while 200-titanium-rhinos-on-the-face-of-the-sun fakk-off-HEAVY monsters
like "The Slasher" and "Princess Down 20" tangent PENTAGRAM-heaviness
(well, more like DEVIL'S CHILDE actually). If there ever was an album
meant to be played LOUD! it's this one. Productionwise "12 a.m." may be
two inches away from a disaster, but the raw, distorted mixing doesn't
ruin the album in a Satan's Host kind of way, instead it just makes it
different, like a massive wall of sound crumbling down on you like manna
from hell. It could be the best basement demo ever recorded, and once
you've pulverized your speaker membranes with INNER SANCTUM, the distorted-to-bloody-hell
guitars will sound totally natural and in place. Now where do I squeeze
in the obvious BLITZKRIEG-comparison then? Hm..
In 1994 Walls Down Records from Luxembourg re-released this album on CD,
with 4 bonus tracks consisting of a demo from '87. Unfortunately the whole
affair is let down by the muffled sound on the LP recording. It sounds
like it was mastered from a 2nd generation tape copy at best, and the
raw energy of the original release is reduced to the sloppy mess it is
rumoured to be. It's still a release worth picking up because of the demo
which is almost in the same league as the album, especially the epic "The
Haunting".
If you by any chance are in possession of this record and think I've overrated
it, I dare you to give it a spin right now and then call me a liar
in
public. As a final footnote I'd like to point out the irony of how
INNER SANCTUM most likely will be remembered as the band where DREAM THEATRE's
Mike Portnoy began his skinwhipping career. Sheer tragedy since DREAM
THEATRE are miles behind the guy said to have caught a glimpse of INNER
SANCTUM's taillights fading beyond the horizon of steel. OFFICIAL!
Originally written in German. Translate to:
Für DREAM THEATER Fans ist diese LP Pflicht, da Mike Portnoy auf "12 a.m." die Schlagstöcke schwingt. Stilistisch hat man aber rein gar nichts mit den Proggern zu tun. INNER SANCTUM spielen sehr straighten Powermetal mit unheimlich treibenden Drums. Der Sänger singt in mittleren Tonlagen und hält nicht arg viel von großen Melodiebögen. Stört aber nicht unbedingt, ist manchmal sogar recht reizvoll. Leider ist der Sound ziemlich mies. Druck ist auf dieser Platte ein Fremdwort und die Gitarren klingen recht jämmerlich, was mich jedoch immer wieder an ADRAMELCH erinnert. Vor allem bei "The Jester". An powervollen Riffs fehlt es den Jungs mit Sicherheit nicht ("12 a.m."), aber der Sound macht einiges kaputt und manchmal wünsche ich mir doch einen melodiöseren Sänger, der zu den wirklich harten Riffs eine tolle Melodie singt. Aber was soll's... 8 Songs sind auf dieser Platte zu bestaunen, welche aber insgesamt keine 30 min. lang gehen. Aber alles in Allem ist diese Scheibe wirklich ein Kauf wert. Es gibt zwar eine Menge bessere LPs, aber auch viele schlechtere. Und INNER SANCTUM's Stil des Powermetals ist einfach frisch und spritzig.