Review by Denis on November 27, 2002.

I don't know what's going on nowadays with the black metal scene but the more I find out about it, the more I discover stuff that I like. Now with this new band, I'm thrilled once more with something totally different. This is far from old school but rather a new musical direction. It mixes up elements of industrial with a black metal structure and the end result is highly consumable to my musically oriented ears.

A band with a strange name built around a Norwegian elite corp. The guitarist and drummer are both from Mayhem. Red Harvest is the current band of the keyboard player. This CD is made of four songs but I whish it would be actually a full length. Another thing that is too bad is that maybe there won't be another recording from them since this is more like a special/side project. Too bad. One can only hope for more in the future.

Here's a track-by-track brief description.

‘Fever Zauben’ has sirens sounds for an intro, then some machine gun black metal, and war samplings. The beat is very fast, complex but melodic even if it is highly technical. Lots of guitars tracks that ends with war sampling.

‘Unter Der Fahne’ begins with marching army, then drum roll. The next thing you know, the exciting guitar riffs rolls on with some keyboards notes. This song is some kind of a battle hymn changing to industrial/psychedelic with vocal effects to become in the end very Avant-garde with a drum solo and great precise guitar riffs.

‘Die Nacht Hat Augen’ starts with plane sampling then arise tornado-like riffs, stopping for a more Avant-garde passage made of strong bass, samplings, keys and spoken words. These two genres appear in alternance to finally end up to a much calmer mode with spacey keys sounding like a submarine sonar. A very thrilling composition.

‘Weltherrschaft’, this one comes in with spacey key work and machine gun rhythmic with broken beat. The guitar is being played with metered interruptions. The beat slows down gradually until a stop then only some psychedelic sounds completed the piece.

Bottom Line: "Weltherschaft" could be translated in English by "another post black metal adventure that has not being developed to its full length".

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9
Atmosphere: 9
Originality: 9.5
Production: 9.5
Overall: 9

Rating: 9.2 out of 10

Review by Felix on October 13, 2022.

Friends of the noble drop, drink up quickly. Here comes Sanctuary and Warrel Dane (R.I.P.) definitely has the power to make all glasses burst post-mortem. His high-pitched screams move to dizzying heights, but his performance can also satisfy those of you who prefer a more male voice. Warrel managed a broad range masterly and without him, Sanctuary would definitely have been a completely different band. But I don’t want to speak about imaginery vision, let’s talk about Sanctuary in the form in which they really existed.

The world was still relatively simple in 1988. There were no 2,000 telephone tariffs, no myriads of streaming services and if the Russians were at war, it was only at the ass of the world, also known as Afghanistan. And in metal, there was only posers and thrashers, right? This was what I thought when I saw the Repka artwork, the sticker “produced by Dave Mustaine” and song titles like “Battle Angels” or “Die for My Sins”. Well, Sanctuary did not belong to the posers, but they brought many shades of grey into my polarizing imagination. “Refuge Denied” is vigorously produced, does not lack depth, boasts with power and has some speedy, very intensive parts. But it also full of melancholic sequences that speak another language. The dramatic cover “White Rabbit” emphasises this facet of Sanctuary very well, but don’t think you get a flabby piece of music. Instead, the band combines sad, desperate undertones very competently with its doubtlessly heavy musical approach.

Speaking of their way of proceeding, Sanctuary connect slightly bulky, riffing (which is never driven by commercial intentions) with excellent lines that create a captivating flow. “Refuge Denied” is free from lukewarm pieces whose only function is to explain us that life isn’t always a bed of roses. Instead, the songs have character and their individuality shimmers through the notes, although the album does not suffer from heterogeneity. One of the highlights is “Termination Force”. Its lamenting guitar at the beginning lays a false trail which, at the latest, the mega-intense chorus hammers into your skull. But despite its sometimes hammering sections, this extremely mature debut does not focus on violence in any way. The basic vibes of “Refuge Denied” are formed by its dark elegance and its somehow mysterious fatalism. And another attribute comes to my mind, not only because of the record label: epic. I cannot describe a song like “Soldiers of Steel” without using this word. It’s heavy, majestic and eerie, traditional on the one hand, but pretty complex on the other hand – and all this without any inner contradiction.

I already said that the album profits from a vigorous production, but I want to go a step further. For me, who never liked Megadeth very much (some of the early songs are okay, but the rest…), it seems that Dave Mustaine never made a better contribution to metal than he did with this producer job. The mix is not overly clean, but it lends the songs such a full sound that I am really impressed. Everything appears unbelievably tight and makes jewels like the band anthem “Sanctuary” or the daring “Ascension Destiny” to real monsters. No doubt, the five-piece made an enormous statement at this stage of its career and when we look back today and see how history has continued... well, it could have been better. Especially for Warrel Dane. Thank God, at least his vocals live on.

Rating: 8.7 out of 10