Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The genre of Metal just keeps giving, it may have found places in which its heavy, breathless, scything down of others around it could not penetrate but still it roams wonderfully unrepentant, alive, cynical but also punctual, the living endorsement of the relationship that goes hand in hand with the kind of beauty that those who choose to dance with are always welcome to enjoy.
For German Heavy Metal stalwarts, Sinner, the deity is one that recognises the requirement of the human soul for change whilst never allowing your true loves to fade away, a reminder of each passion enthused across life whilst always remaining loyal to what brought you to the creative new. The Boomtown Rats once suggested that you should flirt with Death but never kiss her; in Sinner’s latest album, Santa Muerte, Death is ultimate embrace of love, a deity to whom devotion is assured but who rewards with a blissful rage of forever, of industry and of timing, and it is one that is demonstrably intense and steaming with greatness.
Across tracks such as Shine On, Last Exit Hell, Lucky 13, The Wolf, Misty Mountain, The Ballad of Jack and the album’s title track Santa Muerte, Mat Sinner, Tom Naumann, Alex Scholpp, Markus Kullmann and surprising but nonetheless welcome newcomer to the shared vocal appreciation, Giorgia Colleluori, the penetrating force is one that refuses to abandon the captured enjoyment of the sound, shaking it down for all that it is worth, and building impressively on the commitment and success of a career that has defined the genre across Europe.
It is perhaps to the inclusion of the second voice on the album, that of Giorgia Colleluori, to which evolution was possible. We must always search for the next level of our existence, lest of course we get left behind, worshiping the old, the outdated, the forgotten, the sadness of reality which comes from seeing the figure of Death as a construct of evil, rather than the guide to the next realm in which we place our trust and become engrained into the pattern of the Universe. It is the addition of the feminine, the female vocal supplied by Eternal Idol’s Ms. Colleluori, that marks out the album as accepting the strength to stride forward, the personal guide to the next realm which opens the ears of the listener to the truth of musical evolution.
An album which sits comfortably in the annals of the Heavy Metal sphere but which burns in its own right, the realm of the idol and the deity that is Santa Muerte.
Sinner’s Santa Muerte is out now and available from AFM Records.
Ian D. HallÂ