Band:	Sacrist
Album:	The Substance Of Illusion
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	2007
A review by:	Jeff

01. Intro
02. Icy Queen
03. Vision
04. The Garden
05. Circle Inside
06. Voices And Darkness
07. Resurrection
08. Their Anger
09. Anabiosy
10. My Way
11. Eviloque

Sacrist is a really old Czech band which has started it career in 1993 even if they've only released their first album "Symphonies Of Ancient Empires" in 2002. Today we will talk about their second album, "The Substance Of Illusion", which is unfortunately a really common release of Black Metal. We maybe have some good melodies and songs here but in general this is too common to be really interesting. The fans of the genre will like it, when the other ones will quickly forget it?

The problem with an album like "The Substance Of Illusion" is that it's too classic, too common too generic to really catch the attention of the potential listeners. The band plays a classic 90's - 00's Black Metal, not symphonic and trendy but not old school too. This is the kind of generic easy of access Black Metal that we can listen to a lot nowadays. I have absolutely nothing against Sactist and against its music and actually if you listen to the album you'll probably, like me, didn't find anything wrong here (except the production? we will talk about it later.). But the originality of the music of Sacrist is near of the zone 0, there is nothing bad here but nothing special too and it's possible to buy ten similar new albums each month. I've listened to "The Substance Of Illusion" several time and even if some songs like "Icy Queen" have some good melodies all in all it was already done before and "The Substance Of Illusion" just doesn't have the little touches of originality which will surprise us. Unfortunately without being awful, "The Substance Of Illusion" is this kind of album that you'll forget within a week?

The production of the album is also a bit average. This is not the worst too but sometime the sound of the instrument is not really well mixed. The performances of the musicians are correct without being transcending too, seriously we're in front of the perfect example of average album. This is not bad, your ears will not bleed when you'll listen to it but unfortunately you'll not have any orgasm too?

Nothing too add here, I just think that "The Substance Of Illusion" is an album for the fans of the band and for the ones who use to listen to this kind of Black Metal. The other Metalhead will not find anything special here and will probably quickly forget this album. If Sacrist wants to become famous they will have to find their own sound, they can do it, so let's hope that they will find the way to do it.