When Warrel Dane announced during his lifetime that he had the master tapes to the entire show of which five songs appeared on the extensively bootlegged ‘Into The Mirror Live’ EP, I was excited to see its full release. Dane wouldn’t live to see the release of the full show, but it has now been released along with a remaster of the second Sanctuary album ‘Into The Mirror Black’. Sanctuary’s sophomore album was one of the few albums of its era that saw a band maturing and actually getting better in the process. Its dark, sometimes bleak tone accounts for a unique album.

‘Into The Mirror Black’ is often labelled a precursor to the sound that Dane and bassist Jim Sheppard would end up exploring in Nevermore. That is not entirely accurate, but Dane’s lower pitch along with the more subdued tempos and a less over the top approach than on debut album ‘Refuge Denied’ do preface the Nevermore sound in a way. Despite being a big Nevermore fan, I actually prefer ‘Into The Mirror Black’ to the first two Nevermore albums. Sanctuary truly perfects their mixture of US power metal and early progressive metal with a haunting atmosphere here.

One of my few initial gripes with ‘Into The Mirror Black’ was the fact that most of the material is roughly around the same pace, but Lenny Rutledge’s riffs are actually varied enough to keep the mostly mid-tempo material interesting and fresh, while the interaction of clean and distorted guitars lends the album a rather unique sound. ‘Into The Mirror Black’ is probably also the album on which Sheppard is most audible of all recordings he was a part of, enhancing the guitars’ bottom end as well as the high-end sheen. These days, my only complaint is that many of the choruses are a bit samey, because most songs are in the same key and most choruses end with the final syllable of the title stretched out.

All of that is easily forgotten when looking at the incredible quality of the songwriting here. The dark, epic ‘Eden Lies Obscured’ has so much happening and so many dynamic rhythms by Dave Budbill that it’s easy to forget it’s only about five and a half minutes long. Opening track ‘Future Tense’ has some great stomping riff work and a chorus in a different key that drops from out of nowhere, while the more uptempo tracks ‘Taste Revenge’ and ‘One More Murder’ add a welcome release of aggression among the darkness of the rest of the album. The main riff in ‘Seasons Of Destruction’ is one of the coolest riffs of its time and place.

Sanctuary gradually fell apart after ‘Into The Mirror Black’ and morphed into Nevermore, but in a way, that forced the band to quit while they were ahead. The combination of atmosphere, strong riff work and a particularly fantastic vocal performance by Dane make this album difficult to top. It definitely is miles ahead of their competent, but unremarkable debut and not really comparable to anything released before or since. Anyone who likes Queensrÿche’s more USPM-oriented albums, but secretly wishes them to sound darker and more menacing should definitely give ‘Into The Mirror Black’ a shot. This is the thinking man’s metal at its finest.

Recommended tracks: ‘Taste Revenge’, ‘Eden Lies Obscured’, ‘One More Murder’