This french band plays a mix of gothic and classical music in a way that reminded me of the famous gothic band Dead Can Dance. It's not metal though, you won't find a single note of distorsion guitar on this CD. But I think if you like bands like After Forever, Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation or other gothic-metal in which a woman sings you'll probably be interested by this release.

Combining the heavenly voice of "Marquise Ermia" with slow and gloomy keyboard "symphonic" chords and beautiful violin melodies, this album quickly creates the depressing mood that gothic fans are looking for. The lyrics of the songs are mostly in french beautiful but typical of the genre. If you don't understand french, don't let that prevent you from buying this album, since the lyrics are very difficult to understand without the booklet anyway. A cover of Dead Can Dance's Summoning Of The Muse ends the album with a little tribute to Dark Sanctuary's main source of inspiration and almost completely fills the CD. The production is, surprise, surprise, once again very good. The keyboards are sounding very well in their quest to emulate an orchestra (thanks to help of the real violins). Off course, synthesizers will never sound the same and I hope someday this band will be able to play with a real symphonic orchestra. That would bring their music to a new dimension.

So if you haven't had your shot of musical sadness today and also like quieter music than metal, try a little Dark Sanctuary. And if you're a fan of Dead Can Dance this is a blind buy.