Xandria – Sacrificium (2014)

Bouncing back from losing yet another vocalist, Xandria returns with Dianne van Giersbergen fronting the band and with their most mature record to date “Sacrificium”. Marco Heubaum continues to push the band, and with this release they greatly surpass their previous release “Neverworld's End” with a more cohesive and rich sounding album.

Opening with the 10-minute album title track, we are treated to lush orchestrations and commanding riffs. The band’s sound is quite powerful and Dianne’s vocals fit the sound perfectly since they are very operatic and well defined. With the new front woman, the band pushes the envelope with more dramatic and bombastic songs like “Nightfall”, “Dreamkeeper”, and “Stardust”.

With lush arrangements and solid vocal melodies, each of the tracks in this release further develops the band’s skills and showcase maturity in terms of cohesiveness of their sound. With less experimentation than in their earlier albums (“Salomé - The Seventh Veil” and “Kill the Sun”) the band is nicely settling with a dark and melancholic sound that is 100% their own. We can see their refined skills in excellent songs like “Betrayer” and the Power Metal-esque “Until The End”.

Some tracks like “Little Red Relish” and “Temple of Hate” give us that old-school Nightwish vibe thanks to the keyboards and operatic vocals. We appreciate that the band never abuses their Symphonic elements and lets their heavier side (guitars and drums) shine in the mix. We are tired of other bands over abusing orchestrations, and Xandria never does it and yet achieves a very impressive sounding release.

Overall, “Sacrificium” is a very dynamic and bombastic release that greatly shows the maturity of the band. Constantly pushing forward over band member changes, Xandria is a very polished band that is ready to gather the same levels of attention of bands like Epica, Nightwish, Tarja, etc., so be prepared to be blown away by the quality and engagement of this release.

Label: Napalm Records

Release: May 2nd, 2014

Genre: Symphonic/Gothic Metal

Country: Germany