I’ve been listening to Sacred’s debut album Beyond The End Of The World a couple of times and I keep asking myself if time has been standing still. The music of these Spanish guys is comparable to most of the hard rock that was released at the end of the Eighties. As for the guitar, I sometimes clearly hear some Zakk Wylde influences and the singer has probably been listening to Bruce Dickinson a lot. The only difference is that Bruce Dickinson can sing his high notes, while singer Uri Canalias tries and fails. After a while his voice even starts to irritate me. Musically it is pretty good though. Not very original, but the quartet is capable of making some decent hard rock in the style of Masterplan, Dokken and sometimes even Queensryche.

But keep in mind that Sacred doesn’t reach the level of the bands I mentioned. As for the production, the band produced the album themselves and for a debut it’s not bad. The drums are, in my opinion, a bit overproduced. But besides that, it’s a pretty decent production. A nice little detail: the second song of the album (Nocturnal Dike) was inspired by our beloved capital, Amsterdam. Bearing that in mind and reading the title of the song, I wonder whether the topic of the song is about a lesbian who likes to go out at night or about a wall that keeps water out of our little country. It isn’t quite clear.