Band:	Sanhedrin
Album:	The Poisoner
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	February 2019

01. Meditation (All My Gods Are Gone)
02. Wind On The Storm
03. Blood From Stone
04. The Poisoner
05. The Gateway
06. For The Wicked
07. Saints And Sinners
08. In From The Ouside

It was about time, with all the '80s nostalgia lately, that we had some heavy metal that actually sounds like '80s heavy metal.

Yes, I know, heavy metal revival and '80s nostalgia feel like they've been going on for at least 15 years and it just doesn't go away to make room for '90s nostalgia and nu metal revival. A lot of heavy metal revival bands, especially the ones that are more popular now, feel a lot closer to that "hail-and-kill" speed metal thing. You know, like Visigoth or Gatekeeper. I'm not really an expert on '80s heavy metal, so take my words with a grain of salt, but Sanhedrin sound closer to Saxon than Manilla Road.

One of the first things I was surprised to find out about Sanhedrin is that they're female-fronted. Even after finding that out, I had a hard time really accepting that due to heavy metal singers having such high-registered voices (think Budgie or Rush or even the aforementioned Saxon) is really nothing unusual, so it didn't feel out of place. So now the lead vocals of this album are somewhat familiar to the role of Ellen Ripley in Alien, which would suffer no change were the genders reversed. But regardless of that, the vocals on this album are soothing and not overly powerful to get into operatic power metal territories.

And even if this is a rehash of classic heavy metal, a lot of the songwriting is really engaging and not that focused on sticking to a simple verse-chorus-verse-solo thing, and with at least three of the songs being over seven minutes long, it's clear that there's quite a bit of effort put into the songs. None of the performances feel over the top or really that virtuosic, so Sanhedrin clearly had to make up for it with the dynamic songwriting. And they did. There's slight nuances of doom metal and hard rock and speed metal and a lot of moments from the longer tracks like the title track feel almost cinematic, but also cinematic in clearly '80s fashion.

The Poisoner doesn't really bring anything new to the table and will bring no joy to someone who is sick of rehashes and the omnipresence of '80s nostalgia. But they also remind us of why the music that they imitate was so great, and it is not often that a rehash makes me glad that I am listening to it instead of making me feel like I'd rather listen to whatever it imitates.