Review by Michael on December 11, 2022.

Hailing from Malta, Albert Bell's Sacro Sanctus is offering us their fourth full-length album. As on the previous albums the blackened heavy doom duo is telling some tales and legends of European history. This time they go back to the legend of the Sword of Fierbois which was hidden by Charles Martel in a chapel he founded at Fierbois back in 732 after the Battle of Tours and which was discovered by Joan of Arc 700 years later. I guess this is a quite ambitious concept album and for a history nerd like me very interesting. Apart from the story to tell, the design of the booklet is kept in a very lovely designed medieval style with a lot of pictures and many explanations about the lyrics and the song-writing process.

But now let's come to the music. I was pretty surprised to hear the 11 tracks because I hadn't expected such kind of metal here. What do I mean by that? Well, as I said the design of the booklet is very detailed and high-quality but the music is pretty rancid, dirty and slightly antisocial. Don't get me wrong – this isn't meant in a negative way. What the duo performs is pretty cool stuff with a lot of doom and heavy influences and each song stands on its own. It is hard to categorize the kind of music. In some songs like 'Hail The Hammer' they sound pretty much like Reverend Bizarre with these galloping doom riffs, sometimes they have straight up Motörhead influences ('War, Metal And Leather', 'For God, King And Country') and sometimes they remind me of old Manowar back to their “Hail To England''-era ('Clarions Of War'). The vocals are very raspy and deep and sound pretty antisocial, maybe a little bit like Midnight. The drums are pretty thundering and powerful and sometimes remind of the groovy and well-timed drumming we all know from mighty Venom (just kidding, they do it much better here) and the songs always surprise because the music is pretty varied.

Songs like 'For God, King And Country', 'Blood Of Orleans' or 'Ember Eyes' with its quick pace are just fun to listen to and just pure filthy heavy metal. Most of the songs are really tight stompers that are just easy to bang along and have a cold beer. There isn't any track to find that has lesser quality than the others – Sword Of Fierbois is just an entertaining album for some old-school metal parties (and for some history lessons to get your teacher mad). I guess if Joan of Arc would have been a metalhead (and if you read about her biography this isn't too deceptive) she would probably have loved this album.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 stakes