Review by Michael on January 12, 2026.

A few minutes before I started to write the review for Aquilla's sophomore album "Sentinels Of The New Dawn" I read about the passing of ancient alien pioneer Erich van Däniken. May he rest in peace now. Waiting his whole life for the reappearance of the Ancient Gods he hasn't accomplished his mission. So we have to come to visit the aliens it seems. And mankind already did it on Aquilla's debut album "Mankind's Odyssey", leaving Mother Earth travelling to a remote planet to survive. But obviously the refugees haven't kept peace there. What a big surprise. Now they must defeat a tyrant and his merciless battalions to survive. Well, the story sounds interesting, doesn't it? So lyrically this actually hits the bulls eye and also the cover (which reminds me a little bit of "Rain Of  A Thousand Flames" by Rhapsody) is worth mentioning.

But now let's come to the music. Starting with a spoken word intro (and also here I am reminded of Rhapsody when Christopher Lee was the narrator) we get a nice introduction to the following 47 minutes. First of all, if you know the debut, you will notice for sure that the Poles have changed their vocalist. With Captain Paradox (wow, what an alias!) they have some sort of higher vocals in their songs. Sometimes he sounds a little bit like Klaus Meine ("Mountains Of Black Sheep") and they fit quite well to this mixture of classic heavy and speed metal.

Stylistic they are heavily influenced by old Blind Guardian ("Tales From The Twilight World"), especially in the first songs "Creed Of Fire" and "Plunder & Steel". But also Judas Priest ("Battalion 31"),Primal Fear and newer Iron Maiden ("The Talisman") like in the epic "The Prophet" were probably the godfathers for some of their ideas.

The eight songs (I don't count intro plus outro) are highly diverse and full of energy. You can clearly hear that the guys had a lot of fun recording "Sentinels Of The New Dawn" and are still fresh and inspired to write some catchy songs. Also the guitar soli (a good example again is "Battalion 31") and basically the guitars are performed very well. The only point of criticism regarding the instruments are the sometimes too tinny drums (especially in the opener they sound a little bit confusing). But altogether the production turned out quite well, maybe the bass should be a little bit louder though.

Only in "Technocrat's Tyranny" which may be some sort of homage to Lemmy and almighty Motörhead the bass is snarling and clearly to hear. Maybe Motörhead would have sounded that way if they had been into classic heavy metal (with Lemmy a straight-edge guy).

"Sentinels" has become a really very good follow-up to Aquilla's debut album and with High Roller Records they have a very good label behind them so they will probably get a good support for touring and everything else. Now it's up to you to support the guys so they will deliver us some more cool stories and good music.

Rating: 9 out of 10 technocratic tyrants