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SENTRY
Sentry

High Roller (2024)
Rating: 8/10

Featuring former members of Manilla Road, Savage Grace, and many more, Sentry is an American / German band that demands your attention with 55 minutes of colossal metal. As one would expect from ex-Manilla Road members, Sentry drifts towards the darker side of traditional heavy metal, providing both a Gothic nature and an ominous starkness.

The album features a mix of long and short songs but every one of the nine tracks, including a cover of the Candlemass song ‘Incarnation Of Evil’, is worth its weight in gold as the quartet rumbles like distant thunder due to the earthquake drums of Andreas “Neudi” Neuderth, the thunderous bass of Phil Ross and the juggernaut riffs of Abandoned / Jamieson Raid axeman Kalli Coldsmith. Vocalist Bryan Patrick fits the Manilla Road script with his booming growls, and while Sentry simply wouldn’t exist without the late Mark Shelton’s seminal band, this is clearly a continuation that brings many rewards.

Songs like ‘Raven’s Night’ sizzle like old, rainy New Wave Of British Heavy Metal but tinged with traditional doom. ‘Black Candles’ is Sentry at their blackest as Patrick’s tone lowers in the shadowy depths to a backdrop of stormy trudging. The massive bass and drum on ‘Heavensent’ rumbles starkly like a slithering skeletal serpent. ‘The Haunting’ conjures Candlemass and Pentagram whille bridging the gap with a trad metal gloom.

As a record this is just a gargantuan slab shrouded by the ghost of Manilla Road even with galloping threads within ‘Valkyries (Rise The Hammers)’. How the combo stirs up such sinister and spectral vapours is to be marvelled at, and nowhere are these talents more evident than on ‘Awakening’, arguably the eeriest cut on board, but anyone who likes monolithic metal caressed in doomy drapes then Sentry will provide that soundtrack.

Neil Arnold

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