Autumn is back again, with its sumptuous colours, its ideal climate, and its array of surprises. Among them, first of all, arrives one of the most beautiful productions that has been fervently awaited for many months already - the new album by Dark Sanctuary, the most promising and talented group of the past few years. Actually, this isn't quite the new album proper that has just been released, but the two-track single announcing its advent, containing two exceptional pieces. "Vie Ephémère", in the remixed version, neatly aligns with the most beautiful compositions by Collection D'Arnell-Andrea, featuring a perfect orchestration and an even more than perfect female voice. Spectacular lyrical flights of thought, shuddering and bewitching, a majestically rendered instrumentation, vibrant, sombre, and hypnotic percussions, a stunning rhythm, the dream... "Seul, Face au Sinistre", the second piece, proves by far more representative of the new opus, with a sound evolving in all its sensuality and quietude, amply atmospheric, evolving at the mercy of the winds, at the will of our senses, instinctively, lasciviously, and yet, insidiously, allowing for an underlying tension of the most beautiful effect to emerge. One also thinks of Collection D'Arnell-Andrea, or Stoa, endowed with an extra sheen, a sound that excels their elders, tirelessly reaching a level of perfection that only few groups may claim to attain nowadays. Dark Sanctuary need not prove anything anymore since they are nothing less but THE current reference of a music dedicated to beauty, pure and intrinsic, sombre and tragic, supernatural and sublime, as only Dead Can Dance could offer us before. I can hardly await the moment when listening to the album in its entirety...