Vanguard - Sanctuary

Sweden has been known for making good and solid synthpop for a long time now. Vanguard does exactly that, good and solid synthpop. However, the problem with good and solid is that it can often fail being extra ordinary and simply be unsurprising. And their debut album 'Sanctuary' is heading in that direction.

Vanguard delivers good vocals, nice melodies and in all, a nice album where the lowest point is pretty high. What it fails is to deliver an adequate number of memorable tracks, something that sticks. The opening track "Shine", "What Did You Achieve" and "Trigger" are the three tracks you will remember from this 12 track album.

Genre wise it navigates in the landscape of earlier Mesh and Colony 5. Sometimes true synthpop that tends towards the poppier side and sometimes some more harder and danceable features. Every other track is a ballad or a calmer tune and they have a tendency to slow things down a bit too much, ending the album with a ballad works fine, however, the slower tracks don't really make me feel anything, and that's a must. Nothing like Zynic's "Almost Silence" (I've given up trying to not refer to Zynic's debut album whenever I get to review a synthpop album).

But in comparison to the greats of the genre, Vanguard is more the earthquake in Halmstad than what the Japanese experienced in catastrophe of 2011. When you listen to the album, you will feel some movement in the ground in joy, but it's not going to create any tsunamis flooding your ears with liquids of joy. Aug 13 2012