SANCTVS is a one-man Black Metal band from the great white north of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. SANCTVS is in similar vein as other one-man Black Metal bands LEVIATHAN and XASTHUR. This is the first release for the project by musician Mortheos.

The album, titled "Mors Aeterna", was released on October 15th of this year and consists of six tracks that culminate in a 40-minute album. The album opens with an intro track, appropriately titled "Sanctvs Dominvs", which translates to "Holy Master". The track consists of an ear-piercing church organ with a Gregorian style chant over the top. In true Black Metal fashion, from the start SANCTVS is trying to set an evil mood.

We get our first true taste of what the band sounds like on the second track "Roi Omnipotent, Sainteté Maléfique". The title translates to "Omnipotent King, Evil Holiness", and based on the title the track delivers in sounding, well, evil. It's a long track coming in at nearly eight minutes but when you take out the intro and outro tracks, all of the songs on the record are exceptionally long and this one is the shortest of the bunch.

One problem that's sticking out to me on the actual songs on the record is the mixing. The guitars and vocals are drastically overpowered on the mix. This may be by design as, frankly, drums are hard and as with a lot of black metal, bass is nearly nonexistent.

The album ends with a two-minute instrumental track that I'm guessing is serving as an outro track titled "Mors Aeterna". The track is riddled with blatant audio clipping which makes it almost inaudible.

Musically speaking, the album is impressive considering that it all came from one man. While I praise the efforts of Mortheos, I have some problems with the record. It's clear that there's a specific image that Mortheos was trying to project but it comes off as a little much. The song titles, once I translated them, were quite cheesy. The album title itself translates to "Death Forever" from Latin. It's a great effort for being one person and a first record but on the next release I'm hoping to see some maturity and refinement.