In the beginning, all was silent...
1996 However, something was starting to move; something that disturbed the silence. In 1996 Hubertus Liljegren (guitars) and Daniel Thelin (drums) founded Sanctifica and were soon joined by Alexander Orest (bass). The sound of death metal had replaced the silence. Soon another element was integrated into the sound of Sanctifica; Alexander left the bass guitar to Jonathan Jansson and instead showed his talent with the keyboard. The sound of death metal became frostier and blacker.
1997-98 Sanctifica's first recording was perceived in late 1997. The demo tape, called In The Bleak Midwinter, contained nordic black metal and was released in early 1998. Following this, Henrik Georgsson joined the band as a second guitar player, broadening the musical possibilities.
1999 In the last year of the millenium Alexander was replaced by Aron Engberg. The wintery black metal was transformed into something furious enough to tame chaos. Sanctifica again laid siege to the studio, directed by chief engineer Mick Nordström in the intense recording.
2000 The resulting debut album, Spirit Of Purity, was released in March by Little Rose Productions and C.L. Music & Publishing. Following the release Sanctifica played shows in Sweden, Norway and Finland.
2001 Spirit Of Purity received great reviews and inspired Sanctifica continued evolving their sound. Having mastered black metal the course was set for less explored territories. The furiousity in the music calmed leaving place for more intelligent playing, it was arranged in new interesting ways and a lot of the screaming was replaced with clean vocals. In the late of the year Sanctifica again entered the studio to work on the concept album Negative B, this time engineered by guitar wizard Carl Johan Grimmark.
2002 Four months in the making, Negative B was perfected in January and the album was released in March.
During the first couple of shows with the new songs Björn Isacsson was a stand in guitar player, while Hubertus concentrated solely on the singing. In May a new vocalist, David Seiving of Crimson Moonlight, was recruited letting Hubertus focus on his guitar and occasional screaming.
The summer saw Sanctifica play a number of much cheered concerts at different festivals in Scandinavia, the new album and line up received a great welcome everywhere. Some shows offered the extra attraction of dance by Lovisa Lindström, the fairy.
In early October Finland was blessed with a short Sanctifica tour reaching rock clubs in Turku, Helsinki and Jyväskylä. This also marked Hubertus departure from the band.
At the moment Sanctifica is in the process of writing new material, always taking the music one step further.
"The road goes ever on and on"
Source: http://www.sanctifica.com/
