Sanctuary

Sanctuary is the ninth Praying Mantis studio album, released by Frontiers Records on 5 June 2009 — six years after The Journey Goes On, which is a long silence for this band. The line-up moved in the gap. Dennis Stratton, formerly of Iron Maiden, who had played guitar here since the 1990 reunion, left in 2007, and Andy Burgess came in. Burgess has been the second lead guitar ever since and became one of the band's main writers at the same time: his name is on seven of the ten songs in the band's own credits. Ten songs, about fifty-one minutes, with Mike Freeland singing and Benjy Reid on drums. It was mastered at Muse Studios in Atlanta and mixed by Wes Maebe. The fifth song carries two names in the band's own listing — "Turn the Tide / Lonely Way Home" — and Frontiers' channel posted a video for it as "Turn The Tide". King Records' Metal Frontier imprint released the Japanese edition on 23 July as KICP-1372, adding "Broken Chains" as a Japan-only bonus track for eleven songs.