UMUR "Sapphire Season" is the debut full-length studio album by Danish death metal act Cyanotic. The album was released through Nordic Metal in 1996. Cyanotic was formed in 1992 and released a couple of demos before releasing "Sapphire Season", which turned out to be their sole studio album release before they disbanded. The album was produced by prolific Danish producer/musician Jacob Hansen (Invocator, Anubis Gate).

The music on "Sapphire Season" is an interesting form of melodic tinged death metal. It´s mostly slow- to mid paced (even doomy at times) with very few faster paced parts, but the really interesting thing about the music is how laid back it sounds. Of course the warm and pleasant sound production has it´s part in that, but it´s not very often I have used the phrase "laid back" about a death metal release. The music is powerful enough though and the growling vocals by Jan Rasmussen get the job done too (to my ears without being really great), it´s just that "Sapphire Season" is so pleasant to listen to. That´s what makes the album original sounding and in some ways quite unique but at the same time also what makes it slightly tedious and lacking bite. These guys have a sort of subtle manner of approaching the death metal genre and sometimes I just want to scream at them: "Unleash the Beast".

The guys in the band are obviously skilled and they are generally very well playing, and I´m sure quite a few melodic death metal fans (this is not melodeath) will find "Sapphire Season" a very interesting album. Hopefully my above comments about the music won´t read as too negative, because overall I really do enjoy the album and it´s arguably a quality release on most parameters. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.