Sentenced
North From Here

THE REVIEW

In 1992, following the excellent debut "Shadows of the Past" the previous year, Sentenced were tired of being considered, and feeling like, mere clones of Death's "Leprosy." Motivated by the great buzz in those years in the death movement and from listening to the latest albums by Atheist and Nocturnus, Bathory, and Darkthrone's "Soulside Journey," as well as bands like Primus and Faith No More, they decided it was time to evolve their music to create something more innovative and personal.

The first change came with the decision of guitarist Miika Tenkula to abandon the role of growler to focus on his instrument because he was tired of singing live. The microphone handover happened during a concert when Mika Luttinen, singer of their tour mates and friends Impaled Nazarene, was asked to take care of the vocals. However, he failed to finish the favor as he did not know the lyrics and was particularly drunk, so after a couple of songs Taneli Jarva decided to step up and became the new singer of the band (a role he would not abandon until his departure in 1995).

Finally being able to focus solely on the guitar, Tenkula, the main composer of the group, created a sound that alternated dynamic moments close to techno death, which was experiencing its glory days, with slower and more atmospheric ones, thanks to the use of acoustic guitars and keyboards. This was very evocative and capable of recreating in the listener's mind the icy Nordic landscapes described in the lyrics (especially the one in "Northern Lights" regarding the beauty of the aurora borealis) that deal with the relationship between man and the harsh nature of the Finnish winter, ancient pagan life (which at the time was not as overused a theme as it is today), and also the Kalevala, the epic poem of their nation. Further distancing the sound from old-school death was the disappearance of doom influences that made the debut album more catacomb-like, but especially Jarva's screaming similar to that of typical melo death singers like Stanne and Fridén, which created atmospheres closer to those of black metal bands; this difference can be noted by listening to a version of "Wings" from the demo "Journey to Pohjola" and featured in the 2008 reissue where Tenkula is still singing.

The final result of the four Finns' efforts is a compact album of eight tracks that can be listened to in one breath, a product of a very specific era in which death metal was searching for new directions and ways to express itself. Crafted by a band in constant evolution that would change again soon with the next "Amok," moving more towards classic heavy, and then definitively with the gothic turn for which they are remembered. An album that, according to Jarva, expresses a "strange purity" that can only be achieved once in a lifetime.