Sentenced - North From Here (1993)^{Release ID: 6589}

Surprisingly great death metal with more than a touch of melodic black metal.

What a huge surprise this album is! I've heard several Sentenced albums over the years, and I can't say I've really enjoyed any of them. The debut album was average death metal that didn't really do much for me and the later gothic albums I've checked out were quite frankly a bit crap. The vocalist on those latter offerings is awful and I find it hard to understand the fascination with the band. Anyway, I guess I expected North From Here to be somewhere in between the average death metal of the debut and the average gothic rock of later years. Instead what I find is a cracking album that's as much black metal as it is death metal!

North From Here sounds a bit like the combination of At the Gates, Dissection and Dimmu Borgir which is so far away from what I was expecting. The riffs switch between great tremolo picking and shredding sections with ease and vocalist Taneli Jarva (also the bass player) has a fantastic black metal styled venom that's perfect for the complex death and black riffs that fill this album. The drumming is for the most part excellent and the production is top notch as well so overall, I have to wonder why this album hasn't been given more praise, particularly when you consider it was released in 1993! Highlight tracks for me are My Sky is Darker Than Thine, Awaiting the Winter Frost and closer Epic. If you're at all into the more melodic (but still intense) side of death and black metal, then you should check this album out. Don't be put off by the name Sentenced adorning its cover.

Finnish death metallers Sentenced were a minor hit with me during my early tape trading days with their 1992 debut album "Shadows of Past" giving me quite a bit of replay value & subsequently leading me to seek out the band's three earlier demo tapes (1990's "When Death Join Us...", 1991's "Rotting Ways to Misery" & 1992's "Journey to Pohjola"), the latter two of which I really enjoyed. This would lead to me showing a keen interest when word of a sophomore album hit the underground & I'd quickly pick up a high-quality rip of the album through one of my two Blue Mountains based traders who owned a CD copy. I'd very quickly realise that the "North From Here" album was a very different prospect to anything Sentenced had delivered previously though &, on paper, it could have been one that left me a little hesitant. The quality of the music it contained was of such a high standard though that I was immediately taken aback & would spend a lot of time with that cassette over the next couple of months. You see, Sentenced had undergone & significant transformation in the time since "Shadows of Past" & it would prove to be one that would make "North From Here" the band's crowning achievement.

The building blocks of the "North From Here" sessions were very similar to those that produced "Shadows of Past" strangely enough. Sentenced had returned to the same recording studio in Tico-Tico Studio in Kemi & the process was overseen by the same producer/engineer in Ahti Kortelainen who has worked with a long list of Finnish metal bands. There had been no changes to the band line-up that produced the debut either so Sentenced would seem to have been in a very stable place when they produced their second effort. The thing is though, it sounds nothing like anything Sentenced had produced previously. The meat-&-potatoes death metal sound of their earlier work has been completely replaced with a complex & quite technical brand of melodic death metal that immediately impressed me with its increased scope & ambition. It's very easy to tell that the band members had been obsessively listening to Atheist while perusing this record as there are so many clear signs of worship across the eight-song tracklisting. The similarities to the Floridian legends' riff structures is unmistakable & suits Sentenced really well too. There's a clear European feel to the melodic component though & one would have to suggest that "North From Here" belongs in the discussion when talking about the earlier examples of the melodic death metal sound. The musicianship on display is outstanding with guitarists Sami Lopakka (KYPCK) & Miika Tenkula weaving a rich tapestry of melodic counterplay while the vocals of bassist Taneli Jarva (Impaled Nazarene/The Black League/Friends of Hell) showcase a blackened snarl that I find to be quite incisive. There are even moments where the band veer into melodic black metal territory at a time when that the subgenre was still yet to be properly defined so it's fair to say that "North From Here" is a dazzling display of creative intent.

Now look, I've never shied away from admitting that the more melodic brand of death metal is much more of a struggle for me than the traditional one but there's something about the sheer class that Sentenced deliver their product with that leaves me unanimously impressed. The tracklisting is invariably consistent with all eight pieces offering enough quality to keep my attentive gaze from wavering. There are a couple of tracks that are less fully realised than others though with "Awaiting the Winter Frost" & the more conventional closer "Epic" coming across as merely acceptable rather than being particularly impressive like the other six inclusions which are all very solid. I wouldn't say that I find any of them to be genuine classics though which keeps Sentenced in the second tier as far as the overall death metal scene goes. There's no doubt that my position changes on that when I limit myself to just the melodic death metal subgenre as "North From Here" is one of the absolute cream of that crop in my opinion. I have to admit that I find it a little strange that the album isn't referred to as technical death metal all that often though as it very clearly falls under that banner as far as I can see. I mean, if Atheist are tech death then this release is too because it so obviously draws upon the same techniques & feel.

"North From Here" was the very definition of a pleasant surprise & would quickly become the jewel in the Sentenced crown. It still sounds fantastic today but seems to have slipped under the radar a little bit over the years as it's rarely talked about when referring to the elite examples of the melodeath sound with people tending to look solely at Carcass & the Swedes. That shouldn't be the case though as "North From Here" competes on that level very comfortably & should be essential listening for those with a penchant for that sound.

For fans of Atheist, Stortregn & Enfold Darkness.