Sentenced

[?]

Has anyone listened to them? (Hope this doesn't end the same way my Kingston Wall thread did! )

Sentenced was a Finnish metal band, active from 1989 to 2005. They released 8 albums and 2 EP's. Sentenced was originally a death metal band, but like many others (Amorphis, Anathema, Katatonia, Paradise Lost, The Gathering etc.) they moved into a more melodic direction. Their lyrics were often about suicide and depression, but with dark humor and sarcasm sometimes. Sentenced have influenced many melodeath and gothic metal bands. Sadly, their talented guitarist Miika Tenkula died in 2009. My summary and opinion of each album:

Shadows of the Past
Basic death metal, not very original. Their lead guitarist and main composer Miika Tenkula performed the growls on this album.

North from Here
Considered by some as the first melodic death metal album ever! Very technical and aggressive album, influenced many other bands. Bassist Taneli Jarva took over the frontman duties on this album: his vocal style was black metal-style screaming.

Amok
A huge change from the previous 2 albums; their songs became more straight-forward and rock-oriented. Jarva's vocals are still rather harsh but melodic at the same time.

Down
They went through a line-up change: Taneli Jarva quit and Ville Laihiala was chosen as the new singer. His vocal style is much more melodic, not growly but raspy, a bit like James Hetfield. Their music became gothic metal with elements of rock and traditional metal. This is my favorite Sentenced album, I like the dark atmosphere.

Frozen
Not that different from Down, maybe more rock-influenced. Laihiala added some completely clean gothic-style baritone vocals without rasp to his repertoire.

Crimson
One of their weaker albums, I don't recommend to get this first. There are less solos and no typical black humor in the lyrics.

The Cold White Light
Dunno if this can be called metal anymore, but awesome nevertheless. Their songwriting had matured a lot and this was a huge step up from Crimson.

The Funeral Album
Their last album. It's heavier than the previous few, even including a death metal instrumental! End of the Road, the last song on the album, features possibly the best solo by Miika Tenkula.

Here's a song from each album (I can delete the Youtube links if they're against the rules):
When the Moment of Death Arrives
Awaiting the Winter Frost
Nepenthe
Noose
The Suicider
Killing Me, Killing You
No One There
Ever-Frost

[wolfking]

I only own one album from Sentenced, Cold White Light.  It's actually really fantastic, the songwriting and melodies are really, really good.  Lyrics are pretty fucking morbid, but a very enjoyable record.  I should get that out and give it a spin.

[?]

Excuse Me While I Kill Myself and The Luxury of a Grave are great examples of their less serious side!

[carl320]

The Funeral Album is amazing.  I remember I found it used and picked it up for the hell of it.  Didn't listen to it for several weeks.  The first time I did listen, I was floored.  Ever-Frost is a good song, as well as Consider Us Dead and Her Last 5 Minutes.

[?]

I know there aren't many Sentenced fans here, but for those interested, I found an early tentative tracklisting for The Cold White Light from Blabbermouth: https://www.blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=1291

01. Guilt And Regret
02. As Hard As I Try
03. At Your Grave
04. You Are The One
05. Neverlasting
06. Aika Multaa Muistot (Everything Is Nothing)
07. Excuse Me While I Kill Myself
08. Losing My Faith
09. Wither
10. Blood & Tears
11. Man In The Bottle

I wonder which ones are just working titles... According to an answer by Vesa back in 2002, Wither, Man in the Bottle, Drain Your Cup and a couple more songs didn't make it to TCWL and they might finish those "if [they] survive the European tour". Too bad this never happened - later Vesa said all the unreleased songs went into the grave with the band. They did include The Glow of 1000 Suns and Amok Run on the North from Here reissue, but those were finished pieces, so it wasn't impossible to release them.

[MoraWintersoul]

I love this band - one of the Finnish bands of my metal youth I still more or less regularly listen to. I remember getting The Funeral Album as a gift for my one-year anniversary, it was the coolest thing

I vastly prefer Crimson to Frozen but I mostly agree with your assessment of the other albums. People who focus on the Laihiala-era tend to overlook Amok but it is a big mistake since it contains Nepenthe, which is, for me, their top5 song at the very least.

[Scorpion]

Currently listening to The Cold White Light. I'm liking what I'm hearing so far.

[?]

Finnish metal bands need to stop giving promises about EP's including B-sides, don't they? I have a feeling the Sonata and Amorphis leftovers will go to the grave as well.

Anyway, album ranking time!

Down
The Cold White Light
Amok
Frozen
The Funeral Album
North from Here
Crimson
Shadows of the Past

I love this band - one of the Finnish bands of my metal youth I still more or less regularly listen to. I remember getting The Funeral Album as a gift for my one-year anniversary, it was the coolest thing

I vastly prefer Crimson to Frozen but I mostly agree with your assessment of the other albums. People who focus on the Laihiala-era tend to overlook Amok but it is a big mistake since it contains Nepenthe, which is, for me, their top5 song at the very least.

Nepenthe is great, but I'd say New Age Messiah is even better - those leads! Jarva's vocals on Amok make him sound much older than he actually was at the time - you could imagine he was some whisky-loving guy in his late thirties!

I've always found Crimson slightly weak - there are some really good songs like Fragile, Home in Despair and Broken, but there are also some really forgettable tunes. Frozen is much more solid to me.

It's a pity that Miika died so young, he had much more to give to the world of music. BTW, it seems that he loved alcohol so much he even named two instrumentals after Finnish drinks - The Golden Stream of Lapland refers to Lapin Kulta, and 0132 is the product code of Koskenkorva!

[MoraWintersoul]

It's a pity that Miika died so young, he had much more to give to the world of music. BTW, it seems that he loved alcohol so much he even named two instrumentals after Finnish drinks - The Golden Stream of Lapland refers to Lapin Kulta, and 0132 is the product code of Koskenkorva!

Seeing End Of The Road on the DVD, all the while reminding myself that was the last solo he ever played on stage was one of the most chilling moments in my music fan life so far.

Oh, I knew the 0132 trivia, but I had no idea about the Stream

[?]

Seeing End Of The Road on the DVD, all the while reminding myself that was the last solo he ever played on stage was one of the most chilling moments in my music fan life so far.

I've watched it on Youtube and that solo is amazing - I need to buy the DVD someday! The studio version is awesome too, obviously.

For old-school death metal and vinyl/cassette enthusiasts - Century Media have released a limited edition box including the Sentenced demos. It seems that Sentenced was their biggest cash cow, considering the amount of releases that have come out after the band's burial!

[Pelata]

The early, death-vocal stuff is cool. But from Down onward, it's 

[?]

Shadows of the Past is mostly bad North from Here is MUCH better, but still far from the greatness they would achieve later. However, it's criminally underrated in the metal scene - it basically started the whole melodic death metal genre, yet everyone gives the Gothenburg bands or Carcass the credit for that.

[Pelata]

North from Here is MUCH better, but still far from the greatness they would achieve later. However, it's criminally underrated in the metal scene - it basically started the whole melodic death metal genre, yet everyone gives the Gothenburg bands or Carcass the credit for that.

Agreed.

[Scorpion]

So The Cold White Light, The Funeral Album and Amok are all pretty awesome. My favourite is currently CWL, but not by much.

EDIT: Cross My Heart and Hope to Die has one of the most awesome hooks I have ever heard. I mean, most of the stuff I've heard so far from Sentenced is pretty catchy, but... damn!

[MoraWintersoul]

EDIT: Cross My Heart and Hope to Die has one of the most awesome hooks I have ever heard. I mean, most of the stuff I've heard so far from Sentenced is pretty catchy, but... damn!

Oh man Ville's vocs there

[?]

So The Cold White Light, The Funeral Album and Amok are all pretty awesome. My favourite is currently CWL, but not by much.

Good to hear that you like them, you should try Down and Frozen next!

Also, a fun fact: I used to think the talking at the end of Obsession is reversed or in some weird language, until I read that it was a sample from a Finnish film called Kahdeksan surmanluotia (Eight Deadly Shots) - maybe the babbling guy is drunk because I didn't understand a word initially! Sentenced used another spoken sample from the same movie in their version of House of the Rising Sun and there are actually a lot of movie samples on Amok (hell, the whole album begins with one!) - maybe Kevin Moore would be proud of them?

[MoraWintersoul]

Sentenced used another spoken sample from the same movie in their version of House of the Rising Sun and there are actually a lot of movie samples on Amok (hell, the whole album begins with one!) - maybe Kevin Moore would be proud of them?

Just what I was thinking this morning It seems that I have always heavily gravitated towards music with spoken-word samples, while everyone around me thought that's completely dull.

[?]

Well, the sample in The War Ain't Over (taken from the 1985 version of The Unknown Soldier) is more of a gunfire/scream sample than a spoken one! I actually find it interesting that Taneli even did the battle cry ("hakkaa päälle pohjan poika!") in live versions and both he and Ville spoke the "where's the booze?" bit in Nepenthe - maybe that says something about the importance of those samples.

EDIT: Now I can imagine Sentenced playing The Golden Stream of Lapland when suddenly VL appears on the stage, only to say: "oh shit!"

[MoraWintersoul]

EDIT: Now I can imagine Sentenced playing The Golden Stream of Lapland when suddenly VL appears on the stage, only to say: "oh shit!"

[Scorpion]

I KILL MYSELF
I BLOW MY BRAINS ONTO THE WALL
SEE YOU IN HELL
I WILL NOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE

NOW THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS
THIS IS WHERE I WILL DRAW THE LINE
SO EXCUSE ME WHILE
I END MY LIFE



God, it's been a long time since I've obsessed so much over a band.

[Pelata]

When I first discovered Sentenced, with Down, I was all  for a long time...glad you're getting into them.

[?]

I was obsessed with Sentenced as well when I was still a new fan in late 2008/2009. Having discovered loads of other bands in the last 4 years, and due to the fact that nothing new has come or will come from Sentenced, I don't listen to them as much as back then, but I still think they were a great band.

Also, time for a Sentenced nugget: End of the Road ends with the same chord that When the Moment of Death Arrives begins with, and both are played on synth strings - I bet this was unintentional though and not planned like the DT meta-album thing. Pretty cool nevertheless!

[Scorpion]

So yeah, after some listening of those that I actually have and not only have access to via Spotify (NFH, TCWL, TFA), I'd say that I'd rank them this way:

1. The Funeral Album
2. North From Here
3. The Cold White Light

All three are awesome, though, but TCWL is a little too little metal for my tastes. Excuse Me While I Kill Myself, Neverlasting and Cross My Heart are some of my favourite songs individually.

I've listened a little to Amok and Down and they are both cool as well, but I haven't got them on my computer yet.

[?]

TCWL is a little too little metal for my tastes.

I read this as "a little too metal" and I was like "NFH is your second favorite yet TCWL is too heavy?"

BTW, I managed to find a clip of Sonata Arctica playing Excuse Me... - to be honest Tony doesn't really have the voice for this kind of stuff IMO, for example the end of the chorus fits Ville's voice much better. Nevertheless, it's a decent version and I wouldn't have minded if they had played this instead of the Bon Jovi song when I saw them live in October (especially since I will probably never get to hear any Sentenced songs performed by anyone live).

[?]

Fun fact of the day (I bet people outside of Finland haven't heard this one): when Sentenced were recording Down, Vesa got a call from his mum who said some guy called Ville Valo had asked if the vocalist position in Sentenced was still vacant. I'm glad he never got the chance as I dislike his vocals and it's hard to imagine his voice fitting the Down material - if the change from Taneli to Ville L (yeah, Ville is a popular name ) was too radical for some people, then I bet Valo would've been even harder to swallow, as his voice doesn't have any edge at all! Besides, HIM have been much more successful than Sentenced ever were, so he must be happier as well.

[MoraWintersoul]

Fun fact of the day (I bet people outside of Finland haven't heard this one): when Sentenced were recording Down, Vesa got a call from his mum who said some guy called Ville Valo had asked if the vocalist position in Sentenced was still vacant. I'm glad he never got the chance as I dislike his vocals and it's hard to imagine his voice fitting the Down material - if the change from Taneli to Ville L (yeah, Ville is a popular name ) was too radical for some people, then I bet Valo would've been even harder to swallow, as his voice doesn't have any edge at all! Besides, HIM have been much more successful than Sentenced ever were, so he must be happier as well.

Aw holy fuck no. I would have hated that as well.

Have H.I.M. ever confessed being influenced by Sentenced or something? Because, there's just a whole slew of bands from Finland that borrow the "not too heavy, melancholic music, deep male vocals" approach (H.I.M, Poisonblack, Charon, To/Die/For, For My Pain, Entwine, and I bet there's a couple more I can't remember), out of which H.I.M got the most popularity, but I've always VASTLY preferred Sentenced and Charon to H.I.M.

[?]

Valo's array of influences is pretty wide, and he must've been a fan of Sentenced if he wanted to be their singer, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were some Sentenced influences in their stuff.

Anyway, all those gothic metal bands owe a lot to Sentenced, but I guess they got signed and popular because of HIM's success, just like Norther and Kalmah followed the footsteps of Children of Bodom, and the hordes of Finnish female-fronted metal bands try to imitate Nightwish (EDIT: not to mention the folk metal boom - don't know who's getting ripped off, but... ugh!). This is probably the thing I hate the most about Finnish metal scene: when some band gets big, suddenly everyone is trying to sound like them and a huge army of unoriginal copycats is born. Well, Sonata Arctica were initially just followers of Stratovarius like most Finnish power metal bands at the time, but at least they found their own sound.

[?]

I'm bored so I'm offering some Sentenced trivia again: there was a music video made for Bleed (directed by some student), but it was never released since the band thought it was awful. I remember reading someone say they've seen it, though. EDIT: Not the promo video, but I found a live version of Bleed from December 1996: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsgr5NbJcIc

I was just listening to Ever-Frost, that song truly kicks ass! It's especially powerful due to the message of the lyrics.

[Scorpion]

THOSE WITH HEARTS OF EVER-FROST

I still stand by saying that The Funeral Album is their best album. So many killer tunes on there, the only ones I'm not crazy about are Drain Me and Consider Us Dead, the rest if fantastic. Ever-Frost, Despair-Ridden Hearts, Her Last Five Minutes, Lower the Flags, End of the Road...

The live version of Bleed was pretty cool, though I like the Buried Alive version a little more, maybe due to sound quality.

[?]

The Funeral Album is good, but the aforementioned Drain Me and Consider Us Dead are the reason I can't put it in the same league with The Cold White Light and the 3-album run of Amok, Down and Frozen.

[Scorpion]

Tastes and stuff, I suppose, but I don't really like The Cold White Light all that much. Sure, it's cool, but I find it's a lot more one-dimensional in sound than TFA. Plus, it also has its share of clunkers, like You Are the One.

Since I don't have Amok, Down or Frozen yet physically, I can't really say a lot about them.

[Scorpion]

So yeah I got Down and Frozen recently and they are both quite cool, though The Funeral Album remains my favourite. Tracks I really like are Bleed, Dead Leaves, The Rain Comes Falling Down, Drown Together, Ode to the End and Mourn.

1. The Funeral Album
2. Down
3. North From Here
4. Frozen / The Cold White Light

I've warmed up a little to TCWL, so there is no album on the list that I don't enjoy. Sentenced ftw!

Also, just for the hell of it, Top 5 songs:

1. End of the Road
2. Dead Leaves
3. Northern Lights
4. Bleed / Ode to the End
5. Cross My Heart and Hope to Die

[?]

Some of the songs you mentioned are among my favorites as well, Ode to the End might be my #1 favorite Sentenced song!

Choosing just 5 favorite songs is too difficult, so here's my favorite song from each album:

Descending Curtain of Death
Wings
Moon Magick
Ode to the End
The Rain Comes Falling Down
Fragile
Blood & Tears
End of the Road

[?]

Today is the 4th anniversary of Miika's passing - RIP. I still remember how shocked I was upon hearing the news - I'd been a Sentenced fan for only 4 months, but they had already become one of my favorite bands.

On a lighter note, I just listened to For the Love I Bear, and the middle section with the "hilipatihippan" shouts and the burp still gives a wide smile on my face. BTW, you can also hear Miika drumming empty beer crates in that part.

[MoraWintersoul]

Today is the 4th anniversary of Miika's passing - RIP. I still remember how shocked I was upon hearing the news - I'd been a Sentenced fan for only 4 months, but they had already become one of my favorite bands.

On a lighter note, I just listened to For the Love I Bear, and the middle section with the "hilipatihippan" shouts and the burp still gives a wide smile on my face. BTW, you can also hear Miika drumming empty beer crates in that part.

I always crank up a Sentenced album or two today. Rest in peace, man. You were brilliant.