Sentenced - North From Here...

Yet another Metal album that never really "stuck".  Most Death Metal fans don't really know Sentenced because they turned into such a boring and dreary band in their later days, but before all that, they released two stellar Death Metal albums.  I'm going to start with their second one here because this seems to be the most overlooked of the two.

On this album, they were miles ahead of their Finnish contemporaries in terms of musicianship, songwriting, and production value.  While other bands in their scene were almost caveman-ish in their delivery and muddy tones, Sentenced were now sophisticated and super-tight.  The slight melodic tendencies of their previous album have blossomed into complex lines and scales.  The production is very clean and compressed and still maintains a nice ambient atmosphere.  There is some definite Black Metal darkness here, but it's still for the most part a Progressive Death Metal album, made when that concept was still pretty new.  It's such a shame that they went that whole "Suicide Rock" route, but we'll always have this to remind us of the better times.

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