this is part ii of my sentenced post, presenting the more gothic side of later sentenced. i want to start with a song from their 1996 album down, the first one with their new singer ville laihiala. it’s the song sun won’t shine, about love and sorrow.

the sun won’t shine on me without your love …don’t you know
the cold wind kills the flame in my heart …by its blow

the second song is from their fifth album, frozen. my most favourite of their albums. and this song is also my most favourite sentenced song. a song about the end of fall, the beginning of winter. its name is dead leaves.

the wintry frost comes crawling,
freezing all life that’s on its way.
the first dead leaves come falling,
hovering in the air with the rain.

the third song is from their sixth album, crimson. more in the him style. yet another song about death, and about (the end of) love. yet another very sad song.

the fourth song is from their seventh album, the cold white light. again, a song on love and death, one of the constant themes of sentenced albums since the love & death ep. “may death again us unite…”

my heart went down with you
at your funeral I was buried, too
my life … it ended with yours
and i… exist no more

another very beautiful and very sad song from that album is no one there, which i already presented on spielwiese.

the final song is from sentenced‘s last album, the funeral album. in 2005, sentenced announced that they want to disband and never again reunite. this album was their good-bye present, their headstone. resulting in a last final tour, which i unfortunately missed (so i have never seen them live), with a dvd recording of their final concert in oulu, finland. the dvd was released under the fitting name buried alive.

i do not just want to present a song, but a music video. i make this distinction because i (and many others) think that another song from the album fits much better to this video. in fact, you can play the video muted, and play along that song, and it fits perfectly. the video is called ever-frost, named after the song from funeral album. it is an aggressive song filled with hatred (read the lyrics here), similar to the style of most of their final album. the song is probably aimed at their enemies, at their critics, maybe as retribution for the hideous accusations following their release of the song routasydän (see here for more information).

the song fitting better to this video is end of the road, the last song from the funeral album.

here we are, now lay the burden down
we’re coming to the end of our road
sorrowful yet glorious somehow
to be humming this one last ode
so calm and still… it wasn’t all that bad, or was it now?
fulfilled… it doesn’t only hurt to end it now

the video itself is rather self-ironic, depicting one of the reasons why sentenced said they won’t rejoin, combining with a ritual funeral of the band, held by themselves. a fantastic video.

i want to end this double post with mentioning that miika tenkula, sentenced‘s lead guitarist and main songwriter, passed away in 2009. this makes the disbanding definite, forever. miika, rest in peace.

my most favourite (metal) band ever are sentenced. founded in muhos, finland, they started as a death metal band in 1989, and continued their journey through various styles of metal before reaching their end in 2005 with the release of their funeral album. i decided to write two posts on sentenced, beginning with their early work. if you prefer gothic metal and don’t like death metal, better wait for part ii which i will probably finish tomorrow.

the first song i want to present is from their first album, shadows of the past. descending curtain of death is a midtempo melodic death metal piece.

their second album is north from here, from which i want to present the song northern lights. another piece of melodic death metal, including very beautiful and slow parts as well as aggressive, fast parts. something i still have to do is to travel to northern finland during winter, sit down into the snow during night, watch northern lights dancing at the sky, and listen to this song.

the third song is from their album amok, the last full album with their singer taneli jarva, who left the band and later founded the black league. the song nepenthe, a melodic balad, also resulted in a music video, in fact the first one by sentenced. here it is:

after the release of amok, sentenced produced an ep called love & death, the last result featuring taneli. from this ep i want to present the song love and death, one of my favourite sentenced songs. fast paced, it is a beautiful, yet sad song about two main themes of sentenced, namely suicide and love. “love and death… go hand in hand once more.”

finally, here’s an interesting death metal piece which was only released in 2008, though it was recorded already in 1994, but not taken onto amok.

today i want to write about the 3rd and the mortal. well, at least about their beginning, since i don’t really know their work after kari rueslåtten left. their early music is rather doomy, while mostly very calm, and with folk influences. well. i guess i won’t write that much, as their music expresses more than 10.000 words. all the following songs are from their first album, tears laid in earth, and one from its preceeding ep, sorrow. these are their only two releases kari was involved in.

finally, here’s an unofficial, but nice video:

the album tears laid on earth is one of the very few which i deliberately bought a second time without a specific reason, to keep it until i can give it to someone worth it. that moment came one a half years ago.

the black league is a finnish band founded by the ex-sentenced singer taneli jarva. they started as a doom metal act, and shifted more and more in the direction of a mixture of metal and rock’n'roll.
their first album, ichor, is the the black league album i like most – probably because it’s their doomiest one, and it contains my most favourite song: ozymandias, a song dedicated to the poem ozymandias by percy bysshe shelley (his wife wrote frankenstein):

i met a traveller from an antique land
who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desert. near them, on the sand,
half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
tell that its sculptor well those passions read
which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
and on the pedestal these words appear:
‘my name is ozymandias, king of kings:
look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
nothing beside remains. round the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
the lone and level sands stretch far away.

the song is slow, dark, most of it being rather calm, while the recitation of the spoken words is heavy, powerful:

another song from that album i like a lot is night on earth (not related to the movie of the same name by jim jarmusch, which i also like a lot).

a third song from the album is winter wind sings, a dark balad encompanied with a strange video… “when you cry winter winds sing straight to my heart…”

finally, here’s a newer piece of the band, featured on their homepage at some point. it’s a somewhat ironic video about a concert which is not the biggest success. see for yourself: