SENTENCED - Frozen (1998)

The Frozen Blood

I remember that feeling: after great and break-through album “Down”, definitely I wanted more Sentenced-like metal music. Maybe I did not expect a quantum jump, but I expected more songs in the vein of the previous album. Of course I knew that magic of two first releases was gone forever and they probably found their style on “Down”. 

The title “Frozen” and its content really froze my blood. Today, after many years, I still feel the same.  Nothing is changed. Only two songs maintain top level from “Down” session. The rest is average or just poor and even horrible in some moments. The album is opened by quite good intro which turns into “Farewell” – one of two mentioned songs above, fast, energetic with fine melodic chorus and nice Tenkula solo lead, just like old Sentenced used to do. Good opening, but maybe the title of this song is ‘farewell’ to the good music? The next “Dead Leaves” confirms my reasonable assumptions. A promising start is destroyed by bad chorus (no passion? no emotions?), perfect melody is gone, but we can forget about it because the forth song called “For the Love I Bear” is a pure killer here, absolutely the best one, even I can put it in “Down” album and I won’t see the difference! It is like a much better version of “Farewell”. Unfortunately everything good with “Frozen” ends here with the last second of this track. In this moment better is to stop listening to it. Many songs are totally emotionless (“One with Misery”, “The Rain Comes Falling Down” with awful keyboards on the end), completely average and meaningless (“The Suicider” with ridiculous chorus, “Grave Sweet Grave” with promising first tunes and odius pseudomelodic chorus, “Drown Together”, “Let Go (The Last Chapter)”). But the worst moment on the album is “Burn” with female vocals. A true disaster… The last track is instrumental song called “Mourn”, which is in fact fine final tune in this mess-up.

After such rather bitter words, the mark couldn’t be good. Despite of all skills and talent of Sentenced members (especially Miika Tenkula and his guitar), “Frozen” is very average offering and these two mentioned songs cause the album does not fall into oblivion. Fortunately Lopakka and company returned to top form very quickly, they forgot about the past and recorded “Crimson” album which I treat as another pearl in Sentenced metal collection. 

40/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli

(previously written for Encyclopaedia Metallum, on June, 2011, now modified a bit)