Review Summary: An early classic in the golden age of melodic death metal.
Finland's Sentenced had quite an interesting evolution throughout their decade-and-a-half long career. Initially starting out as an old-school oriented death metal band, they would soon begin fiddling with elements of melodic death, black and tech death for their next album. Soon after, they would ditch the tech death and black metal elements altogether and throw in elements of traditional heavy metal, before finally settling into being a gothic metal band until their eventual dissolution. It seemed like the band never truly realized what they wanted to be, only finally settling on a style years after they formed. However, even only for a brief moment, Sentenced created what would eventually be known as an early gem in the history of melodic death metal with
North From Here.
Sometime between their first album and this one, Sentenced began moving their straightforward death metal style in a more technical direction influenced by bands like Atheist, incorporating alternating tempos and more complex song structures. This was an interesting change in style that would end up yielding one of melodic death metal's earliest classics, released in the same year as other notable early genre highlights such as
A Velvet Creation,
Skydancer and
With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness (the last of which was released a little less than a month before this). There was also a slight change in the lineup of the band itself, with lead vocalist/guitarist Miika Tenkula opting to focus solely on guitar, leaving bassist and backing vocalist Taneli Jarva to assume full-on vocal duties.
North From Here is drastically different than their previous effort, almost to the point that it feels like a different band made it. Songs like the opening track "My Sky Is Darker Than Thine" and "Capture of Fire" do an excellent job at showcasing how much Sentenced have changed between this album and their debut, with riffs that are faster and more technical than most found on their last album, alternating between traditional tremolos and riffs that feel almost as if they're twirling around each other. There's also the fact that Jarva's vocal style is more of a raspy growl compared to Tenkula's more traditional death metal growling style. Oh, and there's also acoustic guitars and keyboards now. Sentenced are a different band this time around, but not at the cost of quality, not even in the slightest.
Atmosphere is also something that
North from Here has going for it when it comes to its strengths. The added keyboards do an excellent job of setting up the cold, dark atmosphere that covers most of the album, with one great example being the intro of the appropriately-titled "Awaiting the Winter Frost". This is exemplifying of melodic death metal's earliest days where a lot of the charm was from the mystique of it, coming from many bands' usage of keyboards to set up an atmosphere of mystery and wonder, something that never really quite left, but merely changed as melodic death metal changed itself.
And yet, Sentenced wouldn't stay like this for too long, as they immediately changed yet again for their next album
Amok before eventually ceasing to be a death metal band as a whole. It is an unfortunate fact that they didn't decide to stick with this sound for longer, as it is really unique for the time it was released, especially with how over the next few years, the Gothenburg sound would gradually become the more dominant style of the genre and the style most know it for. Bands like Succubus from Russia would take cues from this album for their own style, which is shown on their debut
Destiny released two years later, but nevertheless remained in relative obscurity in the genre canon. However, what does remain is one of melodic death metal's earliest masterpieces, one that could show what the genre was capable of at the time.
