Review by Jack on February 11, 2002.

Satyricon with this MCD have compiled 4 tracks of seemingly brutal and harsh black metal blasting together. Whoopee. Why Whoopee? I hear so much damn black metal blasting and supposed ‘ferocity’ that boasts that this particular album will rip your head off, or this ultimate song will terrify your neighbor’s parents, that I am starting to get less and less excited by the whole black metal hyper-speed thingy. Satyricon while not claiming to be as superficially superior as some other outfits in Norway, still adhere to these same guidelines of brutality and hyperactivity and ultimately make “Intermezzo II” a real fizzer.

However while 75% of the album may come across as rather hastily compiled, the same can not be said for the last track on “Intermezzo II”; ‘Blessed from Below', which has to be one of the most different sounding tracks I have heard spring forth from the creative minds of Satyr and Frost. ‘Blessed from Below’ could be perhaps pigeon-holed into the keyboard-ambient sector of music, and remains a thoroughly interesting listen which help to lighten the ‘brutal’ load that Satyricon demand of its listeners. As a matter of fact I will be even as bold to recommend the last track to fans of present day Ulver or Arcturus. This is a good thing. Pity the same cannot be said of the whole of “Intermezzo II”.

Bottom Line: “Intermezzo II” is a product that I would only recommend to people who can’t get enough of present day cold and calculated Satyricon or those who just dig the thousand beats per minute style of black metal.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 6
Atmosphere: 4
Production: 5
Originality: 4
Overall: 5

Rating: 4.8 out of 10

Review by Mladen on March 5, 2021.

Epic morphing into mesmerizing, complex blasting into transcendental, impenetrable becoming a monument right before your eyes, obscurity evoking triumph... Sentinel is all that. And more. As if its predecessor, II, wasn't monstrous enough, Sentinel takes Spectral Lore's style to a new level where there are even fewer rules, even more twists and turns, and the levels of savagery occasionally go beyond belief and human imagination (imagine The Ruins of Beverast and Haeresiarchs of Dis having a fight while Emperor and Deathspell Omega are too afraid to go near).

Even though at times the slow, lightless ambient bits can get too long (I'm talking "seconds too long" here) they absolutely serve the purpose of making the listener expect and try to predict what the hell Spectral Lore will do next, and unless you listen to Sentinel quite a few times, you won't be able to guess. If you do remember one bit, you probably failed to notice a small, victorious ornament on the other side of the sound spectrum.

The labyrinth of instruments leaves no blank spaces, no really relaxing moments where you can, if you listen harder, find another nuance. Act as if there is no point in trying to decipher the compositions, and they might be revealed to you.

And that's without taking the lyrics into account - partly inspired by passages from Bhagavad Gita, partly by Plato, the rest being a solid philosophy of what most of humanity is yet to realize, they deserve a special mention. By following them - or at least by trying to - along with the music things might become somewhat clearer, but until the time for that comes the only clear part will be the final, lengthy ambient aftermath.

Sentinel is one of the very few black metal albums of this kind, where artistic vision, inspiration and technical mastery don't want to know about limits. It's hard to imagine someone doing more than what this one person did... Until, maybe, the next Spectral Lore album? I'm afraid to ask.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10