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