Review by Luka on April 30, 2001.

Like Amorphis and many other bands that started as straight-forward death metal, Finland’s Sentenced have since gradually moved on to explore the more delicate and emotional realms of the genre. Light, melodic, progressive and simply beautiful, "Frozen" is as far from death metal as you can get. I have to admit that I never guessed a death band would be capable of creating a beautiful album such as this.

The new clean voice singer, Ville Laihala, perfectly captures the feeling and emotion of the guitarist Lopakka’s depressive lyrics and music. Each song is completely interwoven with beautiful and catchy melody and rhythms and never gets boring for a second. The finishing melody to "Rain Comes Falling Down" speaks for itself. Lead guitarist Tenkula never fails to deliver a totally awesome and fitting solo either, and he totally breaks loose on the very last instrumental song, "Mourn", which is basically a pure three minute melodic solo!

It’s amazing just how much the songs connect to each other, each one was simply ‘meant’ for this album and no other. Every song delivers a feeling of hopelessness and sadness and each following track progresses the feelings further. "The Suicider" and "Burn" are the two songs that briefly break the sad atmosphere of the album with a bit more heaviness. The former is a more older and faster type of Sentenced song and "Burn" is just a strange short track with female and death vocals.

So many people and Sentenced fans disliked this album probably because of it’s unusually sad and depressive feeling. If you disliked it, I’d suggest you give it a few more spins. You don’t have to be suicidal to enjoy it, just tired of hearing bands continually pound the E chord in their songs. "Frozen" is a treasure way too underestimated. This is definitely one of my favorite album of ’98.

Bottom Line: A record of immense beauty and sadness. After a few spins it really grows on you.

Rating: 9 out of 10