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

Review by Felix on September 10, 2019.

Opinions vary widely when it comes to Setherial. Is this one of these groups that actually nobody needs, because many other formations already cover the musical spectrum they offer? Or does the band deliver high quality black metal? The latter is true. Perhaps it's just a strange twist of fate that many maniacs support Dark Funeral or Marduk without taking care of Setherial. The title track of their 7" vinyl release from 2011 shows that their compositional skills reach the high standard of the Swedish flagships. Blast beats, Legion-like screaming and horribly sharp guitar leads give birth to another prime example of Scandinavian black metal. Short calm sequences are helpful in order to increase the dynamic and the high number of tempo variations ensures the listener 's full concentration. The Belgian dudes from Enthroned would call Setherial's approach "blacker than black" and probably that's nothing but the truth. It's the sound that make cloisters crumble. Or at least the sound that makes nuns lose their coif.

Either the song of the B side is completely Setherialized or the cover track always sounded like a number of the Swedes themselves. I would not exactly pay tribute to a band with the shitty name Zyklon-B, even if really great musicians have been active under this banner. But the good news is that this detail does not lower the quality of the song. It's another great storm of devastation and at the end it features a very good atmospheric melody, a kind of harbinger of Emperor's masterpieces. The sound of the songs is also great. It's the typical black metal mix, nasty, aggressive, cold and misanthropic. Bands like Tsjuder also have this sound and I cannot say that I can get enough of it as long as the musical content meets my expectations. That's the case here and therefore I wish that Setherial will return with a new full-length one day. Opinions vary widely? I cannot believe it.

Rating: 9 out of 10