Buried Alive

Well that's it! After a career which spanned nearly two decades, Sentenced have officially called it quits. With this DVD being the last edition to their lengthy catalague, the anticipation from fans was staggering when the concept behind this release was first conceived.

I have never been a fan of Sentenced right from the beginning of their career, namely because I am not the biggest fan of somber death metal. However as their career moved onward and upward, the band managed to evolve and over time were able to carve a niche for themselves within the genre of gothic heavy metal. Once they established themselves as such, the band was a much more polished, and all around solid group.

I believe that the band reached their creative peak with the release of Crimson. The reason for this is that although their lyrical content has been pretty much suicide based ever since the album Down was released (and remained that way right up until the band finally folded), The thing about Crimson that was so impressive to the listener was the melody and catchiness of the songs. Each and every track on that album had a sharpened hook that managed to snag the listener by the ear, forcing them to allow the album to spin uniterruptedly.

After Crimson however, the band never reached any higher peeks in terms of their songwritting ability. Before long, their ideas seemed to have worn thin and their hooks and melodies almost start to sound like repetative redundancies.

As far as this DVD is concerned, there are many great attributes associated with it. The first being the production value, which is most certainly big budget all the way, just as one might expect from something with the Century Media label attached to it.

The live portion of the DVD (disc 1), is the bands last show, live in Finland. Overall, I would have to say that the bands performance is pretty solid, however I do have some slight complaints with regard to the vocalist. It's always frustrating as a fan to listen to a vocalist in a live setting totally alter the structure of a verse or chorus, especially when you as a fan are attempting to sing along with the music (Halford anyone?). The band do however pretty much cover their entire catalogue to some extent, with the majority of the set pretty much pertaining to their most recent efforts such as, The Dark White Light and The Funeral Album. The lighting for the show is great, and it manages to create a very thematic atmosphere in association ot the musical feeling that emanated from the 5.1 surround stereo.

As for the second disc, all of the bands promo videos are included, and if you watch them all in chronological order, its rather apparent how the gothic elements were with this band ever since their early days. Notice how dark the videos are shot!

The Funeral Home Procession (home video footage), of the band on the road is pretty stupid actually, even though I believe that the band was trying to be funny. I guess when some people get drunk, they simply act like fucking idiots, and unfortunately the guys from Sentenced manage to fit this bill. The singer has this quasi homosexual tendency about him that is actually a little bit eerie. Like when he starts rubbing the crotch of the camera man, or when he talks about kissing his friends testicles while he screws a groupie. Sorry, folks, but this kinda stuff sorta creeps me out, know what I mean?

The interwiew with Sami is pretty interesting, which explains the bands history from the early days, right up to the reasons as to why the group was disbanding. This is actually the only segment on this whole DVD that is in English. Everything else is strictly Finnish, with English subtitles.

Overall, I'd have to say that this DVD was pretty decent, but it didn't focus enough on the bands success, or their trials and tribulations, IE their is not enough documentary styled information about the band to really bring this monster to a proper conclusion. Many questions will forever be left unanswered.