Abstract: Founded in 1989, metal band Sentenced was a pioneer of Finnish heavy music. The band’s melancholy tunes had a universal appeal that spoke to audiences far further afield than just in their native North, with more than a million records sold worldwide. Over the course of their sixteen-year long career, Sentenced toured Europe and North America extensively.
The story of these Northern Ostrobothnian (anti)heroes takes them on a wild ride through early teenage bravado to ludicrously absurd and profoundly tragic twists of fate. Along the way you’ll learn their songwriting secrets, experience unforgettable shows and explore the deepest troughs of despair that is life on tour. Deathly disaster and Northern gallows humour; triumphs and squandered opportunities. These heavy-drinking, famously taciturn men in black tell the tale of what it was like to play in the band called Sentenced.
Author Matti Riekki is a music journalist specialising in heavy rock, known as the host of the late national radio show Metalliliitto and the longstanding Editor-in-Chief of Finnish heavy metal magazine Inferno.