Sentenced - Frozen
Review: Although structures remain for the most part basic variations, layering of additional instrumentation augment them enough to give context to the glimpses of underlying structure granted by Black Sabbath-style epiphanies built into the apex of each song's evolution. Expert blues lead guitar gives way periodically to some cliché-ridden complexes of tangential riffing but mostly articulates a careful path of manipulation of the vital emotions encoded within the blues.
A reasonable comparison might be drawn to later Iron Maiden. While the essence of this music is not necessarily any massive deviation from the historical capacity of rock n roll, and while it is far from death metal, Sentenced's "Frozen" still manages to wrest some quality heavy metal from the background of cheese into which it could easily be absorbed, and for that gets credit from this reviewer as an attempt at continuation hidden within the mundane.