SINISTHRA - THE BROAD AND BEATEN WAY | Rockum Reviews

Finland�s Sinisthra have signed with Italian label Rockshots Records for the release of their album, �The Broad and Beaten Way�. Best described as sadness tinged with despair and hope, the new album encapsulates raw emotion set against heavy and brooding music.

This album comes 15 years after the debut record �Last of the Stories of Long Past Glories�, and its manifestation has been a slow and arduous process. The songs were written ages ago while other projects, primarily vocalist Tomi Joutsen�s presence in Amorphis, were given priority from the band members.

Guitarist Markku M�kinen writes the majority of the music for the highly elusive band whose original and complex sound has often been mislabeled. The band explains the evolution of their music:

�We all had a history in thrash and death metal bands, but when the band originally came together in 2000, there was not much metal at all in the sound, it was leaning more towards grunge and at times trip-hop. After the first album in 2005, the sound took a lot more metallic turn and something came in from 70�s prog as well. Metal genres are irrelevant to us.�

The name for the album comes from �Paradise Lost� by John Milton; �The Broad and Beaten Way� is a bridge from Hell to Earth with the lyrics taking inspiration from the fall of man, and from leading a chaotic and self-destructive modern day life and trying to find solid ground and perhaps even some peace of mind. �Eterne� is the first song, where the metaphorical Adam and Eve are expelled, both from Eden and from their union, and in the last song �Ephemeral� Adam, solitary, finally accepts his past actions as futile.

The melancholic sojourn, suitable for fans of Katatonia, Anathema, and Amorphis will be available on May 15, 2020.

The band adds:

�Closely Guarded Distance� is the centerpiece of the album and probably the hardest to digest of the whole lot. So we chose it as the first �single�. It�s some 13 minutes long, divided into three parts. The first phase is the courting, the second phase is the fulfillment and the final phase is the aftermath. Musically it�s an amalgamation of several half-finished and half- discarded songs we had lying around. I think it represents what Sinisthra is about, with all our main ingredients neatly distilled into one song.�