SENTENCED Drummer Talks About New Album

SENTENCED drummer Vesa Ranta recently spoke to Luxi Lahtinen of Metal-Rules.com about the group's as-yet-untitled new album, tentatively due in April via Century Media Records. An excerpt from the interview follows:

Metal-Rules.com: So Vesa, would you tell our readers how this new album sounds when compared to your previous album "Cold White Light" that came out about two years ago already?

Vesa Ranta: "I think our newest 'baby' is a more varied album, content-wise, than 'Cold White Light', even if that album also had quite versatile songs in it, in my opinion. But I think our forthcoming album is probably a bit heavier, all in all, when compared to the songs on 'Cold White Light'. Well, I mean, our heaviest songs have got heavier and lighter songs have probably got even lighter on this album when comparing it to our previous album, so in that sense I would say there's gonna be more diverse stuff on our new record than what we got for 'Cold White Light'."

Metal-Rules.com: Did you sort of try to find a bit rougher and heavier elements for this album on purpose or was that something that came naturally for this album?

Vesa Ranta: "All those heavier elements came very naturally to this record; we didn't have to push them into our songs by any means. Like I told you earlier — even before you put a tape rollin', we were accused of having some references to Nazis in our own hometown Oulu by a group of religious people when we did this song called 'Routasydän' for Oulun Kärpät, a hockey team coming from our hometown Oulu. All those accusations were of course wholly plain bullshit and totally absurd, as we are no Nazis, whatsoever! I think those false and completely pointless accusations fed our anger, which can be reflected through some of our new songs on this new album."

Metal-Rules.com: When you started writing for this new album, how much was your previous album haunting in the background? I mean, it got rave reviews almost everywhere and was successfully received by your fans, so it must have had at least some effect on you when the band started composing songs for this latest effort of your?

Vesa Ranta: "Of course, that's something you cannot avoid because you always try to make better songs and better albums, so some comparisons, either consciously or unconsciously, were made to 'Cold White Light' — and that obviously was quite natural. I think we made a very good record last time even if it's also got its few 'not-that-good' songs as well. When we started the songwriting for this upcoming album, we sort of tried to start from a clean table, and not tried to think too much what we did on our previous album. In my opinion the songs on this new record are the best SENTENCED we have done thus far and I hope once people will get a chance to hear it, could like it, too. But time will of course tell..."

Read Vesa Ranta's entire interview with Metal-Rules.com at this location.