Sinisthra – The Broad and Beaten Way
Format: CD – Digital
Label: Rockshots Records
Releasedatum: 15 mei 2020
SINISTHRA comes from Finland and has been in various stages of existence since 1999. Their style of music is basically metal, drawing from a wide source of different influences and blending them to a sound that can’t really be compared to any one single band. Always quite melancholic, most of the time quite heavy, and often with strong shades of 70’s prog with lesser shades of 90’s grunge.
The name SINISTHRA derives from the Italian word sinistra, meaning “the left side” and representing the allegory of creativity, femininity, individuality and general free-thinking pathways of the Left Hand, without the hollow “satanic” or any other religious connotations. The lyrics veer away from most commonly used themes and focus heavily on more personal and intimate subjects. Sinisthra is all about contrasts, frail yet crushing, sad yet content, silent but roaring. Melancholy without utter despair. Darkness tinged with light. Gravel covered with honey. The only dogma is never to acknowledge musical boundaries, and never to use the words “love” and “death” in the lyrics.
The band released one album in 2005, called “Last Of The Stories Of Long Past Glories” to favourable reviews and got labeled “gothic metal”, somewhat misleadingly, but as the singer Tomi Joutsen joined Amorphis, his career skyrocketed and Sinisthra’s didn’t, so due to lack of time from his part, things slowed down.
Now Sinisthra has completed their second album “The Broad And Beaten Way” and are ready to finally release it. The road has been long, winding and mostly uphill, and promises to remain so in the future as well.
The band comments about the song: “‘Closely Guarded Distance’ is the centrepiece 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 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.”
Best described as sadness tinged with despair and hope, “The Broad and Beaten Way” 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.
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.
Tracks:
01. Eterne
02. Closely Guarded Distance
03. Halfway To Somewhere Else
04. Morning Frail
05. Safe In The Arms of The Everlasting Now
06. Ephemeral
Album Credits:
Music by Markku Mäkinen
Vocal lines by Tomi Joutsen
Lyrics by Erkki Virta
Sinisthra is:
Tomi Joutsen – Vocals
Markku Mäkinen – Guitar
Erkki Virta -Drums
Timo Vainio – Keyboards
Marko Välimäki – Guitar
Janne Telen – Bass
Website: https://www.facebook.com/Sinisthra/