The Black League

Taneli Jarva's departure from Sentenced after that band's 1995 release Amok was mourned by many fans, and it can be argued that Sentenced hasn't quite been the same since. Five years later, Jarva returned in a new band, The Black League, with a style that is very much a continuation of the Amok style of dark metal, though in places the band stretches out a bit, such as on the excellent "Winter Winds Sing" and "The Everlasting", both of which would sound at home on Tiamat's A Deeper Kind Of Slumber. While Ichor and its followup Utopia A.D. fit solidly in the old Sentenced mold, the band's third album, 2004's Man's Ruin Revisited, was quite a different beast. Could the title be an homage to the now-defunct stoner rock record label Man's Ruin? Maybe not, and it may be just a coincidence, but this album, unlike its predecessors, isn't a dark metal album, but more a spirited, 70's-influenced hard rock album -- i.e. an album that would have fit perfectly on the Man's Ruin roster back in the day. A largely different lineup continued the progression away from their early style, with albums released in 2005 and 2009 before breaking up in 2014.

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Discography

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