Finland’s SINISTHRA featuring Amorphis vocalist Tomi Joutsen are sharing the first single ‘Closely Guarded Distance‘ off their forthcoming album, “The Broad and Beaten Way” due out May 15, 2020 via Rockshots Records.
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.
The melancholic sojourn, suitable for fans of Katatonia, Anathema, and Amorphis is available for pre-order: CD & iTunes
