Band:	Unleashed
Album:	Across The Open Sea
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	October 26, 1993
A review by:	Herzebeth

01. To Asgaard We Fly
02. Open wide
03. I Am God
04. The One Insane
05. Across The Open Sea
06. In The Northern Lands
07. Forever Goodbye (2045)
08. Execute Them All
09. Captured
10. Breaking The Law [Judas Priest cover]
11. The General

It's Hard to make a good album after an almost perfect one such as Shadows In The Deep, in 1993 Unleashed released Across The Open Sea, a good album with nice songs, weird lyrics and great vocals.

Axel Hermann is again in charge of the artwork (very interesting by the way), the album cover shows a Viking ship, overture of an album full of Scandinavian history and generals fighting in Viking Northern lands, now this is not precisely a Viking metal band, in fact the music and execution is Death Metal, the only thing that changes are the lyrics which by the way are again written by Hedlund.

This album in particular offers great songs for example I Am God and The One Insane the best songs in the album according to my taste with brutal riffs and great lyrics, a fine instrumental song that shows the band accuracy to play melodies (Across The Open Sea), it offers too riffs that are even catchier than the ones in Shadows In The Deep, and better vocals too, and last but not least an Awful Judas Priest cover (Breaking The Law) no kidding it's really a terrible cover.

The Production and recording is not their best one, and I quote Johnny Hedlund in this matter "Before we recorded this album we had to buy new gear since most of our equipment had either broke down or was worn out from years of hard touring. Unfortunately we had little money to buy new gear and we had to manage without it therefore this record was recorded with a clean but not satisfying sound."

This album is not better than Shadows in the deep, but it isn't a bad album at all, a good thing in this album is that Johnny gives exceptional vocalizations and gives incredible environment to the album which is brilliant by the way, the rating went down only for the production, the fact that I don't think it's a good idea to make riffs even catchier and sometimes weaker than the ones in their previous albums, and for the Judas Priest joke cover.