Penitent started in 1994, when Karsten Hamre was obsessed by the idea of combining his poetry with the music, in order to create more powerful atmosphere than one could get by only reading his poems. These poems reflected his thoughts and visions, which came from deep within the soul and mind. They dealt with themes and topics such as life and death, pain and torture, sorrow and depression. Acclaimed as "mad poetry", all of them indeed had deep sense. After several albums released with labels as Cold Meat Industry, Dark Vinyl, Prophecy and Draenor/Napalm, Karsten decided to change his music direction, building up the album "Songs of Despair", released in 2002 by Beyond Productions. In 2003 Karsten took the decision to come back to his very first sonorities. His album "Deserted Dreams" (recorded in October 2003) is just the first result of his journey back to his roots.