SWALLOW THE SUN
Shining
Century Media Records
An extreme metal band comparing its latest release to METALLICA's Black Album might not be the wisest of marketing strategies. Regardless of how accurate the comparison may be, such pronouncements will no doubt make longtime fans nervous and everyone else rather suspicious, since surely there is a dramatic stylistic shift in the offing.
And that shift most likely will mean something less complex, challenging and, well, extreme - a moderation typically designed to introduce more melody and catchiness to thereby improve its changes for greater appeal. At least in theory. Yet for every Black Album triumph - even if it signaled the end of METALLICA as a thrash metal band - there are plenty of Swansongs or Cold Lakes, half-hearted or ill-conceived transitions that fell flat and ultimately did far more harm than good for the bands involved.
Which brings us, finally, to Finnish death doomsters SWALLOW THE SUN, a band renowned for its epic scale, unrelenting melancholia and jarring sonic juxtapositions. Its new, ninth studio full-length is Shining, and its accompanying press materials declare it: "the Black Album of Death Doom". At least so sayeth bassist Matti Honkonen.
This follows similar descriptions that Shining is "the group's first step on the new path to the unknown" ... "this time the band searched for something new, something bright, something that will take them to new spheres." And how SWALLOW THE SUN was guided into these "new spheres" by producer Dan Lancaster, whose credits include the far more mainstream-minded BRING ME THE HORIZON, BLINK 182, MUSE, DON BROCO and ENTER SHAKARI.
But is that boasting or backtracking - or damage control? Well, perhaps a bit of all of the above. Despite the calculating maneuvering, Shining is certainly not a Cold Lake-style epic fail. The album, however, does fall short of its Black Album aspirations in walking its "new path".
SWALLOW THE SUN has always delivered "gloom, beauty and despair" - to borrow from the title of the band's 2021 live album - in roughly equal measures. Shining, however, finds the quintet paring back the "gloom" and "despair" and going pretty much all in on the "beauty". Melody, brevity and accessibility play a far more prominent role here, at the expense of the "death" and "doom" on which the band built is nearly 25-year career.
What you end up with is an occasionally awkward mishmash that recalls the gothier work of PARADISE LOST, Ghost Reveries/Watershed-era OPETH and KATATONIA, with bits of vintage SWALLOW THE SUN peeking through here and there.
The change is exemplified by frontman Mikko Kotamaki's vocals. His foreboding, quaking gutturals and Gollum-like rasp are largely relegated to pinch-hitter status here as his somber, yet endearing cleans take the fore on pretty much every track. There is still some startling and effective Jekyll & Hyde back and forth, as on "What I Have Become" or the title track that closes the album out. But given how "clean" so much of Shining is, the "dirty" vocals at times seem out of place or unnecessary, as on the ballad-like "MelancHoly" or "Tonight Pain Believes", and may have been better left on the bench, sad to say.
On the musical side, Shining is quite tame in comparison to SWALLOW THE SUN's previous efforts. But true to the band's own words, that should come as no surprise. Shining does kick off on a fairly resounding note with the pompy goth rock and heaving swells of "Innocence Was Long Forgotten" and, as noted earlier, "What I Have Become" with its effective heavy/melodic change ups. But the album wanders a bit aimlessly thereafter, with moments of former grandeur and impact and some enticing passages where the new direction really gels being offset by awkward arrangements, clumsy execution or too much "passivity" - for lack of a better term.
"Kold" and "November" deliver some of the heaviness and doominess of old as the album's midsection and mark a high point. But they are surrounded long stretches of sparse, often staid balladry - "MelancHoly", "Under The Moon & Sun", "Velvet Chains" and "Tonight Pain Believes" - punctuated by intrusive growly outbursts or wispy female harmonizing. Some more of the heft and punch that the lead break on "Moon & Sun" provides would have been welcome here.
Yet what amounts to Shining's heftiest, punchiest track, "Charcoal Sky", sounds something of a knockoff of OPETH's "Baying of the Hounds" in its driving rhythm, crashing riffs and Kotamaki's commanding roar. And the calm, almost new agey passages that dodge in and out steal the song's momentum and essentially get in the way.
The nearly 9-minute title track delivers more in the way of classic SWALLOW THE SUN massiveness and makes for a fine finish to an otherwise inconsistent and frustrating album. The band had been introducing more melody and less of a funereal vibe at a measured, natural pace over its last couple of albums. But apparently that wasn't fast enough, and with that impatience, the Black Album cart has come before the proverbial horse here and SWALLOW THE SUN stumbles as a result.
So, despite the marketing pronouncements - or, indeed, because of them - caveat emptor with this one.
2.5 Out Of 5.0
