Some twenty years into an elegant career, Finnish doomsters Swallow The Sun return with new album Shining. For this album, the band recruited Dan Lancaster, the two-time Grammy nominee producer whose previous work includes Muse, Blink 182, Bring Me The Horizon, and Enter Shikari, in order to bring them up to date. Not perhaps the obvious choice for these masters of melancholy, it finds the band pairing their familiar soundscapes with a range of modern production techniques but, with bassist Matti Honkonen (somewhat unhelpfully), describing it as “the black album of death doom”, Shining has a difficult task ahead of it, and the results are variable.
The overarching approach is mapped out on opening number Innocence Was Long Forgotten. Emphasising the keyboards and electronic elements draws the band’s sound closer to that of latter-day Katatonia, the band losing something of their spontaneity in their pursuit of cleaner lines. This is even more apparent on the schizophrenic What Have I Become, which isn’t sure whether it wants to be death metal or pop metal. It’s an uneasy alliance, with guttural vocals quickly supplanted by carefully tooled harmonies and they just don’t sit that well alongside one another. The same issue is apparent on the restrained MelancHoly although, despite the occasional nod to BMTH in the phrasing of the vocals, it sounds more natural, as it builds to the more brutal passages, rather than using the bait and switch tactics of the preceding song. The pairing begins to bear more fruit with the lush soundscapes of Under The Moon And Sun, which nods to Ulver’s more recent output, the focus on clean vocals all the more effective because it feels more in keeping with the overall sound of the album. Rounding out the first half, the crunchy riff of Kold is both powerful and catchy, the production and arrangements falling perfectly into step, and highlighting this collaboration at its best.
Having found their footing, across the course of the first half, Swallow The Sun sound more comfortable still on November Dust, a rich, warm piece of goth-infused doom that once again nods to Ulver and Katatonia with its immersive production. Even better, the piano-led Velvet Chains is achingly beautiful, the sparser arrangement focusing attention on the perfectly delivered vocals. The band throw another wrinkle in with the dark, trip-hop-infused introduction to Tonight Pain Believes but, unfortunately, they don’t stay the course, and the eerie, commanding verse is undone by an expansive chorus that sounds beamed in from another song. The explosive Charcoal Sky sees the band indulging their love of death metal, and while the doom elements remain, it’s a heavy piece that keeps the listener engaged. The band keep things heavy on the concluding title track, which sees death vocals and soaring guitars coalesce to provide the record with an emotionally satisfying and cathartic finale.
It’s always good to see an artist evolve their sound, incorporating new elements into their sonic palette. However, when a band adopts modern production tropes without changing the underlying structures, the end result – as it can be here – is something of an uneasy compromise. Shining is far from a bad album and as it progresses, there’s a sense of band and producer becoming more comfortable with one another. Where Shining suffers is where, as on What Have I Become, it attempts to nod to the band’s harder edge, the cleanliness of Dan’s production stealing much of the power away. Conversely, the slower, statelier pieces gain greater weight, with tracks like November Dust proving to be impressive showcases of the band’s engagement with modernity. It is here that Matti’s Honkonen’s black album claim is most clearly supported. Yet, it’s not consistent and the band sometimes seem uncertain as to how far they should take things –Tonight Pain Believes being a case in point. Overall, Shining finds Swallow The Sun in transition and, should they choose to continue down this path, it will likely be the next album that reaps the benefit. 7/10
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