“A misstep from a band I hardly know?.
Swallow The Sun have just now, gone and released their ninth studio album. An incredible feat for any band to do.
“Shining” sees Swallow The Sun working with Dan Lancaster, best known for his work on some of Bring Me The Horizon‘s most acclaimed records (most notably Post Human: Survival Horror) as well as working with bands like Crossfaith, Enter Shikari, Muse and Blink 182.
As a first time collab between Lancaster and Swallow The Sun, long time fans are saying this has been a misstep in the bands path. Pulling Swallow The Sun from their beautifully gloom, painful heartache, and melancholic brutality sound, to a more mainstream “Radio Friendly” sound.
On first listen, my mind took me straight to the “Love Metal” genre of HIM. Their Finnish Brothers.
Goth rock and darkwave with that beautiful sense of emotion throughout. However, some fans disagree with me with this being a positive read of the album saying, “Worse, the material sometimes sounds uncomfortably similar to H.I.M”.
At the end of the day, if you are not pissing fans off, then you really don’t know what works and what does not. Stepping outside of the norm of your previous 8 albums and starting a bit of genre bending, is the only way you are really going to fight forward for your music and start to make a claim on the thrown of your chosen genre.
Songs like “Kold” grabbed me by the balls and dipped me in some icy cold freezing waters off Scandinavia. And I liked it. This track screamed Papa Emeritus. It has the theatricality of their Swedish Brothers, Ghost, all over it.
Charcoal Sky gets my fight or flight senses going and I have a sudden urge to punch the air with my fist into the sky. Amon Amarth could have helped write this track and I can already picture Swallow The Sun help rowing the long ship across the heavy seas.
Closing out the album we get to hear the title track “Shining”, and again, its hard not to think of Vilo Valo whilst hearing that first fall into a soft tremolo verse. “When Love And Death Embrace” comes straight into my mind for comparison.
Granted, if you despise Love Metal, you are not going to appreciate the comparison, but regardless of the genre, when song writing is good… its good. And once you appreciate it as it is, then the rest should fall by the waist side and the beauty of the track is all we need to see.
Coming in at a running time of 8.51 minutes, Shining takes you on an epic journey that feels like a montage perhaps of all albums they have created before this. Certainly, feels like we are at the pinnacle point of Swallow the Sun’s career and the ending fades out with a question mark of “where the hell are we going next?”.
Honestly, I really enjoyed this album. And perhaps the path in which Dan Lancaster has brought them on, ain’t such a bad thing after all.
Coming in and out of other genres is the best way of expressing yourself whilst at the same time, reaching your tentacle outwards in order to hopefully get another human stuck on the end so that you can drag them back in to your pit of fans. And ill gladly hold on tight and see where this journey leads to.
Shining has been released by Century Media Records on October 18th, 2024.
Order Shining:
https://swallowthesun.lnk.to/Shining
A six out of ten goes to this album.
Reviewer Carl Foran – @carlforanphotography