Swallow The Sun
Songs from the North I, II & III
Century Media
2015
I’ve been expecting such an ending. This is the so called progression, which is never what it is supposed to be and leads all the bands to wrong choices. I remember a similar case with Opeth, when they abandoned their prog death metal sound entirely (although they had claimed that they would never do so in an interview) after “Deliverance”. The story is more or less known, these days they pretend to be something else, more “artful” and “prog” but the truth is that they ain’t.
Anyhow, back to Swallow The Sun. The band had nicely surprised me with their previous “Emerald Forest and the Blackbird”. I’d even conducted a very interesting interview with the band’s mastermind Juha Raivio. I’m sure that after this review Juha (just like Åkerfeldt) won’t ever speak to me again, but that’s the price one’s got to pay if he’s straightforward and objective. Come what may!
“Songs from the North I, II & III”, as the title declares, is an album which it is divided in three parts. The first part, “Gloom”, is in the same vein with “Emerald Forest and the Blackbird”, only way less inspired and interesting. Also, I think that its long duration (almost 1 hour) makes the whole result a bit tiresome in the end.
The second part, “Beauty” is totally acoustic & atmospheric. It has its moments but it’s too mellow and so wannabe that it becomes somewhat pretentious after a certain point. At times, it reminds of the lame moments of Anathema, Katatonia, Opeth and so on.
The third part, “Despair” is on the same par with “Gloom”, somewhat more extreme at places and it contains 5 long tracks (the shortest lasts about 8:48 and the longest about 12:58). in this part it’s more than obvious that the songwriting part is fully lacking. Without any profound changes from the first part, I still cannot understand why go on and release such long tracks. What for? Long tracks don’t make you “progressive”. If that’s what a band believes then better learn that long uninspired tracks can make the whole album boring and tedious. This is the exact case with “Despair”. Its few fine moments got lost in the boredom & monotony.
The major drawback is the songwriting. I know that it ain’t easy to write so many tracks and keep all the listeners happy & focused; then again a band should not try to do such things for it doesn’t help them at all to expand their fanbase… on the contrary. If they had gathered the best tracks from the 3 albums, then the release would have been way more remarkable.
I do not know that the future holds for Swallow The Sun, but if they take the “Opeth road”, I won’t be surprised at all. Unfortunately, that’s the road to success if you wanna become more radio-friendly and mainstream so as to reach a bigger audience. If you have three hours to kill then go all along and listen to “Songs from the North I, II & III”… honestly, I do not think that it’s possible to listen to the 3 albums in a row, without any break or falling asleep along the way…
Anyhow, back to Swallow The Sun. The band had nicely surprised me with their previous “Emerald Forest and the Blackbird”. I’d even conducted a very interesting interview with the band’s mastermind Juha Raivio. I’m sure that after this review Juha (just like Åkerfeldt) won’t ever speak to me again, but that’s the price one’s got to pay if he’s straightforward and objective. Come what may!
“Songs from the North I, II & III”, as the title declares, is an album which it is divided in three parts. The first part, “Gloom”, is in the same vein with “Emerald Forest and the Blackbird”, only way less inspired and interesting. Also, I think that its long duration (almost 1 hour) makes the whole result a bit tiresome in the end.
The second part, “Beauty” is totally acoustic & atmospheric. It has its moments but it’s too mellow and so wannabe that it becomes somewhat pretentious after a certain point. At times, it reminds of the lame moments of Anathema, Katatonia, Opeth and so on.
The third part, “Despair” is on the same par with “Gloom”, somewhat more extreme at places and it contains 5 long tracks (the shortest lasts about 8:48 and the longest about 12:58). in this part it’s more than obvious that the songwriting part is fully lacking. Without any profound changes from the first part, I still cannot understand why go on and release such long tracks. What for? Long tracks don’t make you “progressive”. If that’s what a band believes then better learn that long uninspired tracks can make the whole album boring and tedious. This is the exact case with “Despair”. Its few fine moments got lost in the boredom & monotony.
The major drawback is the songwriting. I know that it ain’t easy to write so many tracks and keep all the listeners happy & focused; then again a band should not try to do such things for it doesn’t help them at all to expand their fanbase… on the contrary. If they had gathered the best tracks from the 3 albums, then the release would have been way more remarkable.
I do not know that the future holds for Swallow The Sun, but if they take the “Opeth road”, I won’t be surprised at all. Unfortunately, that’s the road to success if you wanna become more radio-friendly and mainstream so as to reach a bigger audience. If you have three hours to kill then go all along and listen to “Songs from the North I, II & III”… honestly, I do not think that it’s possible to listen to the 3 albums in a row, without any break or falling asleep along the way…