Year Of Metal #069: Swallow The Sun - New Moon
Say what you want about the Scandinavians, but they know how to make terror-inducing melodic death metal. This is - I think - my first stop off in Finland, and while one doesn’t want to tar all Northern European extreme metallers with the same brush, it’s interesting to compare and contrast. Put next to Emperor or, especially, Darkthrone, this 2009 album is positively slick, with a lot of pretty, gothic melodies among the various forms of metal vocals. While it’s not a great deal like the Converge and Chelsea Wolfe record, again my most immediate comparison is to something like Fucked Up in how Swallow The Sun use light and shade.
“These Woods Breathe Evil” kicks things off in fantastically direct fashion. We’re given a few seconds of sparkling arpeggios before everything kicks into gear. The drums are worthy of note across the whole LP. I don’t think percussionist Kai Hahto slips into metal tropes even once; he’s never filling the song with a deluge of kicks or flexing on the toms to the detriment of the overall dynamic. On the first track he’s positively swinging, but he’s still able to put plenty of power into his work. I see that, while he’s worked primarily in metal on record, he has a jazz background, which adds up - sometimes it’s about the drum fills you don’t play.
New Moon is a highly dynamic affair, with the lengthy “Sleepless Swans” dragging out a creeping tension through a sinister soft introduction. I love those clean, reverby guitars - they’re a bit reminiscent of Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You, and they ripple and echo like still water disturbed by a stone. Swallow The Sun draw us in for two hypnotically chiming minutes before turning on a dime. Mikko Kotamäki’s vocals go from serene to monstrous; it’s like the song just mutates, becomes suddenly malevolent.
They can hit more straightforwardly heavy beats too, like on “...And Heavens Cried Blood”. Switching to a doomier gear, they push themselves to slow things down to as slow a dirge as they dare. The dip into something less technical works wonders for them - the riff is simple and repetitive, but sounds all the more massive in its simplicity. Even at its most involved, the record rarely sounds overproduced or excessively multi tracked; everything sounds ancient and somehow natural.
Best of the bunch is “Lights On The Lake (Horror pt III)”, with a haunting guest vocal from the late South African musician Aleah Stanbridge. Here the band bring together everything that’s worked so far on the record. The intro menaces through sheer restraint before bringing in the heavy, downtuned doom gear. For a while, the band truly let themselves off the leash, embracing discordance and sheer volume, a piercing organ doing its best to be heard above the racket. When Stanbridge returns at the end, it’s almost stirring stuff, like a pop hook over these colossal chords.
This is high quality, impressively cohesive stuff that I think could potentially find a surprisingly wide audience. Beyond the screams, which would certainly be an entry barrier for a lot of people, this album is packed with melody and gripping, unforced drama.
