Swallow The Sun - Hope

Published Jan. 15 2007

*=Staff's pick	Hope The Hours Of Despair* The Justice Of Suffering* Don't Fall Asleep (Horror pt. 2) Too Cold For Tears* The Empty Skies No Light, No Hope Doomed To Walk The Earth (Hidden Track?)

Genre	Death/Doom Metal	Mikko Kotamäki	Vocals
Tracks	9	Markus Jämsen	Guitar
Runningtime	64 Min.	Juha Raivio	Guitar
Label	Spinefarm	Matti Honkonen	Bass
Release	07 Feb. 2007	Pasi Pasanen	Drums
Country	Finland	Aleksi Munter	Keyboard
Similar artists	Opeth, Katatonia, Sentenced

Critically acclaimed Swallow The Sun from Finland return with their third full-length album. And for this one the band isolated themselves on an island outside of Helsinki for the recording sessions and it resulted in this album entitled Hope. Swallow The Sun performs a lighter form of death and doom metal. Don't get me wrong, it is heavy, gloomy and with a slooooow tempo, but they have the knowledge of how to spice up the melancholia to make it more, in lack of better words, easy-listening. The music is progressive and artistic without becoming pretentious and Swallow The Sun deliver Hope with a grand feeling. The vocals are combined successfully and range between clean and growls and are delivered by Mikko Kotamäki that handles both the techniques well. His clean vocals are soft and emotional while the growls are coming from deep down his belly, yet with a melodic sense.

This is a tasteful album where it despite the growls and ultra heavy doomy riffs does not turn out as particularly aggressive music. With soft guitars and the electronic backdrops they create a beautiful sweeping feeling that makes the music having a constant flow no matter how slow it goes, as in Doomed To Walk The Earth which is really a slow and dark track, tastefully performed with the sweeping female background vocals to back up the really dark growls. The track Don't Fall Asleep has been released as a single, and it feels like the obvious choice with its combination of heavy doom and romantic HIM melancholia that comes out really well in something that could be called a death metal ballad, with the keyboards and the heavy parts reminding me somewhat of Dark Tranquillity.

Hope is a clever album with complex structures, many layers in the sound and tasteful arrangements that combined create an atmosphere that I really like. Furthermore, they are not overdoing anything but you have to be in the right mood to listen to it and to really appreciate its magnificence. To break off the slower songs we find the track These Hours Of Despair that almost appears fast even though it is mid-tempo. It is not completely unlike Dark Tranquillity and has a great melodic riff and a nice flow to it. It is great melodic death metal and I would have liked to hear more of this on Hope to break the inevitable monotony with this kind of music. Vocal guests on the album are Jonas Renkse (Katatonia) and Tomi Joutsen (Amorphis), and with Jonas' performance on The Justice Of Suffering you get a good mix of death metal doom mixed with emotional progressive music like Katatonia, a collaboration that turned out greatly if you ask me.

The album cover says that there are eight tracks on the album, but when I put the disc in my CD-player I can hear nine tracks. If the ninth is supposed to be a hidden track I am not sure of, or if it might even be a cover track? Nevertheless, it is in the same vein as the other tracks so the reason for this extra song remains a mystery for now. (Update: track #9 is called These Low Lands and will be released as a bonustrack on the limited digipack version. //Tommy)

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	8	8	7	6

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Thomas