Review: Swallow The Sun – Shining
Swallow The Sun‘s continued relevance and popularity, while built on the back of classics in their early discography, was carried through their later years by records that managed to weave their flair for melody, melodrama and atmosphere without compromising their sound. Comparing the sound of their debut to the sound of New Moon, or listening to the Songs From The North cycle and then 2021’s Moonflowers, you hear a band evolving while retaining the essence of their appeal.
Moonflowers felt massive, both in its recording and in its position within the Swallow The Sun discography, a big highlight for the band that saw them marrying their ostentatious aesthetic with production and scope that made it feel important and vital. It also felt like the culmination of a specific period of the band, one that was spurred by intense emotions, a period of loss and profound grief; their next album would naturally have to change gears.
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, and Muse. The albums he’s worked on with those bands all have a distinctly electronic bent to them, favouring a compressed, modern rock production seemingly at odds with the more open sound of past Swallow The Sun albums. Shining is a candid attempt to jump headfirst into both a new sound and a new era for the band, embracing trace elements of contemporary alt-pop in its identity. It might be a contentious direction for some but Swallow The Sun have always played with pop forms, even on their most intense records, so as a change of pace it makes sense for the band after such a pronounced period of emotional heaviness.
Unfortunately, Shining starts with “Innocence Was Long Forgotten,” a song that is both very clean while still sounding dated—establishing the tone for much of the first half of the album’s runtime. Its production is flat and synthetic, robbing it of any emotional weight, something that’s been at the core of Swallow The Sun for their entire career. It’s artificial without using its own artificiality to articulate anything. This is highlighted most prominently by the guitar soloing in the track’s back half—a song desperately trying to tear through suffocating production.
“What Have I Become” establishes harsh vocals that seem more arbitrary and forced than before, feeling at odds with a track that’s so sickly sweet. At times its soaring melodrama isn’t far removed from the spirit of the sort of post-grunge you’d find soundtracking a trickshot compilation from 15 years ago or something, and just feels incongruent. “MelancHoly” is very sparse in its composition, and while it tries to use that thinness to highlight its emotive qualities, it instead just feels underwritten. With its abrupt ending, lack of development, and minor arpeggios twinkling in the distance of the mix, it feels especially hollow. This was, of course, likely intentional, utilizing a more dry sound to evoke its titular melancholia, but to my ears it sounds flat and lacking dynamics.
While I don’t think Dan Lancaster is totally unequipped to produce this sort of metal, it’s a production style that is more fitting for his work with hook-driven songwriters, and not with a band that’s been as historically atmospheric as Swallow The Sun. The same issues popped up on his work with Dir En Grey, and I think the injection of Shining with contemporary alt-pop flavour only further muddied the vision of the album—an album whose production feels like it’s trying to be two albums at once.
But it’s also not fair to point exclusively to production as the cause of Shining‘s problems. The composition often feels lifeless, and despite being more active than their other albums, it just feels as if nothing happens for large portions of the songs. The linear composition and lack of real development leaves much of the album feeling static and rote. Thankfully, the record gradually improves following “MelancHoly.”
The album recovers with “Under The Moon & Sun,” which is defined by this persistent little ostinato that’s weaved throughout the track pretty deftly; it’s a track where the compositional intent of Shining finally feels like it matches its delivery, a solid meeting of the album’s relative softness and their past heaviness. The triplet bursts of follow-up track “Kold” give it a unique flavour, and has a notably theatrical flair to its main guitar melody.
“November Dust” changes pace, a song that’s much more considered and deliberate in its writing, initially sounding similar to late-era Woods Of Ypres at the start. Like all of Shining, it still feels confined by its production, a song that has all of this emotional potency pent up inside a flattened sound. It results in a solid track that can still feel hamstrung, with the moments when it should soar instead lacking punch.
The relative softness of “Velvet Chains” is both a moment of respite as well as one of the record’s best songs. Despite its dominance throughout large portions of the song, the piano is utilized quite tastefully, accenting the mood rather than overpowering the mix. It pairs well alongside the moody atmosphere of “Tonight Pain Believes,” the track that’s actually the one most enhanced by the production, leaving it feeling brittle and uncertain, a track that has a great sense of tension to it, accentuated by the sudden transition to its chorus. A big highlight, where both harmonic flair and atmosphere are allowed to gel together.
“Charcoal Sky” is the most traditional Swallow The Sun get on Shining, a track that wouldn’t feel out of place on Moonsongs, and is also the vocal highlight of the record; Mikko Kotamäki’s clean vocals are grand, but his harsh and guttural vocals have always been excellent.
The title track thankfully finishes the record on a great note. The record’s intent of capturing “the profound duality of the human experience” is encapsulated most here—the longest and most dynamic track, it’s the song that manages to present this dualism, a song that’s a tug-of-war between harshness and softness, acoustic and electric instrumentation, loudness and quiet. For as uncertain and trepidatious as Shining has been as an album, its title track manages to fulfill its promise with aplomb.
Shining will likely prove to be a very divisive record but I don’t think for its intended reasons. It’s an album of such wildly varying quality, weighed down by production woes and an uncertain direction. Bassist Matti Honkonen describes Shining as their Black Album, but it feels more like their Death Magnetic. Should Swallow The Sun continue to refine this direction in the future, the bright moments of Shining might shine brighter in retrospect; as a precursor of things to come. As it is, though, it just feels like there’s a solid record trapped within Shining that’s begging to get out.
2.5/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
Shining is out October 18th on Century Media Records.
