Review Summary: what have I become?
I gotta say: one thing I admire is the boldness of this album. I love to see a band throw a curveball artistically and stick to their guns, but it makes it all the more heartbreaking when it just doesn't work. Allow me to offer some important context before we begin; No, I don't believe that making your sound more accessible and arguably 'commercial' is inherently a bad thing. In some ways it makes a lot of sense. Swallow the Sun were on a run of albums that were no doubt emotionally exhausting and draining following the tragic death of primary songwriter Juha Ralvio's wife to cancer. This wasn't limited to Swallow the Sun - Juha was not only busy performing and releasing the soul-shakingly beautiful "Hour of the Nightingale" for his wife's band Trees of Eternity, but continued to release her work posthumously under Aleah and Hallatar, a no doubt unimaginably bleak and melancholic catharsis. After all of this a brighter, more direct album makes sense artistically.
Swallow the Sun's trademark of melancholic, dramatic death/doom has undergone a transformation from raw and organic to cold, bright and sterile. Dan Lancaster's production is perhaps the most contentous element of this album, making everything sound oversaturated, overexposed and scrubbed of any dynamics or humanity. Producing an album full of soul-baring, deep compositions with the production befitting of being in Tiktok shorts is frankly baffling. There are definitely hints here and there that this is the same band that wrote 'The Morning Never Came' but they're few and far between - the occasional background riff or two. Otherwise this is a doom metal album that is cutting and direct. Big walls of rhythm guitar, subtle synth flourishes and massive vocals carry each song along as opposed to the subtle builds of atmosphere we've seen the band do before. There's a few key issues with this that kill the album on arrival and it's a great shame.
Let's be fair - Mikko is a great vocalist when he stays in his lane. His growls and rasps are superb and cut through the mix with all the urgency and anger you'd want and expect. His cleans, at least historically speaking, were always best when accentuating the atmosphere of a piece during the lulls of any given song. Mikko simply doesn't have a voice for hooks - and that's fine - but when the songwriting relies so deeply on hooks and the performance isn't there it makes the experience flat and hollow. To simplify your songwriting, thus giving you less to work with, you have to ensure what's left is enough to carry the song. 'Shining' rarely delivers on this front. The hooky choruses sound unconvincing, artificial and void of passion due to the overprocessing and pitch correction that simply isn't necessary. Mikko can sing. It can, of course, be argued this was a stylistic choice as opposed to correcting performances but the presentation simply doesn't work.
Discussing individual compositions becomes rather redundant when the presentation simply doesn't let them shine. I don't believe that the move to a more streamlined, arguably 'poppy' direction is lamentable one. Swallow the Sun have a large library of meticulous and atmospheric albums in their back catalog we can all enjoy. But here's the thing - the stripping down and streamlining of the structure, for something like this to work a lot of elements have to be in place which for 'Shining' they're absent. We're discussing a band here where 8 minute songs that meticulously built tension and atmosphere was the norm. Keeping that in mind, condensing your album down to simply core elements, those elements have to do a lot more heavy lifting to lift the song out of mediocrity. Additionally when everything is fighting for prominence due to the oversaturated mix, nothing stands out and it becomes a big dramatic wall of practically nothing. There's a great set of tunes in here somewhere that hasn't been given a fair shot.
Frankly, I admire the band for trying something out of left field. I highly doubt this was an attempt at commercialism as Swallow the Sun had a massively dedicated fanbase already. There was no requirement for 'selling out' so we can put the idea of that motivation to bed. For comparison, it's not too dissimilar to the transition between Agalloch's progressive and atmospheric album "The Mantle" and the streamlined post-metal influenced follow up "Ashes Against the Grain". The difference is that Agalloch still hugely played to their strengths as composers and performers. Swallow the Sun are a uniquely skilled band at atmosphere and tension building - abandoning these outright made this album an artistic challenge that I admire them for undertaking.
For reasons laid out quite comprehensively this album isn't for me. I'm still eager to follow along with where they go next artistically and can compartmentalise this in my head as a failed experiment that I oddly commend them for taking. Better luck next time, my lovely Finnish purveyors of misery.
