ALBUM REVIEW: An Empire – A Swarm Of The Sun

Seventeen years deep into their career as A SWARM OF THE SUN, Swedish duo Erik Nilsson and Jakob Berglund have made it their mission to craft music that defies the expectations and scope of the everyday. Existing as an uneasy alliance of the sounds of orchestral, post-metal, doom metal and boundless other genres, they exist to astound the listener with an experience that is cinematic and ambitious.

It has been five years since their last release, The Woods, and the creative process of their fourth record has seen a multitude of changes and challenges. Original ideas were scrapped, and what rose out of the ashes was a six-track, four-act monolith in the form of An Empire, which pulls from the uncertainty and discontent of modern life, and does so with a team of creatives that offer a wholly unique sonic palette to paint this picture.

Pipe-organ, musical saws and trombones make their appearance across the daunting expanse of this lengthy record; from the very foundations, what is produced frequently feels unconventional and even a little unsettling. Whilst the four-act concept ultimately flourishes less than it should do, the sense of discontent and uncertainty that the album is structured around is frequently clear and apparent, often acting as a cinematic musical reflection of this decade thus far.

As a result of this creative approach, there are some real moments of beauty across the span of this immense record. The opening track, This Will End In Fire, is a stirring, evocative affair, with hovering, droning instrumental layers sucking the listener in. The twinkling descending keys layered over marching drums in the midsection of The Pyre are brilliantly ominous, as it slowly evolves into bristling, droning noise. Truly, A SWARM OF THE SUN know how to craft the sense of impending apocalypse.

Sparse vocal melodies from Berglund are layered across various tracks in a manner that transforms them from mere vocals to another complex instrument. There’s a captivating, ethereal quality about it that plays perfectly into the mystical, ritualistic nature of the album, whilst giving the listener something a little more tangible to grasp onto in the midst of the dense, complex instrumentation.

However, many of these glimmers of wonder get tangled up by the sheer density and length of each track, and the impact is consumed whole. Too often does the record feel like a collection of highlights strung together by overextended interludes that serve no purpose other than to sound immense in scale.

When a track approaches ten minutes long, it needs to prove that it is worthy of consuming that chunk of time; every moment must convince you that it has a purpose. Sadly, too much of the material here seems to only exist to push that track length to the extreme, rather than contribute to the sonic experience of this record in a purposeful manner; the tracks that approach 18 minutes long could easily be halved in length, and their impact would not be lessened.

However, as previously mentioned, A SWARM OF THE SUN do supply some genuinely beautiful musical moments across the span of this record. Whether those moments are worth waiting for, however, will determine what the listener gets out of this record. It is clear that there is a real talent at the heart of the musicianship here, and perhaps the only crime of An Empire is simply untamed grand ambition.

Rating: 6/10

An Empire is set for release on September 6th via Pelagic Records.

Like A SWARM OF THE SUN on Facebook.