Swallow the Sun - Moonflowers (2021)^{Release ID: 32490}

The tragedy that encompasses the content of this album is an impossible level of suffering for me to understand, both for Aleah Stanbridge herself and also Juha Raivio.  The album makes a strong case for helping me to at least try to fathom the anguish and desolation that the horrible loss of someone you are really close to and the ongoing grief.  Indeed, part of the success of Moonflowers is that it does not simply dwell in acoustic ballads draped in gothic shrouds.  The album takes time to explore a variety of genres and styles whilst still staying true to it melancholic and melodic gothic/doom tropes, as the band seek various pastures from which to showcase the tumultuous emotion at the centre of the record.

For the most part it works.  I am going to go on record as saying that my least favourite aspect to the album are Mikko Kotamäki vocal's.  However, the instrumentation is absolutely sublime in all of its shadowy textures and ethereal melodicism.  I cannot help but be absolutely enchanted by those guitar leads and those chunky, simplistic and yet so effective riffs. The elements of symphonia are presented so eloquently that it is impossible not to be taken in the dense mournful atmospheres that they create.  Tracks like Woven Into Sorrow and All Hallows' Grieve are absolute masterpieces of constantly shifting form and growing elements, some of which I miss after even a few listens through and continue to identify on later listens even now.

I do however get the sense that Mikko is tested beyond his capabilities on more than one occasion.  This is not necessarily a challenge of his range (no Halford heroics needed here folks), more that I find his vocals at times lack conviction.  This is especially true of the death metal vocals he deploys which border on contrived for me.  Were it not for the obvious brilliance going on virtually everywhere else on the album then this could become an issue that would certainly pull down the rating of the record by a couple of stars.  Thankfully the combination of the musicianship and the guest appearances (in particular Cammie Gilbert form Oceans of Slumber on All Hallows' Grieve) offer more than sufficient compensation here.

Moonflowers is my first venture into the music of Swallow the Sun and despite my vocal gripes there is more than enough here to snare my interest in the wider discography of the group.

Despite the melancholy beauty of the music on offer on Moonflowers, I found it one difficult album to listen to. Songwriter and lyricist, Juha Raivio, has channelled his grief over the loss to illness of his partner, Trees of Eternity's Aleah Stanbridge, into the release and it is a heartbreaking journey through mourning and grief that is genuinely affecting to anyone who has ever suffered the loss of a loved one. A lot of the album is filled with an overwhelming atmosphere of sorrow and desolation of the soul, expressed through quite simple melancholic melodies, clean vocals and ever-present strings with some extremely soulful lyrics that can really cut to the heart in places. Then sparingly, but all the more effectively for it, anguish is unleashed with huge death doom chords and growled vocals, becoming even more desperate and angry by the album's closing track, This House Has No Home, which erupts into black metal-led pummelling as Juha's anger and rage finally explode from the speakers in search of catharsis.

Opening track, Moonflowers Bloom in Misery, starts in gently mournful fashion, softly picked guitar notes, swelling strings and melodic clean vocals poignantly asking "can you die of a broken soul?" before exploding in anger with huge, enveloping death doom chords and savage growls replying "You cry through the fires of Misery! Bleed dry through the nights of Misery!" as if the pain of loss has just become too much to bear and anger at the injustice of it is all that remains. This, in common with much of the album, is more melodic than most of the band's usual output, but don't let that fool you, this is still powerful stuff and when it does explode it hits like a slap in the face! In a reversal of Moonflowers Bloom in Misery, the following track, Enemy, hits hard with anger and rage from the off and throughout the verse as Juha's lyrics tell of how he withdrew from the light into the darkness inside his soul, becoming softer and more melodic, returning to clean sung lyrics for the chorus as he recognises this darkness within himself.

Woven Into Sorrow is the most gothic-sounding of the album's eight tracks and, arguably, the most accessible as it eschews any death metal vocals and has only brief heavy riffing, at least up until the five minute mark when it unleashes a real gut-punch of a riff as once more Juha's lyrics are no longer able to contain the pain he feels. This is followed by my favourite track, Keep Your Heart Safe From Me, which I perceive as a genuine masterpiece of gothic death doom, expressing in music and lyrics everything that exemplifies the genre in a track that only a few of the masters of the genre can match with it's expression of misery and despair. Oceans of Slumber's Cammie Gilbert supplies female vocals on All Hallows' Grieve, as the lost love speaks to the bereft narrator in a duet that is as heart-rending as it is melodic. I will dispense with the track-by-track review, but suffice to say, the latter half of Moonflowers retains the ability to move the listener every bit as much as the first half, culminating in the aforementioned visceral savagery contained within closing track This House Has No Home as Juha's suffering becomes insurmountable and threatens to overwhelm him.

I think there is an authenticity contained within Moonflowers, as a result of Juha's personal loss, that gives it an edge over many other gothic death doom albums' expressions of mourning and sorrow, which are borne of the songwriter's imaginations rather than personal experience of genuine sorrow. Another important contributing aspect I haven't really covered much is the addition of the string accompaniment from the three ladies of Trio NOX which is present throughout the album and is considered so fundamental to the album's success that the deluxe versions contains an extra disc which contains the string versions of each of the album's tracks to be enjoyed in isolation. The strings add an extra layer of lushness to the sound and contribute to the sorrowful atmosphere in that way that strings do so well when accompanying certain types of doom metal.

This is, for me, one of the best gothic death doom albums I have heard in a long while and is deeply affecting on a personal level, as well as providing some top-quality songwriting and performance and this personal connection is something that is very hard to achieve but is deeply rewarding when it is successful and, as such, I consider this very successful indeed.