Hope indeed...that's probably the last thing you'd expect to think about when listening to a release from Finland's masters of doom, gloom, melancholy, and death metal, the mighty Swallow the Sun. On their third album Hope, the band actually offers up some varied tempos and arrangements, and much like Novermber's Doom have stepped up the pace on their latest, Swallow the Sun have added some extra elements to their sound, resulting in a powerful and rich presentation that should appeal to any lover of dark metal. In fact, these eight tracks are so strong, it's safe to say that Swallow the Sun have put together a release that easily compares with some of the best the genre has turned out over the years from bands like Amorphis, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Sentenced, Katatonia, Anathema, and November's Doom.

With crushing guitar riffs, waves of keyboards, and some of the best death/doom growls you are likely to hear, tunes like "The Justice of Suffering", "Hope", and "These Hours of Despair" just kill with powerful intensity and drip with heavy emotions of tragic loss. The use of Katatonia styled clean vocals with the brutal Opeth/November's Doom influenced deep growls is just so well done, and adds a great variety and sense of depth to these songs. The shimmering, gothic sounding keyboards add a majestic touch to the brooding melancholy of "Don't Fall Asleep (Horror Part 2)", a song that dips back and forth between a moody, atmospheric piece to thunderous doomy death metal, again utilizing clean and growled vocals. The 9-minute death march "Too Cold For Tears" is dark, depressing doom, splattered with touches of Pink Floyd-styled space prog, but otherwise features huge guitar dirges, plodding rhythms, and grisly death growls. The band opts for speedier old school death metal with a touch of symphonics on "Empty Skies", and simply crushes the listener to an early death on the bone chilling masterpiece "Doomed To Walk The Earth". This last one conjures up plenty of dark, cold atmosphere, with eerie keyboards, brutally slow and heavy guitar riffs, and bleak, tortured vocal growls. The wonderful piano, acoustic guitar, and synth passages near the end of this 8+ minute gem only adds to the somber mood and delicate yet at the same time thunderous nature of this strikingly fragile piece.

Honestly, there's no "hope" in sight after listening to this dark, morose, yet stunningly gorgeous album, other than the fact that there's all the hope in world that this release will elevate Swallow the Sun as an elite band in the world of doom metal. It should, as Hope is that good.

Sea of Tranquility