THE REVIEW:

Swallow the Sun is a band that has succeeded really well in the beautifully depressing doom/death genre. This genre which isn´t really the easiest to gain recognition, has still been a good path for the band which has put out three quality albums, “The Morning Never Came”, “Ghosts Of Loss” and “Hope” and created a big loyal fanbase within Europe. The band got an offer to create a longer track for film use but the project was never released so the band decided to release it as a Mini-CD. The CD got title “Plague Of Butterflies” and it consists of a one new track which is 35-minutes long and split into 3 chapters as well as their sold-out first ever demo “Out Of This Gloomy Light”. The effort will see the daylight on September 19th through Spinefarm.

“Plague Of Butterflies” is a release that has similar ingredients that have been present on the band´s previous albums – disheartening and heavy guitar melodies, calmful atmospheric keyboards and those guttural growls from Mikko Kotamäki. The clean vocals are once again also strongly presented but this time it really seems that the band has found the perfect balance between the growls and clean vocals. The “Plague Of Butterflies” itself is a nice lengthy track which combines almost perfectly three different atmospheres . The catchy hooks are once again present in “Plague Of Butterflies” and overall the song is a great example where Swallow The Sun is capable of. The rest four tracks are taken from the band´s sold-out demo “Out Of This Gloomy Light” and they definitely show how mature the band really was even before inking a label deal.

All in all I really must say that “Plague Of Butterflies” is really an amazing offering for all fans of depressive death / doom. Musically it doesn´t offer anything groundbreaking or revolutionary, but it´s still a decent release that all of Swallow The Sun fans will definitely enjoy. Swallow The Sun has become the elite in death / doom metal and definitely a band that us Finns can be very proud of. Great work once again from the Jyväskylä-based sextet!

Hardcoresounds.net