On paper, this bill looked to be a little too heavy on the doomier side of metal, with Katatonia, Insomnium, and Swallow the Sun all sort of following similar patterns throughout their career. The addition of Scar Symmetry through ensured that there would be somewhat of a break in styles, and that's exactly as the evening turned out. Swallow the Sun came on first, the band in full support of their excellent new opus Hope, which is a pulverizing collection of doomy death metal dirges that also have a slight progressive edge. The band played for about a half hour, and featured mostly songs from the latest release. While their sound was not the greatest (an ongoing problem at this venue for the first band of the evening) their mix of Opeth/Katatonia/Edge of Sanity/November's Doom type metal, complete with effective vocal growls, mammoth riffing, pounding drum work, and long, epic songs, really worked well and managed to turn many of the folks in attendance into immediate fans. Being an admirer of Hope, I was pretty impressed by these guys in a live setting and look forward to them making their way back to these shores again in the near future.

Sea of Tranquility