Finnish death/doom sextet Swallow The Sun take the stage to low light and a long orchestral introduction, expressions of grim determination on their faces, before they launch into a storming set of misery-laden melody and crushing heaviness. The band matched the bleakness of their music with the seriousness of their onstage performance – keyboardist Aleksi Munter in particular staying heroically stony-faced throughout, only letting a small smile force its way through after the rapturous applause that came after each track’s closing moments. A crushing sound gave thunderous weight to the more death metal riffage, whilst also lettting the mournful leadwork shine through. Fan favourites like ‘Don’t Fall Asleep’ and ‘Falling World’ were greeted by cheers by a crowd who largely knew every word, and the set closer ‘Swallow’ made for a particularly powerful ending to a storming set.

One Metal

It’s great to see sub genres of metal sticking together as was the case tonight. All too often nowadays, their seem to be a lot of tours where the support are not even in the same sub genre as the headline act, which makes you wonder what why they were chosen?! But it was good to see that Finnish doomers SWALLOW THE SUN were chosen, and they really did serve as the perfect warm up act.

The last time I saw SWALLOW THE SUN was a couple of years back at Bloodstock, and while their set may have lost a little of its gloomy atmosphere given it was outside and the sun was out, that was certainly put right tonight. With the heavy riffs and keyboards bringing a certain aura to the set, coupled with the rough style vocals of Mikko Kotamaki, they really did create a great atmosphere in the venue and songs like ‘Sleepless Swans’ and ‘Swallow’ went down extremely well with the crowd.

Bacon Music