Origin : Finland
Genre : Melodic Death / Doom Metal
Release : 2012
Album Info / Review
**Swallow the Sun – “Emerald Forest and the Blackbird”**
*Album / 2008*
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### Opening the Gate
From the first seconds of “Emerald Forest and the Blackbird” the listener is pulled into a cavern of dense, mist‑laden imagery. The opening tremolo guitar adds texture rather than immediate melody, and a low, droning bass line grooves beneath the creeping atmospheres. There’s an unapologetic commitment to melancholy, but the signal stays clear—a trademark of Swallow the Sun’s balance between brutality and ambience.
### Sound & Production
The production on this speed‑tuned swathe of doom‑death is head‑buttingly but not granular. One of the standout aspects is the way the drums resonate: snare hits have a natural, resonant small‑room punch while double‑kick patterns are tight and driving. The engineering by Mattias Arvidsson offers an almost three‑dimensional mix. The guitars sit at the right side of the panorama, slightly overlapping the male and female vocal lines that thread through the track. The mix stays open enough to allow the oblique, slow‑moving doom riffs to breathe, while the occasional blast‑beat feels like a shift in weather.
The rawness is purposeful; the low end is carefully compressed but never flat-boosted. One can taste the high‑frequency lift on the guitars that makes the choruses sing over the melancholy wind.
### Atmosphere & Essence
Every track functions as its own sub‑world; “Love With No Color” is a serene ballad with clean acoustic plucks and dream‑like staccato riffs, while “I Dream of the Crown” dives into industrial riffs and bleak, claustrophobic logic. The band has a knack for weaving bleak lyrical themes into a sonic architecture that feels like a living forest: 🌲
– **Emerald Forest**: coils of rolling guitars, city‑drum layers, rhythmic guitars in sync with a heavy broken‑time feel, mimicking pine stumps in the wind.
– **The Blackbird** (in hidden track): a stuttering snare and barrel‑roll that’s a scream, a perfect animalistic twist to the meditative palette.
– **Studios and Sinks**: slow, heavy riffs layer over subtle string run‑throughs that resemble the wind blowing through voids.
Every song has a signature punctum—a sigh, a cry, or a lurch—imbuing the whole album with a sense of coherent narrative.
### Riffs & Songcraft
The riffs here are less about showmanship and more about weight and speculation. While the solos become an essential part of the sound, they act as a dialogue between the band members rather than flashy solos for the show. Each chorus can be described as one of those memorable few valleys travelers will remember for years. The writing style ghosts from one track to the next; the focus is primarily on writing rhythms that feel stable and melodic:
– **”Sea of Black and Thin Silences”**: hypnotic, repetitive versus a subtle, weeping metallic riff.
– **”In the Springs of Prominently Stormy Nights”**: a power‑core riff that pushes the track deeper into a momentary whirlpool.
– **”Between The World”**: the track takes a turning from the obligatory melody into an eerie distension of change that uses how the keyboard pours into ear.
You can stand for 8 minutes and still be drawn into the dark obscurity.
### Overall Impression
This album is an example of how slow‑tempo doom‑rock can be fine‑tuned using melodic elements. The creative sound direction clearly points to Swallow the Sun’s desire to stay away from the numb cliché or oversaturated solos, instead focusing on the mood the songs can achieve with an eye to Wall strikes.
The track “Surely We’re a The Loved (Splash)” is a “truly awesome song a…ittle heavier than the rest of the band” that showcases impressive melodic depth, while “The Blackbird” properly calculates a “mysterious line that works for almost any reason” and the well-known theme that is so strong and dubious it brings rock description into the fill making the track both simple and moving.
In sum, **“Emerald Forest and the Blackbird”** is an evocative, de‑constructed riff‑driven album built for those who want to experience the long, immersive soundscapes of doom and death metal, with a focus on belonging to the black, low‑volume and emotional realm and meeting them through coherent atmospheric structures. It matches the band’s studio refinements, providing readiness for the final analysis.
