A Swarm of the Sun – An Empire [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

“Imagine the best parts of Katatonia, Anathema, My Dying Bride and Agalloch all submerged into a minimalist post-metal miasma, so thick not even the faintest ray of hope can penetrate.” This is how Steel Druhm invited us to envisage Swedish joy vampires A Swarm of the Sun, in his review of their second album, The Rifts. That review introduced me to A Swarm of the Sun and to that list I might add the claustrophobic, stripped-back sorrow of NONE. Despite being unflinchingly beautiful, The Rifts and its successor, The Woods, blanket and suffocate you, so that when you emerge after … well, a period of time that’s extremely hard to gauge, you feel like you’ve been underwater, holding your breath longer than is comfortable and you surface, gasping for air. A Swarm of the Sun’s fourth LP, An Empire, is no different.

Talking to Grymm about An Empire, he said, in that way he has of cutting straight to the core of things, that it’s “incredible how gorgeous it is.” He’s not wrong and, to be honest, I could have left this write-up of A Swarm of the Sun’s latest symphony of depression there. But, perhaps, I should attempt a long-form descriptor of why it’s so gorgeous. As with all previous outputs from Jakob Berglund and Erik Nilsson, the record feels like a single living composition, that moves, flows, and breathes. So, while it technically comprises six tracks, there was really no point in subdividing it, other than to label different movements within the whole. An Empire is not a record you pick a favorite track from to add to a playlist. The movements, spread over 71 minutes, range from sparse, haunting fare (“This Will End in Fire”) to heavier, post-doom (parts of “The Pyre”) and even mesmeric drone (title track). But separating it into its constituent elements somehow diminishes the album, while also failing to convey what it is.

An Empire by A Swarm of the Sun

As A Swarm of the Sun wend their way through An Empire, they build layer upon sunless layer. Speaking about the album, the band said that one early direction, when writing it, was to develop the album’s instrumentation purely in terms of texture, and you can hear that. As the instrumentation—which includes everything from guitars, piano, and a variety of organs, through to synths, harmonium, musical saw, and trombone—develops, the textures are so rich, even in the album’s starkest moments, that you can almost bite into them. Consistent across the piece is Berglund’s distinctive crooning, which has a fragile, reedy, Billy Corgan-like (Smashing Pumpkins) quality, but one which is always threatening to crack with emotional strain. For the most part, this is set to stripped-back, ponderous keys, delicately plucked strings, and minimalist percussion falling somewhere between drone and the most post of post-metal.

However, while Berglund’s voice feels like a thread to clasp hold of across An Empire, there are extended instrumental passages to A Swarm of the Sun’s sound, which feel every part as emotive. The heavier, doom-adjacent parts of 18-minute epic “The Pyre,” which are the closest thing to metal on An Empire, build for so long that you’re almost unaware of them, until they break over you like a wave. At which point it’s as though a valve has blown and all the pent-up pressure is released. Similarly, the rumbling drone, breathed into being by the dying gasp of a long sustained note from Berglund, which forms a chunk of the title track feels every bit as much a part of An Empire as the delicate keys that open “Heathen.” It would be easy to underestimate the songwriting skill and confidence that it takes to craft an album like An Empire. But its very simplicity is its haunting, despairing magic.

“It’s incredible how gorgeous it is.” – Grymm.

Tracks to Check Out: No, I’m not doing this, you’ll listen to the whole goddamn thing and you’ll bloody well cry like I did!1

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