Plague of Butterflies

Last year I was told of a band who produced wonderful melodic doom/death music. At first I was sketchy on the idea, as at the time I wasn't a big fan of Doom metal, Can't get enough of it now, When I heard of the band's name, "Swallow the Sun", I just thought it was kind of cheesey. So I obtained the albums, had a listen, and I loved their work ever since. I was stoked to find "Plague of Butterflies" in the store down here in little New Zealand, people from here will know why because of our shit stores, especially in the South. I had alot of fun with this release blasting through the sound system.

Chapter I: Losing the Sunsets. This chapter starts off with a nice melodic guitar piece for a couple of minutes when you get an almost sudden, powerful churning chords. The feeling of the bass was quite outstanding. The crashes of the cymbals ringing out. It was just heaven. Which builds to a steady tune. Which then dies out to another melodic piece with MIkko's clean vocals being at the front at this time. He is quite a great vocalist, nice clean voice, but can really lay down the low growls, and those almost black metal screech-esqe vocals. The lyrics fit well with the band and their music. Worthy of doom indeed. Feeling cold and lonely. How wonderful, eh? Curse you, Evael, Curse you.

Towards the end of the chapter, you get a melancholic and atmospheric piece which dies to the blowing of the wind, followed by some neat keyboards. And then BAM! You get the heavy riffing and the screeching vocals into Chapter II: Plague of Butterflies. This sudden heavyness is probably my favourite quality of Swallow the Sun. The tune of the guitars is lovely, it doesn't have that droning sound and is really quite mellow, and the wails are simply superb. Once again at 19 minutes after some heavy doom riffing and technical drumming you get another atmospheric piece. Soothing, mellow and calm. The blowing of the wind and a quiet guitar tune that is really quite relaxing. And when you wish it would just go on, it hits you again. The riff, the drums, the bass, it all just kinda jumps on you. Which then gradually dies down to another melancholic piece. A fine ending of the second chapter.

Chapter III: Evael 10:00 kicks in with those guitars we love so much, but soon dies down, and we revisit Mikko's clean vocals. Sounding more dramatic than I've ever heard him before. Kicking into a guitar and keyboard melody which is fitting, with more harsh vocals, back down to the clean. The drumming is rather relaxed. If only double kicks could be incorporated into this somehow, how orgasmic that would be... But i don't see it happening, but then again Swallow the Sun doesn't need to do so. Pasanen always shows his skill and Plague of Butterflies is no exception. Leading up to the end of this majestic song... Lovely harsh vocals, a drumming pattern worthy of excellance, atmoshperical and melodic guitar/keyboard symphonies droning out to a keyboard finalé into silence.

During the silence, I was just sitting there. Pondering what I had just heard. With almost seemed like a tear in my eye. That was one of the most beautiful pieces I have heard in my whole life. Coming close to My Dying Bride's "For My Fallen Angel".

Also included on this EP are the tracks from their unreleased 2003 demo "Out of this Gloomy Light" which just goes on to justify why Swallow the Sun are one of the greatest doom/death bands out there today. This one I do recommend to those into doom/death. And if you're not. Well why not start here?

Swallow The Sun has maintained their consistency fairly well during their entire career, and even though the 2007 album ”Hope” had some disturbingly present modern metal influences and possibly somewhat lower overall quality than especially the debut album, ”The Morning Never Came”, all their full-length albums have been pleasant listening experiences with aspects both original and familiar. Whether crushing your ears with slow and heavy doom, or breaking your heart with melodies of melancholy and sorrow, their modern brand of doom metal has always been innovative and lucid at the same time. ”Plague Of Butterflies” sadly doesn't live up to their former releases at all: compared to the easily understood yet intense doom metal of their former years, this EP is in no way equal. It's hard to listen most of the time, and not really a rewarding experience. The melodies are sometimes quite generic and of a style already used more than enough by bands like Insomnium, Daylight Dies, Saturnus and Swallow The Sun itself. There are many other styles of metal here – none of them original or new anymore – but even so the nature of ”Plague Of Butterflies” is repetitive: the only things that this helps to create are inconsistency and lack of direction.

The over 34 minutes long song, ”Plague Of Butterflies”, starts with an acoustic intro typical to Swallow The Sun, but compared to almost any other of their songs, it's disappointingly unmemorable. Heavy guitars soon take over the stage, and while they sound good as ever, sound means nothing when the listener is offered nothing but chugging of a slow rhythm guitar and a failed attempt at creating a melancholic atmosphere, a bland melody that everyone has already heard at least twice before. As another positive note about the production, Swallow The Sun has finally got the drum sounds right: what used to be a downside in Swallow The Sun's music – the drum sounds – is now a positive element. The low-pitched growled vocals are doomy as ever, and the choirs of clean vocals sound quite good, though they offer nothing very interesting melody wise. Kotamäki's screams sound much more controlled and restricted than before and have lost much power, but despite being quite unmemorable, they aren't bad. Keyboards take a background position, which works for the good of the album. They help to make the simplistic guitar melodies more atmospheric and give an epic feel to the music, which guitars alone – on this album – certainly fail to do. As the part concludes, the music is, at its best, filled with atmosphere and delivers a great emotional impact to the listener. It isn't genius like ”Shape Of Despair”, but comparable to it: great effect with surprisingly little effort.

After some silence, a piano intro comes, followed by a heavy and fast metal part with blastbeats that certainly brings variety to this EP. While a new thing for Swallow The Sun and definitely an exciting and unsuspected turn, it's almost complete Dimmu Borgir worship, starting from keyboard patterns, guitar riffs and even vocals, accompanied with some vague likeness of what the band is known for – what follows is like a melting pot of modern extreme metal styles. Haunting keyboards accompany the repetitive rhythm guitar chugging as the vocalist unleashes his death growls and Shagrath impersonations. To further elaborate this unoriginality, the vocalist uses growls and Shagrath vocals, in some parts, simultaneously, which is clearly a trademark of bands like Dimmu Borgir. The rhythm guitar goes on to play a dissonant riff, like a fusion of the aforementioned band and Opeth, with a pinch harmonic an everything, also waving goodbye to the little remaining originality this part ever showed. The lead guitar is gone – the band probably couldn't write a lead suitable for such a drastic departure from their real style – and overall, the appeal is minimal. Fortunately, this abomination is followed by an excellent and emotional part with a simple guitar arpeggio, melancholic piano, audible bass (for once) and a drum beat from Opeth's Damnation.

Dimmu Borgir leaves the stage and Swallow The Sun comes back with their trademark style, and manages to play some quite melancholic melodies. There aren't many innovation or new ideas, but Swallow The Sun creates some quite emotional interesting and sounds, reminiscent of My Dying Bride and early Anathema. ”Plague Of Butterflies” has an epic climax in the end, which is the proper way to end a song over half an hour long. It's emotional, epic and filled with atmosphere, and though it really looks up to the way Moonsorrow ends songs of similar length, it is quite tasteful and well written. Again, it doesn't sound like the result of hard work or like a brainchild of a genius, but it succeeds at ending the song in an appropriate way.

It's a shame that the album is extremely inconsistent in quality, and compared to Swallow The Sun's other releases, the lack of originality is remarkable. As a whole, ”Plague Of Butterflies” is really mediocre because of its inconsistency, but there are some quite good parts and the production is even better than before, making it mostly a worthy listen. Listening is indeed the difficult part though: this EP lacks direction to the point that it's hard to pay attention to when it doesn't progress enough. What increases the worth of this EP is that ”Plague Of Butterflies” also includes the 2003 demo, ”Out Of This Gloomy Light”. For demo versions of Swallow The Sun's legendary songs like ”Through Her Silvery Body”, and ”Swallow”, these are surprisingly good. Only the production is noticeably weaker compared to the album versions: the guitars lack punch and the bass drum sounds terrible. Kotamäki's screams are excellent here, much better than in the title track – this contrast elaborates the sad fact that the vocalist's abilities are apparently declining. All in all, this EP is one for the fans and collectors – one interested in the demo or the band's exploration of symphonic black metal territories, failed experiment or not, might find ”Plague Of Butterflies” worth the money, and as a whole, the EP will surely bring a Swallow The Sun fan a quality listening experience. Others are suggested to stick with the full-length albums of this band.

Going into dangerously ‘kvlt’ territory, only three copies were made of Swallow The Sun’s first demo, ‘Out Of This Gloomy Light’. If you aren’t one of the lucky and/or obsessive few who own one of these demos, this new EP slaps it into a nice shiny super-jewel case for you. While final versions of all these songs appeared on their debut full-length, ‘The Morning Never Came’, there is still a high quality to them. It manages to prove also that the band’s positively colossal sound is the work of the band themselves, and not a technically gifted studio lackey. The songs are fabulously well written, with excellent atmosphere and mix despite the clearly low-key studio job.

... now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the main attraction of this new offering, the brand new 34 minute title track. Something of this scale is not all that unfamiliar in doom metal circles, however Finland’s Swallow The Sun have only ever recorded one song that extends past ten minutes, yet alone thirty. Of course, Swallow The Sun are not a band to disappoint, and ‘Plague Of Butterflies’ certainly doesn’t change that. It comprises three movements, yet retains a commendable continuity; where each part flows naturally into the next. Sonically, it’s the band’s established melodic doom sound, as crushing as ever, but this one sees some interesting new developments. At points some black metal influence can be heard, through the sympho-BM tinged keyboard work of Aleksi Munter or, more prominently, through a new vocal style that Mikko Kotamäki can add to his repertoire: A nice juicy black metal shriek that really works for those times when his clean voice and his absolutely stellar low growls aren’t quite perfect enough.

Trees and other foliage that reflect the truly relevant dark sorrowful abyss that is my metaphysical being, you know the drill. All jokes aside though, the lyrics in ‘Plague Of Butterflies’, penned by guitarist Juha Raivio, are very good. As you may have guessed, they are of a doom standard, nice and dark, and very stylised without sounding half as pretentious as most bands that write this way. There is a story-like quality to the way that the three ‘chapters’ of the song unfold, tightly bound together yet still holding the individual identity that is established by the music. However, the vocals alone are enough to support any integrity that these lyrics may or may not have, and the fact that these lyrics are solid anyway is merely a bonus.

As a project that allegedly began as an attempt to write film music, ‘Plague Of Butterflies’ is a great success as a piece of Swallow The Sun music. Whilst it at times lacks some of the direct punch that the band’s usual shorter pieces have, it instead offers definitive proof that Swallow The Sun is not a one trick pony. Side by side, you can see the band’s very earliest output and their most recent, and you can see that overzealous genre hopping is not what ‘evolves’ a band successfully. What evolves a band is something like ‘Plague Of Butterflies’, which toys with development and progression enough to stand on it's own two feet, but also owes itself to previous work.