### Swallow The Sun: Plague of butterflies

#### 26/09/08 || Euthanatos

While being a fan of doom metal, there are so many boring bands in the genre that I seldom go out of my way to hearing what’s popular nowadays. And when I say popular, I mean what people are raving about on internet forums. Swallow the Sun, however, got me from the get go, as soon as I listened to “The Morning Never Came”, I was a die hard fan. I was extremely impressed with the quality of the tunes, the aggressiveness of it all, without letting go of the sluggish riffs that characterize doom so well.

“Ghosts of Loss” and “Hope” kept showing a band constantly evolving and at the same time still releasing magnificent material, on par with their debut. This was the best band most people had never heard of. Now comes “Plague of Butterflies”, which supposedly is an MCD, as it’s basically just one, 30 minute long track, separated only by mood/ambiance/theme, much like Edge of Sanity’s “Crimson”.

“Losing the Sunsets”, “Plague of Butterflies” and “Evae” are the three passages, and they are astounding. Swallow the Sun has never sounded better or more diverse, and they haven’t given up an inch of their integrity of “doom-ness”, if you will. I am genuinely impressed at how soft and brutal this track is at the same time. Mikko Kotamäki also deserves a Grammy, an Oscar, a fruit basket, whatever stupid award you can think of, for his mesmerizing performance.

Now, seeing as they took a good while recording this track and it being obvious fans would be clamoring for more, Swallow the Sun also added the 4-track demo “Out of this Gloomy Light”, to make this more like a normal, full-length album. Only a handful of demos were ever made, so I can’t really compare this in any way to what was originally released, I can’t tell you if changes have been made and whatnot. But, for the life of me, I don’t know if this was just re-mastered or truly re-recorded, because it sounds good as fuck.

Being some of their first material, these songs sound a lot more “doomy”, with a catastrophic and somber atmosphere, and naturally a lot more rawer than the recent albums and also the “Plague of the Butterflies” trilogy. Nevertheless, it’s still great material and complements the first track, although not as brilliant, quite nicely. I’m very pleased that Swallow the Sun continues to amaze me and it gives me nothing but great pleasure to highly recommend this album to anyone who cares.

The cover: It’s three uh… things. I don’t want to stare at them any longer, they’re scary.

9 girls that swallow out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Spinefarm
- Website: www.swallowthesun.net
- Band
- Mikko Kotamäki: vocals
- Juha Raivio: guitar
- Markus Jämsen: guitar
- Matti Honkonen: bass
- Aleksi Munter: keyboards
- Pasi Pasanen: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Losing the Sunsets / Plague of Butterflies / Evael
- 02. Through Her Silvery Body
- 03. Out of This Gloomy Light
- 04. Swallow
- 05. Under the Waves