Style: melodic doom death metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: The first part of Swallow the Sun's magnum opus, melodic doom death in their normal style
Thoughts: Swallow the Sun has been around for a long time. For many years they played a genre defining version of Finnish melodic doom death. They were good at it, very good at it... then the quality started to slip a little bit around Emerald Forest. It was almost as if the band heard my concerns, because the follow up is easily the best album in their entire discography.
Songs from the North is a three part monster album. There are three parts, and this is the first. Part 1 shows where the band came from. This is their quintessential style: a mix of light and dark, of heavy and soft, violence and peace. The album starts out with soft guitars that soon give away to a massive riff and deep bellowing growls.
Slow sullen music is exactly what is in store here and the band is in high form as they deliver these eight songs. There are a couple of missteps however, mostly with the growls. Mikko's voice isn't what it once was. Those deep earth shattering growls from Hope and Ghosts of Loss are gone. Instead we have a bit of a broken and forced growl in it's place, not terrible but not up to the standard the band set previously. The clean vocals though are as good as they have ever been, maybe even better than before and are a clear highlight of this part as well as what is coming in the next part of the album.
Songs from the North starts off with likely the weakest part of the trilogy, and considering how good this entry is were in for one hell of an album. Buckle up, it only gets better from here.
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