A Swarm of the Sun – An Empire (Review)

This is the fourth album from Swedish post-metal band A Swarm of the Sun.

An Empire offers up a daunting 71 minutes of music to explore. It’s a lot to absorb, but is worth the time investment, as the dark soundscapes that A Swarm of the Sun create are utterly captivating.

The music mixes together elements of the ambient, drone, progressive, atmospheric, doom, and post-metal styles together into a collection of music pieces that have a very well-formed personality of their own. As well as the standard instruments you’d expect in a band, A Swarm of the Sun also use synths, keyboards, piano, vibraphone, harmonium, musical saw, trombone, and organs to further flesh out their impressive sound.

An Empire is not an album that’s easy to provide external reference points to, but I will say that across the album aspects of bands such as Bell Witch, Between the Buried and Me, Briqueville, Cult of Luna, Mogwai, Pijn, and Radiohead can all be used in places to guide your progress through the record’s duration. It’s quite a diverse list, and should be taken with a pinch of salt for some of them, (for example, the more aggressive, faster parts of Between the Buried and Me‘s music are not relevant here). One of the best, simplest ways I can think of to describe An Empire is as a ambient/atmospheric post-rock/metal instrumental album, only with heartfelt clean vocals in place of the typical roars.

Divided into four movements, An Empire takes the listener on a immersive journey into a world that sounds so compelling and richly rendered that you can almost drown in it. A Swarm of the Sun demonstrate an enviable mastery of worldbuilding, and succeed in crafting, sustaining, and manipulating atmosphere and emotion with the ease of true artisans.

Spanning a range of moods, textures, and feelings across six well-realised tracks, the songs drip with emotion-rich depth. From oceans of minimalist drone to malevolent heaviness, from ethereal fragility to devastating heaviness, from expressive delicacy to crushing intensity, and much more, the music delivers an engrossing experience throughout.

An Empire is an astonishingly good album. A Swarm of the Sun have produced a record that’s incredibly compelling. If you like your music mournful, drone-rich, and awash with atmosphere, this is for you. An Empire is a record that gradually unfolds and develops with dread-inducing beauty, and it’s impossible to look away from the darkness that it portrays.

Essential listening.