Band:	Dark Suns
Album:	Swanlike
Style:	Progressive death metal
Release date:	2002
A review by:	Jeff

01. Swanlike
02. Infiltration
03. The Sun Beyond Your Eden
04. Virtuous Dilemma
05. Inside Final Dreams
06. The Neverending
07. In Silent Harmony II [bonus]
08. Suffering [bonus]

I discovered Dark Suns by pure luck one day in my CD shop. I fact I saw this cd and found the cover really beautiful, in the vein of the ones that only Doom Metal bands use. I said to myself, "Dark Suns, hum? all that really look Doomy? damn dude, maybe you should try to listen to this one". After 5 minutes of listening, I was sure of one thing, this album should come back to my house with me. Now I'm just wondering why this band is totally unknownn like that, why nobody talks about them, that's weird really, because with "Swanlike" they only released in 2002 one of the best Progressive Death/Doom album of the year. If you like bands Opeth, Anathema or even Katatonia, no doubt that this album is a must have?

"Swanlike" is a real masterpiece, all the songs are great, with an incredible musical structure. In fact the eight songs of this album are more than complex, with a lot of breaks and progressive elements. It's hard to classify the music of the band, because it's certainly not Doom metal, but however, we have slow tempos like with Doom and the ambiances are all very sad and dark. Progressive Death like an Opeth or maybe Progressive Doom can be a good name to classify them, but at the end, we don't care about this point, because the music is great and that's the most important. Like with Opeth you can have a beautiful nice voice sometimes and some other times some strong Death vocals. Musically you will find, piano, folk guitars but also electric guitars and powerful drums, in fact the songs are in general divided in two parts, a very calm one, and the other a bit more aggressive. But however it's really melodic [the guitars arpeggios are incredible] and beautiful all the time. That's really progressive, the guitar solos for example can even be a bit experimental but damn that's only great each time. The most incredible thing on this album is the ambiance, that's hard to have something better. All the songs without any exception are touching and give shivers, honestly it's hard to find a lot of albums which can give this feeling. This is just classy, in one word perfect.
The production is also more than good, the songs are long the sound is good, the artwork is beautiful no really that's hard to find something wrong with this album.
That's incredible to see that we can have such music, and however only some few people know this band, which doesn't suffer the comparison to an Opeth or an Anathema then if you really need a bad comment in this review, well I will only say that it's a shame that Dark Suns isn't a famous and well known band, because musically speaking, they have the potential to be a great band? Hoo yes?

If you are a Doom Metal fan, if you like bands like Opeth, or if you just want a great album with absolutely beautiful music, you need to find "Swanlike". Honestly I can only strongly recommend this album, one of the bests that I found lately. Amazing, surprising, beautiful, and poetic, the music of this band from Germany is a pure jewel. Believe me my friends, you must have this album, really you can't miss it because that's a real sacrilege?
I hope that you understood that you'll have to find this album, I'm sure that you'll thank me later? Brave Dark Suns, you deserve all our respect for this masterpiece, and I just hope that I will listen to very soon your new album "Existence" which will be released in 2005?