Band:	A Swarm Of The Sun
Album:	An Empire
Style:	Post-rock, Post-metal
Release date:	September 2024
A review by:	musclassia

01. This Will End In Fire
02. Heathen
03. The Pyre
04. An Empire
05. The Burning Wall
06. Anthem

Post-rock and post-metal are genres in which emotionality and atmosphere are typically of major importance, and there are few bands to which this applies more keenly than A Swarm Of The Sun.

The last time we heard from the Swedish duo on 2019’s The Woods, listeners were greeted to an album that, while ultimately quite concise in total runtime at under 40 minutes, was very patient, gradual and contemplative in the slow evolution of its gloomy, cinematic, immaculately textured compositions. On the band’s Pelagic Records debut, they’ve gone all out, as An Empire is a whopping 71 minutes long. The music within those minutes has apparently come out rather differently to what A Swarm Of The Sun’s first plans for the album were, which were scrapped following the pandemic in favour of a six-track, four-part odyssey of engrossing, heartwrenching sonic catharsis.

A Swarm Of The Sun place a great deal of importance upon the depth of their texturing, arrangement and sonic range, and as a result, on top of the typical rock band instrumentation, more atypical instruments such as the vibraphone, pipe organ, trombone and musical saw can be heard during a playthrough of An Empire. However, not a whole lot of anything is heard at first; An Empire is the epitome of a slow burn, and 7-minute opener “This Will End In Fire” offers but the faintest of igniting sparks, glacially progressing from sparse tones and gloomy ambience to eventually end with the ominous drones of an organ.

The band lie somewhere on the periphery between post-rock and post-metal; at times during this opening track and others to follow, it can barely be associated with either. The density of the arrangements when the band is at its loudest are engulfing enough to cross over into metal, but there’s never an explosion of bludgeoning heaviness. More than any other band that comes to mind, the one that A Swarm Of The Sun are perhaps closest to is Cult Of Luna, but specifically in their subdued, bleak songs like “Crossing Over” and "We Feel The End"; I do also find myself thinking at times of Amenra’s own softer, dronier tracks (think “De Dood In Bloei”). And yet, in spite of all this subtlety and bleakness stretched over such a long duration, this band is so adept at their craft that I never find An Empire to drag or outstay its welcome.

After those eventual organ chords on the opening track, “Heathen” initially reverts back to nothingness, but it evolves at a steadier pace with the weaving in of piano, synths and droning guitars, until finally, around halfway through, A Swarm Of The Sun bring the most delicate and hushed of vocals into the equation. Eventually this song finally crosses over the threshold into rock and metal with lively drumming, reverberated distorted chords and additional layering to result in a grandiose, glowing climax to the track.

An Empire is a meticulous and remarkable album, and I don’t want to fall into the habit of going track-by-track in painstaking detail, but special mention needs to be reserved for the next song on the tracklist, “The Pyre”. At a whopping 18 minutes, it is the longest song on the record, and it is a gripping journey. Opening with just piano and understated singing, it takes its sweet time to let loose with the metallic instrumentation, and to begin with it is just simple chords plodding along in gloom with haunting keyboard and guitar textures on top, but the song first swells, and then pivots into an rousing percussive march. The huge-sounding propulsion from the drums is the perfect platform for an increasing layering and expansion of the song’s heaviness until it becomes all-engrossing, a perfect example of doing more with less, and also with more. It really feels like a ceremonial procession to build up a pyre and set it alight, before being engulfed by the blaze; it’s a song that asks a lot of listeners, but gives something special in return.

I could go into such depth with the rest of the album, but in the interest of brevity, I will merely acknowledge the beautiful tenderness of the piano, and the haunting ambience of the midsection, of the title track, and the effective change of pace for the almost rocky and up-tempo “The Burning Wall”. Closing song “Anthem” is almost as long as “The Pyre”, and while it offers a more subtle and understated evolution, it is a similarly cinematic and evocative slow burn. An Empire as an album demands patience from listeners, and even those willing to offer their dutiful attention may not ultimately reap the rewards of its very subtle fruits, but I for one think this is the pinnacle (so far, at least) of A Swarm Of The Sun’s efforts to create post-rock/metal at its most atmospheric and contemplative.