Swallow the Sun seemed to have been in a rather creative mood lately, releasing a 3-disc album, a couple of weeks ago. The started a tour to support only shortly after the release. This tour hit the Baroeg on a dark, rainy, autumn Saturday evening, which actually sets a perfect mood for some doom / death metal. And they brought two support acts, that formed quite a varied. The venue wasn’t sold out, however there was quite a good turn-out.

Opening the evening was the Italian band Adimiron. They had just started as I entered the venue. Traffic issues caused a slight delay. I hadn’t even heard of them before, but they already released four albums. I guess this is a blend of mostly progressive death / thrash metal with all kinds of influences. Technically proficient, however like with many progressive bands, they lack actually good songs. So in the end it was cool for a couple of songs, then turned repetitive.

The second band, was another band I wasn’t familiar with: Wolfheart, from Finland. From the first couple of notes it was obvious that they play melodic death metal. A very catchy melody started nearly immediately over a bit of a bland riff. Not too bad, but I don’t really care for music that is that catchy. Even though they can write a decent song or two, it lacks in the riffs departement.

Then finally Swallow the Sun took the stage. I have been following this band pretty much since their debut album, and they took somewhat more accessible direction compared to the doom / death they played early on, with less focus on the heavy riffs which they make up with very solid melodies and creative song structures. They started off with a couple of songs off the new album that I hadn’t heard yet. And they confirmed basically they direction they took on the previous album. Among more newer songs they gradually went back through their discography with the awesome Cathedral Walls, and Hope. After an hour or so, they went off stage. Only to come back, but with acoustic guitars instead. They went on to play some songs of disc 2 from the new album, which consists entirely of acoustic music. Frankly, I thought this wasn’t as strong as their doom death, in part because the guitars sounded too thin and also because vocally Mikko’s clean vocals aren’t very impressive. After three songs they switched back to electric and played another new song off the new album. And closed the set with the oldest material of the evening Descending Winters and the just beautiful Swallow after more than 100 minutes. Quite a feat, and in general quite a good show.