Dark Masterpiece: Moonflowers by Swallow The Sun

When I wrote about the best metal albums of 2021 in December, I didn’t tell you which one I thought was the best among them. There was one hint though about its release date for the attentive reader. As I said in this article, there was that one album in 2021 which left me speechless and this is the “Moonflowers” by the Finnish death-doom masters Swallow The Sun. When I reviewed Iron Maiden’s Senjutsu in September, I remember saying it was too early to label this or that as the best metal album of the year, although I am a great Iron Maiden fan.

Turned out I was right, and my favorite album was released in full in November 2021: “Moonflowers” is the 8th studio album by the extraordinary Swallow the Sun. The unusual thing about the album is that Juha Raivio came with this crazy idea of making a full classical/instrumental bonus album from “Moonflowers” when he was composing the strings parts from the songs and the instrumental version was released before the album itself. Finnish all-female classical music trio, Trio NOX recorded the album in Sipoo Church where they thought the acoustics were best. Trio NOX is Aino Rautakorpi on the violin, Helena Dumell on the viola and Annika Furstenberg on the cello. In this recording they were supported by Krista Ruusunen on the grand piano. The strings were composed by Juha Raivio and arranged by Helena Dumell. The Moonflowers being very melodic and dark in nature, it was an amazing experience for NOX to reveal the beauty of what lies underneath the distortion in its purest form, that is, pulling out the essence of this death-doom masterpiece. This was exacly what I wrote in September about the Turkish metal band Pentagram’s (Mezarkabul) pieces arranged for the piano by classical pianist Dengin Ceyhan: when you take the distortion and the drums out, you reveal the beautiful melody beneath.

As I told you in my various articles and reviews, my favorite albums are those with tracks seamless as in tone and meaning, woven from the same musical fabric and Moonflowers is one excellent example. A wonderful companion for your dark, melancholic and rainy days –both inside and out- I noticed lots of consecutive tracks in C Minor and G Minor, which contributed to this “seamless” effect. Minor key tracks following each other added to the blackness, coldness and obscurity of the album. As master Steven Wilson once said “The saddest music is most often the most beautiful”: Moonflowers is sad, poignant, beautiful and glorious, all at the same time.
Let’s look closer at the lyrics and the title of the album. Moonflowers are poisonous and beautiful flowers which bloom at night: they are a symbol of blossoming, growing in hard and dark times, and are a symbol of the our strength facing the difficult times of our lives. Creatures of the dark such as bats and moths serve for pollinating the moonflowers: so the moth figuring in the band’s beautiful logo is no coincidence. Metaphorically, I think that the moonflowers which bloom in misery, is literally this wonderful album blooming in the shadow cast by the coronavirus pandemic, during all these years of darkness and hopelesness (and I must say that I have written all these lines before I read the confessions of Juha Raivio on the album). As I wrote before in this year’s album reviews, musicians produced lots of beautiful music during the lockdowns, this music taking its roots in the deep hopelesness and darkness we were thrown into with the start of the pandemic. Another powerful album underlining the darkness of lockdowns and the exit to light is Leprous’s “Aphelion”, also reviewed here in metaloda.com. I believe that, despite all the dark times we faced, 2021 has been a golden year in terms of the dark and glorious music made by all those metal bands I mentioned in my article Best Of 2021.

“Will you die in misery, rain over me,
Will you die of a broken heart,
Will you die of a broken soul,
Will you die tied in your chains,
And now it rains.”

Pitch black lyrics and strings orchestration add more drama to the songs by Swallow the Sun:
“You drag your heart behind like a wounded kill” is one of my favorite quotes from the album.
The effect of their music on me is like the dark band Antimatter’s: if you listen too much, you are thrown into a dark and sad mood of a death wish but I think that is the whole point of death-doom. In the track “Keep your heart safe from me” I especially liked the contrast of clean and brutal vocals by Mikko Kotamäki and the melodic guitar parts. His scream in agony goes like:

“Crown me
Throw me into the sea
Chain into the pain I feel,
Keep your light safe from me.”

The lyrics “I cut myself dry on wild moonflowers” made me wonder whether in addition to being poisonous the moonflower plant has thorns that can cut your skin. Little research revealed that indeed, after the blooming season, the moonflower vine develops thorny pods starting soft and harmless but growing into sharp talons that can do serious damage. It makes more sense to learn that Raivio hand picked and dried some moonflowers and drew the red moon on the cover art with his own blood (this left me with an evil grin on my face). I have thus decided that the title of the album is very well chosen and that the moonflower plant is “metal” indeed: beautiful, strong, sharp and dangerous.
All Hallow’s Grieve echoes with All Hallow’s Eve, that is the Halloween, with Cammie Gilbert of Oceans of Slumber as guest vocals, giving you goosebumps while listening to the track. There are many recurring and contrasting symbols in the lyrics: light and blindness, black and white, fire and darkness, chains and skies. We were literally chained to our houses, afraid to go out where the coronavirus walked the streets like the Angel of Death, but we always bore the hope of leaving all these dark times behind. “I reach for the old sky set alight” thus shows the tininess of the human being under the vast skies and is also a hope to reach the light after so much darkness. My favorite tracks from the album are “Enemy” with its stormy classical version and the “Fight of Your Life” with its excellent climax moment at 3:15 with tremolo guitars and brutal vocals. The longing for the old times manifests itself in the following lyrics from the song:

“Once our hearts sang, echoed in the forest,
Upon the meadows, the days full of wonder,
Now all dreams buried beneath me, all treasures
Here I stand on a mountain,
My wings nailed to Earth,
All kingdoms meant to fall.”

So, dear metalheads, if you have not already listened to this dark masterpiece, I say please do so as soon as possible. There is a weekly updated Spotify link at metaloda.com for those who want to listen while reading this review. The brotherhood of classical music and metal is a subject I covered many times in my broadcasts and articles: although they look like very different genres, they are harmonically based on the same principles of western music and the “Moonflowers” left me both delighted and very excited, being a devoted fan of both genres.
Swallow the Sun will be participating to “Doom Over İstanbul” in October 2022 organized by Duality Productions. I can’t wait to see this wonderful band in İstanbul and listen to “Moonflowers” live, which I think was the best music released in 2021.

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