Pain can inspire songs of heartbreaking beauty. And it’s clear enough that Juha Raivio isn’t feeling any better: just listen to Swallow the Sun's Moonflowers. The guitarist and bandleader admits it up front: he hates this album as much as he loves some aspects of it. Writing and listening to it have plunged the musician into the bitterest melancholy. A few years earlier, the Finnish band released When a Shadow is Forced Into the Light, a record that was overshadowed by the death of Aleah Stanbridge, a singer who had collaborated with the band on several occasions and Raivio's companion, who passed away after a tough battle with an aggressive form of cancer. The obscure beauty of this record let the light in on many occasions: a glimmer of hope that shone all too weakly. Despite its melodic strength, Moonflowers also returns at times to a darker and more visceral doom sound while integrating strings in a more sophisticated way on certain arrangements.
This is a work of composition that seems to indicate a grief that has settled in for the long haul. This sentiment is summed up perfectly by the opening track, Moonflowers Bloom In Misery, which, after a soft and melodic opening, gives way to heavy guitars and the return of vocals that are as much a growl as they are black metal screaming. The opener is followed by a tense Enemy, which relaxes to let the strings finish the song on a note of melancholy. The return of female vocals on All Hallow's Grieve (by Cammie Gilbert of Oceans of Slumber) brings in a certain sweetness before the return of a harder black metal at the end of the album. Moonflowers is testament to wounds that still haven’t closed. The band wanted to amplify a sense of majestic cruelty by having the Trio NOX (violin, viola and cello) reinterpret the whole album on a second record recorded in a medieval church, thereby offering a more acoustic perspective. Beauty in sadness. © Chief Brody/Qobuz