With 'Hope' Juha Raivio and his fellow musicians did everything right, once again. I´d even say, that 'Hope' is their best album so far. More clean vocals, operatic background vocals on some tracks, Jonas Renkse from Katatonia ("The Justice Of Suffering") as a guest vocalist and Tomi Joutsen from Amorphis ("These Lowlands") help to make 'Hope' so special and more varied than the former two albums. Not to forget the typical damn deep growls from Mikko.The range of his voice seems to be greater, which means deeper growls and more clean vocals. I sometimes compare him to Mikael Åkerfeldt, since both have perfect clean vocals and growls, which is pretty rare, but on the other hand a comparison wouldn´t be right, since he´s got a very own style of growling. In contrast to the former albums, you can find some more uptempo songs on 'Hope'. "Faster" sounds somewhat strange to my ears when speaking of Doommetal.

There´s a constant change or better to say flow between slow, depressed passages that built up more and more tension until they reach these uptempo parts, where the built up tension is relieved in the more aggressive parts. In addition to that there´s the change between soft clean vocals or even whispering and aggressive vocals. All very dynamic stuff that fits perfectly together. Some people might complain, that there are more bands, that play Doom Metal that sounds similiar - yes, right. But it always depends on how you present that music and Swallow The Sun put pure emotions on this album in a very own way and apart from that, there are enough typical trademarks, which makes it easy for the listener to recognize that this is StS and not any another band... which helps them to stand out in the mass.

There are rarely albums, that manage to drag me down like 'Hope'. So why listening to albums that drag you down and make you feel bad, if there´s already enough that drags you down in daily life, some people might wonder. Well, this music might be depressing and sad on the first sight, but if you put some effort into the music, you´ll feel that it cheers you up as well and, as the title says, gives you hope. That´s why!

Captivating from the first song on, no really weak songs, therefore : Since the 3rd album is always called the "Make it or break it" album, 'Hope' is definitely a strong album, which should help them to gather many (new) fans, especially outside Finland! The high chartposition they reached after the release should be the first sign that there are more and more people recognizing this band.

Congrats for such a strong and emotive album guys! To sum it all up with a song title of their former album 'Ghosts of Loss' :

Gloom, beauty and despair!

written by Ateacina

Playing time: 63.47