Style: Progressive rock, neofolk, ambient (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Anathema, Heilung, The Pineapple Thief, Lunatic Soul
Country: Sweden
Release date: 31 January 2025
You’re traveling alone along a dark forest path, wrapping your cloak tight as the first raindrops of an impending storm begin to tap softly upon the boughs above. Night has begun to fall, the clouds occluding any semblance of a sunset as the slate-gray sky slowly shifts from light to dark. As if in response to your imminent need for shelter, the glow of a fire beckons from between the trees. Cautiously approaching, you see a strange man in foreign clothing, sitting at a campfire in a shallow cave shielded from the elements. Upon seeing a fellow traveler in need, he invites you in, and while you’re wary of sharing a cave with a stranger, it beats the prospect of staying out in the increasingly harsh elements. While cooking a modest meal upon the fire, the man shares stories and songs from a faraway land, some grandiose and fantastical, some muted and mundane. With every tale, his careworn yet smooth voice begins to meld with the surrounding soundscape of crackling logs and the pounding rain just outside, and the tension from a long day’s travel slowly seeps out of your soul. The journey ahead is long, and many dangers remain, but for a brief moment, there is respite.
Such is the experience of listening to the music of former Tribulation guitarist Jonathan Hultén. While Hultén is no stranger to abrupt genre swings, having overseen his previous band’s transition from straightforward death metal to blackened goth-rock, his decision as a solo artist to abandon metal entirely in favor of hushed, acoustic folk music on 2020’s Chants From Another Place was about as much of a 180-degree turn as he could have possibly made. For his latest effort, Eyes of the Living Night, Hultén aims to diversify his new sound into something more lush, dynamic, and sweeping. Sure, the soft, acoustic Nick Drake-isms of his previous work are still present, particularly in the campfire croon of “Vast Tapestry”, but with the addition of a more colorful sonic palette this time around. You’ve got electric guitars, synths, gnarly organ (“The Dream Was the Cure”), and programmed electronic beats (“Afterlife”), to name a few, and it makes the overall genre of the album rather difficult to pin down. Hultén calls it “ambient dream-grunge”, which seems at first blush like an intentionally absurd mess of self-contradictory terms, yet ends up being as good a term as any to categorize the fuzzed-out, melancholic, ethereal sounds on offer.
Still, with all this experimentation in genre, there is always the risk of straying from the carefully maintained tone of hazy, primeval warmth that wraps around the listener like a warm blanket, tossing it aside in favor of mere shallow gimmicks. Happily, that is decidedly not the case here; every switchup in the soundscape is but a tool in service of establishing the album’s positively immaculate sense of vibe. The closest comparison would be later-era Anathema, who similarly used whatever musical elements made sense in crafting their melodramatic yet ultimately sunny and optimistic brand of soft prog– and while Hultén may approach things with a bit more melancholic, woodsy mystique, he too makes music aiming to unburden the listener’s soul and make it soar. From the grandiose post-rock-adjacent dynamic swells in opener “The Saga And the Storm” to the atmospheric solo piano piece “Through the Fog, Into the Sky”, there’s a sense of sweeping, transportive magic throughout, no matter the scale, as though each song were its own unique yet equally cozy little fey dimension.
How Hultén achieves this is a bit difficult to neatly describe. The melodies are a part of it, to be sure. Like all of the best folk music, a number of the melodies here, such as the gentle yet hypnotizing waltz “Song of Transience”, feel timeless, as if they had thrummed for millennia in the collective subconscious of humanity before Hultén plucked them out of the ether and gave them physical form. The arrangements and production are also warm and full of depth, lending a sense of vitality and fullness throughout. However, the biggest X-factor here is Hultén’s voice. True, he’s not some showy virtuoso (though parts of “The Dream Was the Cure” and “Starbather” show he can belt it out if needed) but rather he sets himself apart through his absolutely stunning use of vocal timbre. Not only does his natural tone have just the right tinge of roughness to add a sense of humanity to an otherwise-angelic croon, but his use of layering and timbral shifts makes his voice blend into the instrumental arrangement in a truly unique way. Take, for instance, the thrumming, vibrant harmonies in “The Dream Was the Cure” that sound reminiscent of the drone tones in bagpipes or hurdy-gurdy. Or maybe the mesmerizing combination of rasp and vibrato that somehow makes a held note in “Riverflame” remind me of the talkbox intro to Snarky Puppy‘s “Sleeper”, of all things.
Any criticisms I can muster towards Eyes of the Living Night are relatively minor, and stem largely from personal taste. I would say that Hultén’s complete avoidance of any outright solos or anything remotely “metal” does slightly dampen the album’s more energetic songs. Some slightly heavier guitars at the climax of “The Saga and the Storm” would have made it hit so much harder, and adding in some kind of extended, progressive instrumental passage to “Starbather” would solidify the ’70s prog throwback vibe the song flirts with but doesn’t quite commit to, while also making it feel like a proper showstopping closer. In addition, the ballads’ melodies do occasionally skew a bit simple and “nursery rhyme” for my liking (“Vast Tapestry” in particular), and “A Path Is Found” is a decent but somewhat inessential interlude where the guitar and violin mostly spin their wheels for a minute.
At the end of the day, though, these are small blemishes upon an absolute stunner of an album. It successfully takes the sounds of Hultén’s previous work through a marked expansion in scale and musical diversity without sacrificing the fragile yet heartfelt coziness that made it special in the first place. Eyes of the Living Night takes that quiet, peaceful inner sanctuary and expands it into its own world, a starlit realm whose shadowed corners hold no dangers, just treasures that the light hasn’t quite reached yet. The night within is, in its own way, a living thing, a dynamic entity whose darkness and dread can be dispelled if one has the determination to press on and the will to switch one’s perspective. It is a challenging journey, yet a rewarding one, and there is no shame in resting for a moment by a nice, warm campfire before pressing on.
Recommended tracks: Afterlife, Riverflame, The Dream Was the Cure, The Ocean’s Arms
You may also like: Tvinna, Silent Skies, Oak
Final verdict: 8/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Kscope – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Jonathan Hultén is:
– Jonathan Hultén (vocals, all instruments except those noted below)
With:
Esben Willems (Drums)
Ida Nilsson (Harmonica on “Dawn”)
Maria Larsson (Violin on “A Path Is Found”)
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