Style: Post-metal, djent, post-rock, progressive metal (Mixed vocals, mostly instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Tesseract, Meshuggah, The Contortionist, VOLA
Country: Norway
Release date: 16 October 2026

Take a deep breath and smell the herbal, smoky aroma of the forest’s stoic conifers. Feel the soft, damp loam underneath the soles of your feet, leaving imprints behind with every step. See the golden rays of the sun’s guiding light, reflecting off the dewdrops that rest on giant flowering leaves. Hear the birdsong; melodious, yet holding secrets of conversations you’ll never come to know. And don’t forget: taste the sweetness of the dotted raspberries, their sugary flavor washing away any bitterness in your throat. The luscious innocence of the environment surrounding you sends your mind adrift, dreaming of an embrace that reminds you of a protective bear hug; or rather, the softness of a panda’s fur…

…Wake up. Smell the smoke. Feel the compacted sand beneath your feet. See the deep cracks in the barren desert, begging for hydration. Hear the desolate silence. Taste the roughness of your tongue, desperate for water’s embrace. Beware not to choke on dust as it enters your throat. The heat—harsh, merciless, and distorted—makes you beg to drift off into slumber, to return to the safety of the forest that teems with innocent life. 

The biomes above—forest and desert—couldn’t be more different from each other, yet they tell two sides of the same story. Norwegian trio Grant The Sun seek to continue telling their narrative that journeys through Earth’s natural landscapes: Voyage, their debut released in 2023, showcases the exploration of both the shallow and deep ends of the sea.¹ Distorted post-metal guitars, creative drumwork, and classically rhythmic ‘djelements’ guided the listener through the Earth’s wettest biome. Grant The Sun’s latest release, Biomes, swings between the lively, dense sounds of the forest and the dryness of the baking desert by heightening the strength of the musical elements heard in Voyage. 

As a climate scientist, I’ll be the first to tell you that there is much more complexity to the Earth’s atmosphere than what meets the eye; Biomes captures this hidden entanglement in its own sonic ambience. Opening track “All Who Wander” sets the thematic stage with guitars that sparkle in the soundscape over massive, fuzzed-out chords—a natural staple of post-rock music. Polyrhythmic grooves and djent-like accents feel exploratory rather than weighty as Markus Lillehaug Johnsen’s bubbly vocals help the sound take flight, reminiscing on Umpfel’s spacey aura. Tracks like “Canopy” and “Heliconia” take after the opener’s characteristics, and not just because their titles allude to the forest’s luscious tones:² in the way a forest shelters many varied compositions of life, Johnsen’s and Martin Rygge’s guitar work explores all sorts of textures that glimmer, sing, and even tremble, helping to root Biomes in a laid-back, verdant soundscape. The more one listens through the layers of sound rather than at them, the more detail they’ll come to discover thanks to Biomes’ clean production, too, as complex instrumental layers speak but never feel crowded in tracks like “Canopy” and “A Chemical Floor”. 

Too much green in the atmosphere can make for a healthy floral environment, but wouldn’t allow species from different habitats to flourish. Rygge leads this necessary biological change musically with distorted harshes that couple with Håvard Sveberg’s incredibly articulate drum work, channeling the spirit of the desolate desert biome.³ “Tedium” and “Final Breath” are among a handful of tracks that open with gritty, underpolished harshes that create unease in an otherwise established soundscape—although I find the harshes a bit too rugged and hardcore-like in a few moments. Mostly, though, the gritty harshes pair well with the consistently dry drum tone, setting up higher-tempo tracks with accented snare hits and staccato ride taps that define Biomes’ djenty identity: “Jaguar” does this best with an extended Meshuggah-esque vamp section that’s darker than any other moment on the record. The drums continue to add to Biomes’s tone, where the exposed blast beating in “Heliconia” takes center stage over ringing guitars and gentle chugging to create a uniquely pleasant layer of dry, atmospheric sound between other flowery instrumental channels. 

While Biomes is chock-full of catchy melodies (“Gold”, “A Chemical Floor”), the amount of focus put on the atmosphere tends to make the album’s tracks bleed into one another. The blend of instrumentation isn’t a bad thing when it comes to creating a spacey, lush sound, but when tracks have a similar formula to one another—“Final Breath” and “Cinder” starting with very similar vocals and drum lead-ins, for example—one can lose their place in the album. The amount of creativity littered across the soundscape makes it obvious that Grant The Sun can experiment in their music, and the potential for a couple particularly unique (and selfishly, some jazz-adjacent) licks is a bit squandered in favor of establishing their desired soundscape with broader melodies. The alternation of driving grooves and laid-back guitar solos within one larger soundscape makes Biomes easier to enjoy when approached from a holistic, atmospheric perspective. 

Nevertheless, Grant The Sun set out to continue their journey through the natural world, and Biomes has showcased their ability to build upon their established sound. Their earlier ideas, heavily steeped in post-metal, grew into compositions that combine said post-metal buildups with atmospheric djent and melodious, soaring guitars. The duality of sound as a result of the album’s concept makes Biomes a worthy exploration of forest and desert and of what makes the Earth unique. Djent fans and post-metallers alike should be sure to take the journey—as long as you’ve packed all of your travelling essentials, of course.

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Recommended tracks: Gold, A Chemical Floor, Canopy, Jaguar, Heliconia
You may also like: Outrun the Sunlight, Skyharbor, Umpfel, Shy, Low
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Mas-Kina Recordings

Grant The Sun is:
– Håvard Sveberg (Drums)
– Martin Rygge (Guitars/Screams)
– Markus Lillehaug Johnsen (Guitars/Bass and Clean Vocals)

1. Biomes’ album cover is incredibly cute (I need a poster of it), but the marine scientist in me can’t help but love Voyage’s courageous panda headed straight for the anglerfish. ↩︎
2.  ‘Canopy’ referring to the upper layer of forest created by outer tree layers, and ‘Heliconia’ directly referencing the genus of flowering plants. ↩︎
3.  Titles like “Speck of Sand” and “The Taos Hum” allude to this atmosphere, with the latter referencing the Taos Hum effect in the desert town of Taos, New Mexico (in which a low percentage of residents reported hearing a constant, never-ending low frequency in their ears). ↩︎