The Eternal Resonance
2020 has been an awful year in many, many ways. One bright spot has been the release of some truly stellar albums—some expected and anticipated, others out of the blue (at least to me).
One of my absolute favorites of the year falls into the "out of the blue" category: The Eternal Resonance by the Swedish band Sweven (apparently an old English word meaning a vision or a dream). The heart of Sweven is guitarist and vocalist Robert Andersson, and while I was familiar with his previous band Morbus Chron and the only album they released (also titled Sweven), it for whatever reason didn't connect with me like The Eternal Resonance.
This is an album truly made with love. The intricate attention to detail and ambition infused in each song is very rare find these days. While there's inspiration from 90s-era Swedish melodic death metal, there's also a tasteful progressive metal aura as well. This feels like sonic art to me, something done for no other reason than the expression itself.
I intend to aggregate my favorite albums from 2020 before the year is up, but The Eternal Resonance has really been a surprising bright spot in a dismal year.