[Cover photo credit to Jakob Berglund and Johan Söderling]

Swedish Post-Metal duo A Swarm of the Sun have announced the upcoming release of their fourth studio album, An Empire, for September 6th, 2024 via Berlin’s Pelagic Records.

An Empire sees Erik Nilsson and Jakob Berglund continue the “compositional narrative thread” seen on their 2019 album The Woods. This time, the mood of melancholy allows the band to dig deeper into “ideas of desolation and despair” whereas lyrics incorporate “tenderness” that can also be harrowing.

Having worked a bit on the album in 2019, but then forced to take time away, Erik and Jakob came together years later and started something entirely new. The result is a six-track tale told in four movements. Lead single “The Burning Wall“ embodies this compositional approach and shows frankness in its lyrics.

A Swarm of the Sun have balanced An Empire between “the familiar and entirely alien” in the context of their work as an evolution of their Post-Metal sound. With “increasingly bleak times” leading the band to “reassess their relationship with creativity and suffering,” this new body of work “captures intimate highs and crushing, debilitating lows of modern life.”