Released on: 10th September 2021
The newest release from Niklas Sundins’ Mitochondrial Sun, Bodies and Gold, is a sombre and personal piece invoking Blade Runner-esq soundscapes and technological reflection in a metropolitan package. Sundin is better known for his contribution to the melo-death act Dark Tranquility. However, as of 2020 he is no longer with them. Giving him more time to explore and expand on new horizons.
Bodies and Gold is a six-track EP where Sundin applies his thirty-years plus of musical knowledge into an almost visual collection. (Visual because these tracks are more like excerpts from a grand plan than simple pop songs.) Sundins’ mood music is like an urban soundtrack nearing the disharmony of industrial soundscaping. Bodies and Gold mostly offers dark and imposing tunes in lament of this dismal reality. But also, does not shy away from the warmth that can be found in the human spirit.
With a great deal of attention, Sundin manipulates sounds and effects to do his bidding. While articulating his feelings coherently in the form of melodies carried by staccato rhythms and monotonous intervals. It is mostly electric. However there are sequences of organic cadence wound into the substance of the EP. Patterns and passages that welcome the human element in a technocratic landscape.
It is not melo-death. But it does loosely share the same feeling. Bodies and Gold, and Mitochondrial Sun in general, is an adventurous take from an artist typecast by genre;It has a spooky and transcendental appeal similar to Dark Tranquility, just with less white noise.
8/10
