Sunbreather – Sunbreather

 

 

Sunbreather – Sunbreather
Self-released – 2025
Rock, Stoner, Metal, Prog
Rated: ***

The album art has this weird pull on me. It draws me in and makes me want to be creative. And that’s just the start of what’s about to happen.. For then there’s the music… Sunbreather. They hail from Leeds in the UK and this is their debut full-sized album. Sunbreather. And even though there are other bands with the same name, this one should become the definitive one. For there’s a certain absolute quality about their sound. And it fits the name: Sunbreather.

Immersive and beautifully crafted,  the album will serve as a smash and grab introduction to a band that immediately knows how to blend atmosphere with heaviness, and emotional charge with a real sense of intention. It feels entirely and deeply personal, and through that becomes universal, grand and vast. Moving seamlessly between moments of towering weight and mirroring reflection. 

Two minute long opening instrumental Foreglow, preheats your imagination and sets a dreamlike tone, so that following track Apricity can take you on a sweeping journey of textured sound and layered rhythm. What emerges is a highly detailed structuring that seems to reveal ever more on ever smaller scales. The vocals glide through waves of fractal distortion and wave like melody, while the rhythmic foundation shifts effortlessly between hypnotic groove and thunderous drive. 

As the story continues each track becomes its own chapter, pulsing with spiritual energy one moment or a more raw and edgy approach the next. Often those chapters explode on certain stanzas with chaotic fuzz and a hardcore or slow grunge attitude. Showing off their subtlety and introspective side, they have Reverie slowing the pace even more and touching upon the dreamstate again. And so is later Sleep, that even hints at incursions into more drone like territories. Dark, but strangely soothing. 

Final, morning song, Aubade, hints at a green light on the horizon, a sun slowly rising, with a sweeping, cinematic sense of finality, and a sudden burst of energy, it all slowly fades into a quiet sense or release. And perhaps relief. This is the kind of debut that offers up so much and shows a band that is on the brink of reaching their full solar potential. I would love to hear what a maestro like Esben Willems or Steven Wilson would do with the masters for this album. And in a decade or two, three, when Sunbreather has released another ten albums, and their debut is much sought after, who knows, one of them might just be asked to remaster this beauty. It’s already emotive and bold, endlessly engaging and with the right kind of ears, you can hear this suspiring supernova…

(Written by JK)

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