REVIEW: SoftSun - Eternal Sunrise

If you’re an appreciator of dark, melancholic, and atmospheric guitar-driven music, then you may have already heard of SOFTSUN. If you’re unfamiliar, this duo, made up of guitarist GARY ACRE and bassist/vocalist PIA ISAKSEN, is difficult to pin down to a genre, and in some ways, that works to their benefit. In their latest album, Eternal Sunrise, this fluidity allows them to explore elements of atmospheric post-rock, dark doom/sludge, and ambient trip-hop.

Kicking off with Sacred Heart, this track bears all with its melancholic, distorted guitars, and heavily reverbed drums that are all washed over by Pia Isaksen’s ethereal and dreamy vocals. It’s almost Celtic in its execution, reminiscent of the legendary DEAD CAN DANCE, though not quite as experimental. This vibe continues with A Hundred and Sixteen, an eight-minute baptism of aural proportions. Throughout the album, you can expect to be consistently awash with walls of sound, which, for the first two to three tracks, could almost put you in a trance. However, as the album continues, you may feel a little exhausted.

Often with dark, atmospheric music, you’ll find yourself riding all of the peaks and troughs of the music as slow build-ups end in huge, crushing crescendos, only to bring you back down, floating on a cloud of satisfaction. With Eternal Sunrise, you just don’t quite get that feeling as often as not; tracks on the album hit their peaks early on and remain almost consistent throughout. Tracks such as Abandon Lands reach their summit at around 1:30 and remain consistent until they conclude.

What you’ll find with Eternal Sunrise is a lot of similarities from track to track, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’re passively listening to the album while doing other tasks. There’s a lot of substance here to soak in, but as some tracks hit the eight-minute mark, you may begin to get a little audio fatigued by the end of it. With the whole album clocking in at around 40 minutes, it may feel a little long in the tooth, and you’ll be left yearning for a climax that never quite arrives.

SOFTSUN do manage to do many things great with Eternal Sunrise, like being able to create such huge songs with minimal instrumentation. It can be easy to layer too many instruments and lose elements within the whole composition. SOFTSUN manage to add just the right amount of each, with rhythm guitars gently twinkling alongside crunchy distorted guitar leads and thick, warm bass, all while atmospheric vocals swirl like smoke drifting throughout a dark Scandinavian forest.

Overall, much like SOFTSUN themselves, Eternal Sunrise is a tough one to place. While on one hand, you’ll be treated to an absorbent, doomy, post-rock, shoegaze album, on the other hand, if you’re a fan of having climactic progression in your dark, atmospheric guitar-driven music, you may be left wanting more. It’s not a bad album by any stretch. The two perform incredibly well on the album; their influences are presented with clarity, and with the addition of ROBERT GARSON on drums, they don’t overpower songs with unnecessary fills and flares. It just suffers from overall compositions being a little too similar from track to track, and while you may appreciate the familiarity, it can give a feeling of being a little too drawn out.

Score: 5/10

Eternal Sunrise will be released on November 7th 2025 via Heavy Psych Sounds.

Words: Aaron Richardson

Photos: SoftSun