(In January of this year the Swedish/French duo Enshine released their first new album in more than a decade. The odds or DGR failing to review it have been slim or none, and at last he has done so.)
Tenured readers of the NoCleanSinging hallowed halls will recognize the name Enshine as one we have covered a decent amount in years past. The introspective, philosophical, skyward-gazing melodrama of the death and doom duo has held much appeal around here during their times of activity. Comprised of musicians Jari Lindholm and Sebastien Pierre, Enshine have sought to unify the strengths of the pair’s many other projects into something that utilized the aspirations of a genre that often evokes dreamlike qualities.
Positioned within a subset of doom with a stronger focus on beauty within the idea of melancholy rather than an outright crushing of the spirit. Atmospheric without being overwhelmingly sad, you’re just as often made to feel like you’re a piece of cloth caught in the wind floating high in the clouds just as often as you are brought back down to Earth and pressed into the ground. Little wonder then, that of the three Enshine releases up to this point, the band’s cover art has either been picturesque hues of blue and white among mountainous landscapes or hyper-colored renderings of the stars. Enshine combines the aspirations of two individuals whose other bands and their own solo careers have aspired to set listeners in a similar head space, both spiritual and introvertedly-philosophical – and very, very heavy on the keyboard leads.
Until this point, without the group’s newest release Elevation sitting in our view, it had seemed that Enshine were going to be positioned on radio silent. Like many projects of this ilk, its constituent parts had kept busy, with Jari releasing material both under his own name for solo work and exploring an equally doom-leaden funeral march in Exgenesis. Sebastien for his part kept busy with a solo act as well releasing his own doom explorations under the name Cold Insight, continuing his work with the progressive melodeath team in Fractal Gates, and going on his own funeral doom march as well with Inborn Suffering. For some time, it looked like the drift in space of Enshine would be permanent at two albums released in 2013 and 2015 and an EP entitled Transcending Fire in 2021. That is, until late 2025 when Enshine would stir back to life with the first few singles released from their at-the-time-upcoming 2026 release Elevation.
Much like their career and album title, Enshine and their disc Elevation spend their time high above the clouds creating a melancholy-filled take on doom that you could see being fed through a prism to refract into all sorts of beautiful colors. Both Jari and Sebastien have storied careers in this approach, as demonstrated by the dissection above, but even then it’s still interesting to hear some of their other projects starting to bleed in around the fringes. Enshine’s surprisingly uptempo and keyboard-heavy opener on Elevation – the song “Shimmering” – could cause a head turn for those familiar with the progressive melodeath of Sebastien’s project Fractal Gates. Granted, once the guitars are allowed room to soar after the opening mighty roars, things settle more into the frost-filled mourning and introspective works of the pair’s respective doom projects. Elevation serves as a union of a multitude of influences, lessons learned, and new approaches. It is still recognizably “them” but it is also a “them” that we haven’t heard from in half a decade or more depending on when you’ve last made contact with them.
Elevation makes some interesting choices with how the album flows; for most of the ride you’re drifting along with Enshine, ascending higher and higher through each song as you lay upon a multitude of focused guitar work and keyboards. Sometimes you’re settled into the bed of sound so comfortably that you start to lose yourself within it and it almost becomes therapeautic. The vocal work remains as fitting as ever, but that previously mentioned drifting feeling with the band almost offsets just how low some of those growls can get.
What does catch you off guard though is that three songs into Elevation, Enshine drop a decently lengthy instrumental entitled “Distant Glow” – serving as coda to the previous song and a segue into the upcoming one. The major affect of its presence – and to be fair, as an instrumental, “Distant Glow” is pleasant if not outright infectious – is that it somewhat blurs the gap between “Where The Sunrise Is Felt” and “The Moment”. More than once, there’s been a situation wherein I’ve personally found myself recalling a melodic line or lead from “Distant Glow” and thinking it was part of those previously mentioned songs. That three-pack becomes tied together as a result, and therefore you can’t do one movement without the other two. It isn’t three separate songs, instead a happy accident of a musical suite.
Deeper into the album’s recesses we find a solid pairing of songs in how Elevation closes out. “Soar To Fall” takes that bleak title and turns it into something gorgeously atmospheric, with heavy swells and even some minor backing symphonics. If Novembre hadn’t returned to us with Words Of Indigo last year, this would’ve been probably the closest we would have landed. The combination of morose clean singing and echoing guitar passages truly sounds like a Novembre song gone full “epic”. The higher screams stick out like jagged rocks atop the multiple layers of instrumentaiton within the song, and each melodic line moving backward and forward could lull you into a trancelike state.
“Reignite” closes out the album on equally epic footing, though it is built more out of martial rhythm than beautiful guitar and keys interplaying off of one another. Much like how Elevation started out surprisingly uptempo, letting “Reignite” close the album with midtempo stomp and head-nodding guitar riffs is also a surprising choice. It works well within the context of the album but also has “Reignite” standing strong in the standalone aspect. There’s no massive buildup to the song, it is one that subtly stacks piece upon piece until the song ends. The “Reignite” of its closing sounds much larger than the “Reignite” that started out, in addition to that last guitar solo being ferociously strong.
Elevation is admirable in that sense, because it sounds as if Enshine never allowed themselves to hibernate, but it also brings the project fully up to date with the music scene as it is now. The confluence of its two musicians’ separate projects fully uniting to create Elevation works in this album’s favor. It is a release that is able to succeed as a welcome-back album but also as something completely on its own with no needed context. Elevation is a great album for longtime fans because you know what to expect and Enshine execute upon it incredibly well, and for newer fans Elevation is a great release and a great starting point. You could easily begin here and enjoy the group’s previous albums. Both Jari and Sebastien do fantastic work with all of their other projects but the union of the two of them for Enshine shows that they’re capable of creating music that is truly special.
https://enshine.bandcamp.com/album/elevation
https://www.facebook.com/enshine.band