REVIEW: Hail the Sun's "Divine Inner Tension" via Equal Vision

California’s Hail the Sun is a band I’ve had a lot of admiration for and sort of my last guard in the swancore scene. From their technical prowess, involvement in the community and overall energy they were an easy band to follow. However, like most bands in the genre, things started to fall apart for me in 2021’s New Age Filth. On that record Hail the Sun showed that they were sort of at a progressive stand still and that they were starting to gain some toxicity in their fan base. Nevertheless, I was excited for a new record, I think my faith was misplaced.

Something that strikes me right away, as always, is that Hail the Sun is a band that can play. The issue is I feel like playing is all they’ve done for six albums now. This band absolutely coasts on their ability to play fast and its sort of gotten old, I want to see them write a song worth that talent. They skirt along that again and again on this record; songs like “Tunnel Vision Alibi” have some cool hooks and a compelling breakdown. What I can’t ignore however is that anytime this band gets close to showing any heart they loop right back around to “wow, cool riff.” This issue becomes especially apparent when the following “Mind Reader” is more or less the exact same song. A lot of it just feels sort of soulless.


Divine Inner Tension also relies heavily on its production and surround sound and yet all of the production is fairly weak. Now, I don’t own top notch listening equipment at the time of writing this, but I also feel like between three different speakers one of them should have some balance between channels. It’s honestly unprofessional and appalling. That and certain decisions come off as forced art, “In My Dream” and “I Saw You Hanging” do not need to be split in two and it sort of comes off as silly.


I wouldn’t normally share this side of the process but on first listen this was going to be a four. As I listened more, I found that I didn’t think the record was bad, I was just expecting that by album six we would have progressed somewhere. Hail the Sun feels like a band absolutely locked in a time loop and I really hope that they progress beyond this at some point soon.


Our rating - 6/10
  1. Tunnel Vision Alibi
  2. Mind Reader
  3. Chunker
  4. 60-Sessions Blocks
  5. Maladapted
  6. The Story Writes Itself
  7. (In My Dream)
  8. I Saw You Hanging
  9. Tithe
  10. Feeble Words
  11. Little Song
  12. Under the Floor

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