Oh Hiroshima have never been a band in a hurry. The Swedish duo, brothers Jakob Hemström and Oskar Nilsson, now joined by Kristian Karlsson on keyboards, built their reputation on patient, swelling post-rock, the kind that asks you to wait before it gives anything away. All Things Shining, their fifth album, released in June 2024 on Pelagic Records, continues that tradition while making something quieter and more personal than anything they’ve attempted before.
The record opens with “Wild Iris,” and the first thing you notice is the urgency. A driving, half-time groove carries Jakob’s vocals forward, “My friends are ordinary”, and something about the directness of it feels like a deliberate statement. By the time the chorus lands, the song has declared its intent: this is a record about what happens when the spark goes out of things, and whether it ever comes back. The refrain, “It’s been way too long since lightning struck right through you”, is the album’s thesis in a single line.
“Holiness Movement” and “Swans In A Field” follow, two mid-album tracks that settle into the kind of textural, slowly unfolding space Oh Hiroshima have long been comfortable in. Neither rushes. Both reward patience. Karlsson’s keyboards sit underneath the guitars rather than competing with them, adding weight without adding clutter, a choice that pays off consistently across the record.
“Secret Youth” is the most stripped-back thing here, a song built on a tight, almost motorik pulse that confronts youthful idealism with the cold pragmatism that tends to replace it. The restraint is deliberate: there’s no wall-of-sound moment in “Secret Youth,” just the unresolved tension of the groove pressing forward. It’s one of the record’s more confident moves.
“Rite of Passage” is the album’s longest piece at just over seven minutes, and its most cinematic. The opening third is nearly still, fragments of guitar, space, something close to hesitation, before the full band arrives and the track opens into something genuinely moving. By its close, it feels like the emotional centre of the record, even if “Memorabilia,” which closes things out at a similar length, arrives with its own quietly devastating weight. Both tracks ask more of you than the shorter ones do, and both deliver.
“Deluge” takes a different approach entirely, an unlikely combination of orchestral warmth and electronic abrasion, Jakob’s lyrics drawn from the work of Nobel Prize-winning Swedish author Pär Lagerkvist. The contrast between the acoustic and the harder edges gives the song a restlessness that fits its themes: the fine line between good and evil, order and flood.
Mixed and mastered by Magnus Linberg, who handles the same duties for Cult of Luna, All Things Shining sounds exactly as large as it needs to. The guitars carry weight without becoming heavy in any genre sense; the space in the mix is used purposefully. The brothers’ working relationship gives the record an intimacy that their earlier, larger lineup couldn’t quite achieve, every arrangement choice feels considered, nothing wasted.
Standout tracks: Wild Iris, Rite of Passage, Memorabilia
All Things Shining doesn’t announce itself loudly. It builds slowly, says something true, and leaves before it outstays its welcome. That, for Oh Hiroshima, might be the whole point.
