Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Soen
Label: Spinefarm Records
Release: 2012
Running time: 48:30
Rating: 3/5
I’m no purist, but I’ll go out on a limb and say there are very few aces in the world who can pull off, gracefully and without tripping over their own shadow, what I felt after my first exposure to the rays of Tool, and that’s still the stuff that has shaken me to the core and was somehow, directly or indirectly, tied to the great Maynard and company. Strangely enough, even aces we’ve seen in rather different roles get swept up in the sweet rhythms of melancholic, deep contemplation about the state of the world and the world’s mentality. One such superstar tribute to the giants of progressive me(n)tal beauty is Soen, who are, so to speak, the Swedish interpreters of that L.A. sound, and standing side by side this time are former Sadus, Testament, Death and Iced Earth man Steve Digiorgio, Martin Lopez, the former rhythmic heart of those exceptional Swedes Opeth, and the vocal soul of the band, wound around the vocal cords of Willowtree singer Joel Ekelöf. The biggest unknown to me was guitarist Kim Platbarzdis, but let me first explain that a friend, comrade-in-arms and spiritual brother pointed me toward Soen, and I’m sincerely grateful to him for the revelation. The fact is that there’s way too much going on in the Swedish nexus of music-making for anyone to enjoy and mentally process absolutely everything the descendants of the Viking tribes cook up, but even so, Soen are news that reaches back in conception and genesis to 2005, when Lopes and Platbarzdis came together as the nucleus of the band, and the firstborn, the album Cognitive, is, as an album title should be, a cognitive stroll down the byways of consciousness.
The fact that there’s a fair bit of deliberate raiding of Tool’s repertoire shows in both the music and the look of Cognitive, with its smoky cross-section of a battered human figure, both visually and in the sequences of melodic slides into meditative rhythms somewhere between Lateralus and Aenima. Still, there’s enough soul of their own in all that pattern-copying for Soen to keep their dignity and their own backbone, and to earn a standing ovation from someone who won’t let anyone mess with and trample on the sphere of the sacred, which Tool undoubtedly are. The sensual weave of Maynard-style vocals, which Ekelöf serves up with tenderness and feeling, wraps nicely around the rhythmic looms of a very dreamy Lopez this time, Platbarzdis’s guitars keep the link to Adam Jones, and somewhere in the background even the image of Billy Howerdel creeps into the picture. Soen soften the organic essence of Tool’s progressive writing and, in that typically Swedish melancholic way, translate it into their own expression of Tool-ish interplay between four rhapsodes from entirely different waters. The artistry is obvious, and so is the technical chops of all the co-conspirators in this hypnotic game of rhythm and imagery across the tracks on the record. The opening Fraktal already sounds like an intro to Parabola, and the follow-up, Fraccions, is just the expected eruption of emotion that Tool already delivered, and eleven long years ago at that! Strangely, Delinda doesn’t surprise either, though it’s surgically precise and studio-scrubbed. It’s just too predictable for the heart to really leap and the soul to be truly, honestly shaken!
Out of some hidden frustration and fear of judging too harshly a very compact projectile of artistic inspiration that nevertheless wears someone else’s shoes and someone else’s signature, I won’t go into details this time, so I don’t spoil that feeling of soul-level arousal I got the first time I heard the record. The well-known and beloved patterns stoke flames of love and passion for listening through every layer, but as the hundreds of layers unfold, it becomes more and more obvious from one sequence to the next that, apart from the exceptional technical copying of exceptional source code, there’s not much to hold against Cognitive. Maybe only the fact that on the skeleton of these otherwise beautiful and well-rehearsed looms there’s precious little that’s their own and original, and the result is comparable to a very detailed and excellent replica of a Van Gogh that a skilled art student manages to paint with effort and sweat after diligent work, but a copy that smells of fresh paint can’t compete with the patina of time and the mad genius of Vincent, soaked in pure idea and passion. Soen are good imitators, but they fall about half a meter short of the extraordinary power and intensity of Tool. Instead of vivid, colorful pastel shades, they reached for watercolors, and the color of the mental rainbow matches. I could accuse Ekelöf of too much repetition and not enough balls, but I won’t. A textbook case of too little resolve is the syncopated gem of the record, Oscillation, or Canvas, which, besides its broken rhythms and tribal rhythmic soul, deserved a bit more oomph and a soul of its own, or at least somewhat more manly dynamics and sensibility.
It’s precisely because of this that the greatness of an otherwise good album, hell, a downright outstanding one, fades and waters down a little. The shamans of magical hypnosis and rhythm slipped past the sharp eye and trained hand of these academically educated anthropologists of sound, who in their craftsmanlike pretentiousness made something that holds water but can’t reach the solar maximum Tool have been radiating from their very first moment. One of the record’s strongest moments is Purpose, which, ironically, raises the very question of the point and reason for wearing someone else’s lion skin, the hide of giants who had to shed it in their evolutionary growth and bloom so they could fly even higher and louder toward the heights of the divine One and Highest. That is exactly what separates originals from imitators and the big from the small, and that’s why I hope Soen can pump some more of their own atmosphere into their lungs, some more of their own blood, even if dirtier, through their capillaries, and rub some more of their own unfinished dreams into their mental hemispheres. If they do, we can look forward to a splendid continuation of an otherwise good, but not outstanding, first trip into the (un)known …
Line-up
Joel Ekelöf – vocals
Kim Platbarzdis – guitar
Steve DiGiorgio – bass guitar
Martin Lopez – drums, percussion
Production
Kim Platbarzdis
Tracklist
- Fraktal
- Fraccions
- Delenda
- Last Light
- Oscillation
- Canvas
- Ideate
- Purpose
- Slithering
- Savia
