Label: Silver Lining Music
Release date: February 1, 2019
Production: David Castillo & Iñaki Marconi
Album length: 51.54 min
Genre: Progressive Rock / Progressive Metal
Soen kicked up quite a bit of dust back in 2012 with their debut “Cognitive.” Many, many people didn’t even take them seriously, slapping the label of average Tool clone on them right away. Anything but. True, Tool have always been an inspiration, a creative inspiration for the band, and the latest album “Lotus” bears that out (even the cover sets up the association), but through the follow-ups “Tellurian” and “Lykaia,” the band has boldly and unrestrainedly dug deeper into its polished art pose and recognizable expressive stance, which with “Lotus” steps up to a new level of quality.
Depression and melancholy, carved out the “Swedish way,” stay intact, the universally welcome companions on the new album too. The gloomy atmosphere is packed into ultra-catchy musicality. It’s backed by a contagious barrage of riffs and frequently syncopated rhythms, and the interesting part is that the exceptional Martin Lopez, with his razor-sharp, unbelievable drumming finesse and charisma, not once takes the spotlight, even though he’s laser-focused the whole way through on laying down an extremely layered and lively dressing of drum mastery. This album also buckles under syncopated rhythms, but it’s remarkable how it flows so smoothly and wins you over instantly, even with all the technical complexity and arrangement progressiveness behind it. That’s a guarantee that “Lotus” and Soen will grab even those listeners who are first and foremost after a gripping mood and don’t demand progressively structured complexity (which Soen certainly don’t lack).
Of all four Soen albums, “Lotus” is probably the one most uniformly focused on striking its chosen artistic pose. Hence the most compact and coherent release. That’s how it feels while listening. An extremely “feelsy” album. Of course they again vaguely recall Tool, partly thanks to Ekelof’s approach to vocal presence, partly thanks to some compositional tricks, but like I said. Soen don’t know how to “grind.” They’re not a heavy slog, they don’t go in for fragmenting motifs, and they’re not experimental either. Their story is a devotion to building hypnotic moods. What we have here is an intoxicating musical odyssey that lulls you into a peculiar atmosphere, loaded with excellent organic production that creates an incredibly contrasting balance between the building blocks of the sonic picture. The guitar phrases are thickened and greasy, gazing down into a lower tuning, and in the background the framework is perfectly laid by Martin Lopez’s progressively stripped-down drums and the punch of the warm tone of the thickened bass lines. For real contrast you get the old-school-minded keyboards, drawing plenty from the Hammond sound, even the Mellotron, and the unique, distinctive and incredibly catchy vocals of charismatic singer Joel Ekelof. On that front Ekelof sounds more convincing than ever before. His performance bursts with emotion and, like I said, Ekelof is the basic building block of this melancholy, this exuberant melancholy that embodies not just this album but the previous three too. The depression Soen create is comparable to what? The Swedish legacy of depressive stories. Katatonia.
Martyrs, with its melancholy and its musical payoff (especially the chorus), plus Joel Ekelof’s vocal range, is the candidate for the number one hit of the new album. In fact, the main thing that grabs your attention on the album this time is Joel Ekelof, who has carved out an extremely favorable spot for himself in the compositions, hitting his vocal zenith at every turn.
Soen are hugely successful at flipping the atmosphere. They do it gradually, and they usually save the real upheaval of atmosphere and its crescendo for the chorus melodies. There are loads of calm passages that make sure each track on the album develops with real dynamics. They’ve always been famous as masters of this element. And “Lotus” as a whole is the most convincing at emphasizing it. On that front, definitely the band’s most mature album to date.
The depressive energy, especially in the calmer, acoustic-backed passages (River), carries the listener’s concentration off toward transcendence, and with a possible switching off of the ratio, this atmospheric hypnosis hits its original goal all the more successfully. Music that touches the listener. In these calm passages the energy and vibe of the new Soen quickly make friends with the kind of energy that bands like Riverside or Opeth, even Steven Wilson, deliver on their new albums. Soen get there in their own way, but you can find quite a few atmospheric parallels with the melancholy expressiveness of the bands just named. “Lotus” is the band’s fourth album, and it introduces new guitarist Cody Ford. Once again the album occasionally taps into the legacy of seventies prog rockers like Pink Floyd and Camel. In that respect the new guitarist owes quite a bit of inspiration to David Gilmour and Andrew Latimer (e.g. the title track). But Soen were already leaning toward the Floyds on the last album, so that’s nothing new anymore. Still, as the newcomer on the team, Cody Ford is committed to the decisive pull of some lower-tuned, more generously frothing riffs that build a determined massive wall, as right there in the opener Opponent, or in the second half of the album with Convenant and, just before the end, Rival. Interestingly, as the new guitarist, he doesn’t bring any particular change to the band’s music.
“Lotus” is yet another excellent studio album from Soen. With it, the band keeps hardening its artistic focus and expressive stance. It feels remarkably unified, and it’s the most focused of everything they’ve released so far. A real blend of complexity and theatrical, gloomy atmosphere, dominated by an intoxicating musical allure that gets under your skin instantly. Fans will be thrilled, and with the new album the band credibly strengthens its standing on the wider proggy scene and grows into an ever more important part of it.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9.0 / 10
Track list:
01. Opponent
02. Lascivious
03. Martyrs
04. Lotus
05. Covenant
06. Penance
07. River
08. Rival
09. Lunacy
Lineup:
Joel Ekelöf – vocals
Martin Lopez – drums
Lars Åhlund – keyboards, guitar
Stefan Stenberg – bass
Cody Ford – guitar
