Sunday Meditation with Soen! (2015)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad

Venue: Channel Zero, Metelkova, Ljubljana
Concert date: March 22, 2015

Sunday gigs are (for me, at least) just as much of a pain as, well, Monday gigs. We’re not getting any younger, and on a Sunday night it can be hard to peel yourself off the comfort of the living room couch. This time, though, it wasn’t so hard: last Sunday Channel Zero hosted Sweden’s Soen on their first headlining tour. They’re no strangers to our stages (they first played here as support for Paradise Lost, then last year at Metaldays), though until recently they were known mostly as the band of former Opeth drummer Martin Lopez. Well, Soen are steadily shaking off that reputation and building an identity of their own, as they proved on Tellurian, the latest follow-up to their debut Cognitive. Despite the Sunday slot, what surprised most this time was the great turnout: the crowd (some of it from abroad) packed Channel Zero almost to the brim already during the opening act, Lizzard.

First on stage were the French lizards, and no, that’s not some French culinary specialty. It’s Lizzard, a progressive art rock/metal trio from the French city of Limoges. The band got going in 2006, and this was their first time playing for a Slovenian crowd, which did them a huge favor. The French threesome thrilled and won over a jam-packed Channel Zero with sheer, simple loudness, which live is a serious upgrade on the studio sound. Thanks to the excellent, crystal-clear yet properly loud sound (the bass strings rattled even our guts), all of the band’s strengths floated effortlessly to the surface. Those lie mainly in the relatively simple guitar riffing, which is melodic one moment, earth-shakingly punchy the next and psychedelically seductive the third, and even more in the broken polyrhythms of an exceptionally well-versed rhythm section ruled by drummer Katy Elwell. Most of the focus was on her, since she didn’t just show she masters her instrument, but above all that a woman’s hand can hit the skins properly hard. Judging by what we saw, Katy hits even harder than plenty of male drummers. Mathieu Ricou’s vocals mostly brought Maynard James Keenan to mind (Lizzard clearly take their cues from Tool, though without overdoing the imitation), but toward the end he came off a touch monotonous, while bassist William Knox put on a show of his own. He laid down a heavily grooving, massive foundation, but he’d apparently eaten who-knows-what before the gig and kept glancing around the stage paranoidly, as if he were on a really bad trip, haha. Lizzard deservedly got a great reaction from the crowd, and at the end a thunderous applause and wild enthusiasm, which the girl and the guys took with obvious surprise and sincere gratitude.

Lizzard set Soen a tough task in justifying their headliner status, and in that respect they even outplayed them a bit this time. Soen were plagued above all by a much worse sound, at least in the first half of their three-quarter-hour set. For the first few songs the PA was so weak that vocalist Joel Ekelöf was almost inaudible, completely buried by the thundering rhythm section, the most convincing part of their show. The sound did improve after a few songs and was still far from Lizzard’s level, but Soen managed to justify their status as tour headliners anyway, even though their melancholic atmosphere grew ever more sleep-inducing, so by far the most successful and convincing moments were the sped-up, hard-hitting »metal« ones, from both Cognitive and Tellurian. The two new members, who filled the gap left by guitarist Kim Platbarzdis’s departure, also found their footing. Veteran guitarist Marcus Jidell (currently in Avatarium and solo, and in the past also with Evergrey, Royal Hunt, Candlemass and Pain) played his parts without major problems, and the multi-instrumentalist Lars Ahlund was even more convincing. In the background he handled backing vocals, keyboards and assorted percussion, and at times he slung a guitar around his neck and joined Jidell. Still, all the attention this time was stolen by the reliable, unerring rhythm tandem of bassist Stefan Stenberg and the superb Lopez, who showed off a whole palette of different drumming techniques. The instrumentalists ended up rescuing Joel’s weaker performance. Between songs he has nowhere near the charisma he has within them, and maybe Sunday (or the more convincing opening act) was to blame for making Soen come off even sleepier than usual. The song selection was good, but personally I like Soen much better in shorter doses.