ALBUM REVIEW: Soen - "Lykaia"

By: Phil Weller

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 03/02/2017

Label: UDR Music

On Soen’s third full length record their own explorative hunger is satisfied in the most delicious of ways, resulting in their most dynamically versatile but free flowing release to date.  An explorative and colourful record, there is a lot to take in with this record, many dimensions in which to get lost in. Repeat listens bear gorgeous fruits.

“Lykaia” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Sectarian
2. Orison
3. Lucidity
4. Opal
5. Jinn
6. Sister
7. Stray
8. Paragon

The Review:

Since the dawn of civilization, mankind’s instinct has been to go on long explorative journeys. Often such journeys are treacherous, fraught with deviations, twists and turns that take people in directions they could never have imagined. Be these physical  odysseys into new unchartered territories, from the highest mountains or the pitch black unknown of the deepest oceans, or be they journeys into science, the search for cures for our most deadly afflictions and beyond, human nature has always looked forward, always advanced. There is always a thirst for more; more knowledge, greater discoveries. On Soen’sthird full length record their own explorative hunger is satisfied in the most delicious of ways, resulting in their most dynamically versatile but free flowing release to date.

2012’s ‘Cognitive’ saw them taking their first breaths, still young and finding their footing, while ‘Tellurian’, which came two years later, represented a band with a firm understanding of their own identity. They learnt to translate their ideas beautifully yet forcefully. What ‘Lykaia’does then is express a wider ranging sound with higher, grander peaks and darker; more gutturally and emotionally charged troughs. Each song is its own story of building crescendos detailed with deft subtleties and imagery, which together coalesce to compliment the bigger picture. From the higher, anthemic altitudes of ‘Sectarian’to the murky, riff-infested depths of ‘Opal’, it is a solid, inspired release.     

‘Sectarian’sets the scene with an off-kilter riff that continues smoothly from the sonic feel of ‘Tellurian’. The song progresses delicately, its flow, much like the rest of the album, pertains no sharp and sudden changes. Instead every turn they take – and there are many, each poignantly placed and clinically delivered – makes perfect sense, no matter what dwells behind the bend. ‘Orison’, the standout track, sees a jittering groove tangle with Joel Ekelöf’s purring, wounded vocals, with unconventional but thrilling riffs that flirt with jazz spinning in and out of focus. Its second half is completely detached from the first. But throughout they blend fiery musical passages with lofty, vocally driven explosions.      

‘Jinn’meanwhile sounds vulnerable. Dreamy eastern tonalities sway in and out of the foreground accenting that tenderness, which in turn contradict the doom mongering giants that lurk in the song’s more action-packed passages.

An explorative and colourful record, there is a lot to take in with this record, many dimensions in which to get lost in. Repeat listens bear gorgeous fruits.  

“Lykaia” will be available everywhere from 03/02/2017

Band info: official || facebook