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
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’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.
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
