Soen______________
A decade into their career, Soen have decided to take a different approach on their fifth album. More honest and raw, its underlying message is clear and concise. Martín López and Joel Ekelöf tell Prog why they got angry on Imperial.
The Swedish prog metallers take a more direct path with their latest album.
It’s a winter evening and two members of prog metal outfit Soen should be regaling Prog with anecdotes from their very first Latin America tour, but instead drummer Martín López is questioning his life choices. “I’ve been a musician for 25 years and I realised that in one day it can all disappear and there’s nothing to fall back on,” he ponders.
Like everyone else, the ex-Opeth sticksman didn’t have the best 2020. Last March Soen managed to squeeze in a few gigs in Mexico City before Covid-19 was declared a pandemic and the rest of their tour, which was meant to extend across South America, got canned.
As the virus tore through continents leaving fatalities and job losses in its dust, suddenly artists were feeling the brunt of this economic recession and this particular musician, who’s had the luxury of playing on seminal prog metal albums and touring the world, is holed up in Stockholm fearing the worst.
“It’s not the same for architects and doctors; for musicians it doesn’t matter how good you are, no one’s really got your back,” he says.
But there’s a glimmer of hope. Soen have a new album out entitled Imperial, the followup to the acclaimed Lotus, which surprised and impressed prog and metal fans alike with its solid maturity and glossy songcraft. In the comfort of their homes in Stockholm, López and frontman Joel Ekelöf are here to talk about Imperial and, because it can’t be avoided, reflect on the current state of the world.
“We’re actually 300 metres away from each other,” says López while Ekelöf fixes his headphones. “We live really close to each other but not in the same house, thank God. But because of the pandemic, we can’t meet.”
For a brief moment López’s dog makes a cameo on the video call and a little later family members crop up in the background. It all feels very homely and a world away from rock’n’roll stories of summer festivals and exotic tours. But now Imperial is finally out López and Ekelöf, despite the impediments of social distancing, are buoyant about their latest creation.
“This one feels more straight, like we’re not hiding behind cheap technicality,” says López. “It’s a really strong album; it’s straight to the point but also the message is clearer and it’s more honest. I don’t feel the need to complicate things, I just wanted music straight from the heart and this is how it turned out. I think it’s raw and better than Lotus in many ways.”
A prog band not trying to be complicated? Is this really what we’ve come to expect from the musician who supplied the drums on Ghost Reveries and Blackwater Park? It’s true that when comparing Imperial with Soen’s 2012 debut Cognitive, for example, there are immediate and stark differences. In their early work, listeners will find the typical, syncopated tropes of progressive metal, imbibing the staccato-like semi-urgency of Tool while their freshest material presents a hulking mass of honed riffs and smoother-than-smooth vocals. It might have something to do with their new producer, Kane Churko.
“We’ve been working with David Castillo for many years,” says Ekelöf about the respected producer who’s also worked with Katatonia. “He’s a great companion of ours and he did an excellent job on Lotus. He’s a prog master now and has worked with bands like Leprous but did we really want to make another album like that, with the same recipe and the same guy? No, we were going to do something with an American producer.”
López elaborates, “We didn’t really have a plan but after we wrote the album and recorded it, we felt like it had this really heavy character and that we should go for a more American sound, instead of what we usually have, which is very Swedish. We felt like this album should have an extra punch so we started looking around for decent American producers that are really different. That’s where we found Kane.”
Canadian-born Churko, who is better known for his work with beefy bro-metal heavyweights Five Finger Death Punch and Disturbed, is a pivotal figure in Soen’s latest chapter. Having mixed and mastered every track on Imperial, his chunky, in-your-face approach to Soen’s apparently typical ‘Swedish’ sound has become the vehicle for the band’s simmering vitriol towards the world and their steadfast intent to make a statement. López knew they’d be taking a gamble: “It’s kind of a risky album for us, which we love. It’s easy to fall asleep in that comfortable chair and
“I think the mood of the album reflects the tension in the world. It’s a pretty angry album!” Joel Ekelöf
repeat the same formula but on this album we felt like we wanted to cook something new.”
Soen’s thirst for the new is dispatched in the lead weight riffs of opener Lumerian and from there they set about balancing skilful arrangements and Ekelöf’s maturing vocals with overdriven guitar tones and López’s skin-pounding ferocity to create a cohesive, solid collection of songs. About Imperial, López says, “It’s a lot less polished. Instead of going into the details of every instrument, you just get the raw emotion of the song.”
Ekelöf concurs, “Some fans might say that you can’t separate the instruments in this record but we love it.”
It seems like Soen are closer than they’ve ever been to realising their vision. They admit that in the past they’ve been guilty of focusing too heavily on technicality but by introducing a more holistic approach to songcraft it’s allowed the vibe, rather than the virtuosity, to shine through. “We have become very, very confident in what we do, and that we’re good musicians,” adds Ekelöf. “We can really stand for the music that we do, and that means that we don’t have to show it off in every second. We know we’re good, we know it’s going to come through, we know the music is good.”
The upside of spending less time on the finer details of the musicality is that Soen get to spend more time on the lyrics. Unsurprisingly, front page news is their reservoir of inspiration.
“The pandemic gave us more time to write, which is a good thing, but also more time to reflect. Either you work as a team or you drown and die,” says López morbidly. “I saw all these things going on around the world, like Germany taking in infected people from Italy. Beautiful gestures. But I also saw politicians attacking each other and manipulating the number of people who have died just to gain something. These fucking guys at the top are ready to milk any situation just to gain a bit more power.
All of this stuff has ended up in our lyrics.”
Finding fertile ground with the injustices of the world, Soen’s video for Antagonist takes aim at the powermongers through the depiction of a dystopian future. Lifted from an album laden with frustration and anger at the world, it’s no wonder that the coronavirus has amped up Soen’s awareness of hierarchical powers. Even the album’s title is a nod to social ranks.
“We play all the prog festivals and see all these bands and it just feels like it’s more about intellectuality, the cosmos and poetry but I don’t see that old, rebellious vibe.” MartÍn López
“I think the mood of the album reflects the tension in the world.
It’s a pretty angry album!” Ekelöf remarks. “We looked at how polarised the world is right now and, although it wasn’t necessarily intentional at the time to have this theme running through all of the songs, it just sort of came with the times.”
López also recognises the fire currently raging in Soen. “I think we just get angrier and angrier every year and I don’t think it’s strange at all with how the world looks today. That all goes through our music. I think, in that sense we try to stick to what it originally meant to be progressive like being anti-government. We think about the people at the beginning who sought justice, like the hippies in the 70s. I actually think a lot of that is lost in new prog if you compare it to the old bands of the 70s.”
He continues, “I feel like the new wave of progressive bands don’t want to get involved in anything. I’m not naming any bands but I just get that vibe. We play all the prog festivals and see all these bands and it just feels like it’s more about intellectuality, the cosmos and poetry but I don’t see that old, rebellious vibe.”
Finding something to kick against, even if the object is prog itself, has Soen fired up. That is until, a conversational deviation suddenly has them misty-eyed over the genre.
“I’m really attached to prog,” states the Soen drummer. “It was the stuff that I’d listen to with my father when I was a kid. It’s the stuff that I played for many, many years, my whole life in fact, and it’s what I listen to myself. For me, Pink Floyd is my favourite band ever.” He recalls the days when he used to listen to The Wall with his dad. “I remember he got some earphones and for the first time ever I had earphones in my hands. I just listened to it for months, everyday, a couple of hours a day, because it was something so magical for me.”
For Ekelöf the memories are just as visceral, with his father also playing a pivotal role in shaping his musical tastes. “I grew up with only my dad, and he was a huge prog fan. He had a vinyl player and a big stereo and when it was four o’clock and he was starting to prepare for the evening he used to put on his vinyl records. We lived in an apartment but it was always at a loud volume, and you couldn’t get away from it, but that was just his way. He would get his daily fix of music like you would get your morning milk!” And Ekelöf senior’s records of choice? “It was Genesis, Jethro Tull,
King Crimson, Kate Bush… you name it, we had all that stuff. And it’s in my DNA now.”
“I think I can relate to their way of making music more than I can with new stuff. If you take Genesis, for example, and an album like Selling England By The Pound, they create these huge landscapes and it’s like an adventure to listen to their music. It’s not about how fast they play, or what kind of techniques they are using, it’s all about the songs, they are really strong songs, and I love that!”
From a band that was hyped up as a supergroup to then be knocked down as Tool copycats, Soen haven’t had the easiest ride, but with each record they are getting closer to hitting their stride. And if Imperial
can take even the tiniest slice of influence from Selling England By The Pound or The Wall
then Soen are definitely onto a good thing.
Imperial is out now via Silver Linings.
See www.soenmusic.com for more information.