Album Review: Soen - Imperial

As the metal universe continues to fracture under the weight of thousands of bands, what we have lost is an anchor point around which we can tie everything, a singular place to point to when we want to answer what metal is in the year 2021. When we examine the horizons, we see that metal can be heavy, metal can have groove, metal can be progressive, metal can be melodic, and metal can even be emotional. With so many nooks and crannies, defining what metal is in the here and now is nearly impossible.

And yet, Soen has done just that. Their blend of progressive and melodic, their blend of heavy and emotional, is the natural through-line of metal evolution. With their last two albums, "Lykaia" and "Lotus", Soen not only found their identity, but they have shown us everything modern metal can be. Those two albums stand above everything else metal has had to offer over these recent years, not only earning Album Of The Year from me on both occasions, but taking strains of Tool and Opeth, and turning them into the future I had been waiting for.

Time waits for no band, and evolving is the lifeblood of staying ahead of the curve. Despite their artistic triumphs, Soen is not settling for recycling what has already worked. After a year of anxiety and heartache, they return with an album that not only has to live up to their own lofty standards, but needs to reflect where we are as a society.

That makes this the third panel in a triptych, where "Lykaia" was the dark omen, "Lotus" was the corona we see shining around the edges from behind, and "Imperial" is the defiance we feel now that we fully see reality in its proper light.

There is a palpable energy that seeps through the recording, with the production slightly gritter than on "Lotus", emphasizing the band's heaviness while they still play with dynamics, fully embracing the need to ebb and flow to maximize every song's impact. When the band is in full flight, and Joel Ekelof is singing with everything he's got, Soen is powerful in a way more traditionally 'heavy' bands can't match. It's precisely that they aren't pummeling us endlessly which makes their impact that much stronger.

Soen's growth has coincided with Joel's development as a singer. On "Cognitive", both felt tentative as they took their first steps down this path. This far into their journey, they know exactly who they are, and who they want to be, and that has opened up not just their sound, but imbued it with a swaggering confidence that amplifies the melodies. Soen is a progressive metal band in the way they play with intricate rhythms and non-traditional song structures, but they are just as much an emotionally resonant melodic band. Few bands in metal have ever been able to put both sides of that equation in balance, and Soen does it in a way that doesn't sound like anyone else.

As "Imperial" unfolds, we hear the Soen trademarks revisited, twisted in on themselves and condensed to their most potent form. "Lumerian" opens the album with some of their most pummeling guitars, but gone are the instrumental codas of previous albums that played with new sounds to segue from one song to another. "Illusion" takes the melancholic ballad format of both "Lucidity" and "Lotus", but adds more layers of beauty while staying nary a second longer than needed. Soen has learned to stick-and-jab, going for the throat with every song. In these pandemic days we all have too much time on our hands, but Soen doesn't take that as an excuse to drag things out even further in the name of exploration. They treat time as precious, and remind us to make the most of every moment we have.

The evolution of Soen on this album comes not in giant leaps, but in small steps. It's the 80s synth that pops up in "Deceiver", the symphonic aura of "Modesty", the continued distillation of their songwriting to its razor-sharp core. Frankly, there is no need to evolve when no one has yet caught up.

Soen's ability to sound both melancholy and optimistic at the same time is intoxicating. When I listen to any of the three albums in this trilogy, there's a hunger to hear more of it. They are tapping into something primal in our experience, bridging our hearts and furies, or perhaps it's as simple as left and right brain connecting in a common language. Soen reaches us on a level you're not going to hear from your standard metal band. Plenty of musicians can play like Soen, but none can write like them, or nail the details that make their grooves swing that little bit more, that make the stories and melodies that much more inescapable.

I wondered how Soen could follow up two masterpieces. They took the counter-intuitive path, narrowing their focus rather than expanding, and by doing so have used their own echo to amplify everything that was already great about Soen.

The brass ring has now been raised for 2021. Now we wait and see if anyone else can jump high enough to scrape their fingers across the bottom, much less grab hold strong enough to pull it down. "Imperial" is, yet again, truly stunning.