Foto: Sadan Ekdemir

This was the last gig of Soen’s European tour after releasing their third studio album ‘Lykaia’. It’s the album where they finally got their own unique sound. In parallel to the meaning of the title, their sound is like a never-ending transformation among different genres of music; songs can start slow with poignant melodies, and can suddenly smash heavy beats in your face.

The crowd fuelled up with the extraordinary performance of support band Madder Mortem while waiting for Soen. They finally appeared onstage with ‘Canvas’ as their opening track – a polyrhythmic progressive masterpiece from the Cognitive album. All dressed up in black, the soft voice of Joel Ekelöf swirled the melodies into the night. Shortly after, new song ‘Sectarian’ from the latest album started, proving their signature sound is still progressive yet slightly darker. Finally, head-banger ‘Savia’ came along and gave the crowd what they expected. I deem myself lucky to finally see the unique drumming skills of Martin Lopez live, especially in this song. In addition, having additional tumba drums and keyboards handled by multi-instrumentalist Lars Åhlund helped to fulfill the atmosphere of Soen’s uniquely captivating sound.

Shuffling through the newer and older hits, Soen got a huge applause when they started with the hit ‘The Words’. Beginning with a stunning intro and a vibrant style: first as a ballad, then building up heavily and reaching climax with subtle strings tones. An exciting and memorable moment from the show was when Marcus Jidell played the middle section of ‘Pluton’ along with the crowd, dividing them into groups and making them hum the different parts of the melody. That was somewhat an unexpected move, but yet quite magical.

They finished their show with the most Tool-ish song, ‘Fraccions’ (this song reminds me so much of schism), but the crowd was still asking for more. Shortly after the last song, they came back on stage to play ‘Tabula Rasa’ and ‘Lucidity’. The show finished, but the refrain of ‘Lucidity’ kept playing in my head the whole night.