Soen Unveil “Antagonist,” Announce Fifth Album, Imperial

Soen, founded by former Opeth drummer Martin Lopez and singer Joel Ekelöf, are now five albums deep into their career. Although I’ve appreciated their music since their debut landed in 2012, it wasn’t until Lotus, released last year, that I got fully on board as a fan; it’s a friggin’ fantastic record and it landed on my best of 2019 list.

The prolific Swedes are already back with another effort, Imperial, aided by the downtime brought on by the pandemic, and they’ve just dropped its first single, “Antagonist.” And it’s great! It continues in the vein of what they had going on with Lotus — an extension of Opeth’s more melodic, hooky side — and arrives with a politically motivated music video.

Lopez explains of Soen’s new album:

“In my life I try to be as real as possible, but I think that the music, and nature, of Soen are the only place that I really, really feel I can be myself. When you’re home, doing music, writing lyrics, that is where you really get to express yourself without any judgement and with total freedom.

“It has obviously been a crazy, terrible thing for everyone, and for us as a band it has been really frustrating not being able to play shows, but also it has given us a clear window of opportunity to realize this album completely. We were able to spend 12 hours a day for many months bringing ‘Imperial’ to the place we truly wanted, mainly working on the groove and flow of the album.” 

Imperial comes out on January 29, 2021 via Silver Lining Music; pre-order here.