Soen
Lykaia
Revisited
Silver
Lining Music
Music
press can get right up my nose. Instead
of celebrating another great Swedish rock band who have already acknowledged
their influences and whose drummer once played for another band, they jump upon
one journalist’s comment of “sounding like..” and write only paragraphs to back
that up. It’s the same lazy claptrap
that the motoring press said of my car’s ability to undertake motorway travel
which has now gone beyond 135,000 miles.
Soen
create memorable atmosphere and play a heavy progressive rock/metal. They offer intricate music with a welcome
return to rock with a more commercial appeal in the clean, melancholic vocals from Joel Ekelöf, yet balanced perfectly with their own metal
riffs that to my ears don't sound like anyone else.
Each
track displays catchy song craft, passages that ebb and flow with subtlety from
thundering walls of sound to ringing guitars.
Short memorable riffs augment the quality lead guitar work.
You
will gather that Lykaia Revisited is
a re-mastered version of Lykaia which
came out in 2017. The sound is
marginally better and there’s 2/3 extra live tracks depending upon your
preference for digital or CD. It’s a shame this re-mastered version didn’t come
with a separate full live album leaving the original intact, even if the final
price reflected this. Be assured, both albums are worth your plastic folding stuff, but the original version finishes perfectly
with the eight-minute God’s Acre that fades out to cap the original release. Drummer Martin Lopez says however, that all
the band felt that Lykaia could
greatly benefit from being re-mastered whilst also sealing the Lykaia
era perfectly.
Concentrate
on the fine music and not the comparisons made by others of this band. May I thank reviews editor - Lee Vickers, for
his personal copy of the 2017 version for comparison and for the opportunity to
review and enjoy this updated version of perfection.
NE
