COGNITIVE

Soen is built up by experience and mature musicians with a plethora of influences ranging from Opeth, Tool, Death to Willowtree. Throughout their Soen career, they mellowed down, cut down on ambitions and became more melodic - way to gain more commercial success.

This first album captures Soen at their most ambitious but also less original stage - as Tool clones. Almost all instruments and vocal imitate Tool - to a high degree. Anyways, there is good musicianship behind the tracks, nice ideas, high quality instrumentation and enough dynamism to keep it going - unlike Soen's later efforts. On the other hand, you can hear subtle Opeth influence that will grow more significant on other releases - the music is not dark and does not bear so many contrasts as Opeth's music.

This is an interesting debut album and could be seen as some kind of hommage to Tool but the lads manage to come up with their own ideas albeit rooted in Tool's sound. Not a major album of the year, but still pretty good. 3,5 stars