"The Shape of Everything"
The New SOM Album
SOM singer and guitarist Will Benoit woke up one night to find an email from guitarist Joel Reynolds in his inbox. Attached was an mp3 called "Animals". It was one of the defining moments in the emergence of the glorious new album "The Shape Of Everything ".
Because Joel had sent his message between three and four in the morning, Will knew immediately that it had to be something special. His bandmate certainly wouldn't have been up all night otherwise. Joel was living in Richmond at the time, and it was just the time of the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests. The musician was at the forefront the whole time, seeing statues being torn down and witnessing the cultural shifts. He later told the rest of the band how inspiring it was. About the demo tape, Will reports:
"I was pretty blown away by the demo. From the first note of that lonely, haunting guitar intro all the way through the heightened tension of the instrumental outro — that was all in his original version, and it felt like lightning in a bottle that I had to dig in on immediately.
"I remember I was running errands all morning, and in the car, I was bouncing back and forth between listening to the demo and recording voice memos of all the vocal melodies on my phone. By 11 a.m., I had the chorus lyrics and harmonies worked out by 2 p.m. I was back in the studio and had all the vocals recorded pretty close to how they are on the album. Once the rest of the band added their parts and flourishes, the song really came to life. It's dark, it's strange, and it's one of my favourite SOM songs we've finished so far."
"The Shape Of Everything" is a great album.
"The Shape Of Everything" is a big album – consisting of eight tracks. With just 34 minutes in total, SOM managed to build a palpable dramaturgy that speaks of the world in our time.
If you like bands like Deftones, Failure or also Alcest, you should urgently go on a journey with this shoegaze/post-music band - it's worth it. There is a story behind every song, and you can hear and feel that.
Brutal riffs meet heartbreaking lyrics that go deep. Atmospheric sequences replace metallic walls and lead into a dream world.
Heaviness, gloom and hope
The record is the band's second complete studio album. SOM are about to release it on January 21st – just in time for the originally planned extensive tour through Europe tour together with Katatonia and Sólstafir.
Their work sounds round and raw at the same time – dark, emotional, and with a slight touch of romantic melancholy. When recording "The Shape of Everything", the band aimed to express heaviness and gloom and hope – and they did it!
To shoot the video for their pre-released single, "Moment", bassist Justin Forrest drove into the Colorado desert with filmmaker Alex Pace. The two of them spent the night there to film the sunrise. Among other things, the clip shows Justin's cold hands in the desert sand. For Will, this is the perfect metaphor for the last two years.
By the way: The latest pre-release single is called "Center". You can watch the video right here:
SOM – "Moment"
Die neueste Auskopplung heißt übrigens "Center". Hier kommt das Video: