There are bands that build their identity around technical ability, bands that chase heaviness, bands that live in atmosphere and bands that reach for something deeply emotional. SOEN have somehow spent more than a decade existing in that space where all of those things collide.
From Cognitive through to Memorial, the Swedish progressive metal heavyweights have never seemed particularly interested in sitting comfortably inside one corner of what a SOEN song is supposed to be. Their music can absolutely crush you one moment and then pull almost everything away the next, leaving little more than a voice, a piano or the empty space between the notes.
That balance sits right at the heart of their latest album, Reliance. Released earlier this year through Silver Lining Music, it is a record filled with strength and vulnerability, dependence and independence, aggression and restraint. After spending months living with this bloody thing myself, I was keen to get vocalist Joel Ekelöf on the other end of a call and dig beneath some of those layers.
There was another pretty fucking important reason to catch up too. After years of both the band and Australian fans waiting for it to happen, SOEN are finally coming to Australia for the first time this October, bringing The Omnific along for shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
For Joel, finally getting SOEN down under means a hell of a lot.
“It’s something we have wanted to do for our whole career. We’ve never been able to get it to work, so it’s the first time for SOEN. That’s a big thing. It’s really cool to be able to do it.”
Before diving too far into Reliance, though, I wanted to go right back to where music first got its claws into him.
When Music Became Something More
One question I love throwing at guests is their earliest core musical memory. Not necessarily the first band or song they remember hearing, but that moment where music suddenly stops being something playing in the background and becomes something that actually moves you.
For Joel, that memory reaches right back into childhood and his father’s record collection. His dad regularly played progressive music around the house, but hearing Genesis and the interplay of piano and Steve Hackett’s guitar became one of those moments that stayed with him.
Joel remembers being incredibly young and not really understanding what he was hearing. He just knew that something about it sounded different.
“I don’t know what I’m hearing right now, but this sounds really special.”
It became his first memory of music genuinely moving him without needing to understand why. The feeling arrived before any knowledge of musicianship, genre or songwriting could explain it.
Then came Alice Cooper.
When his dad brought home Trash, something clicked differently. The artwork looked cool as fuck to a young Joel, the songs grabbed him and Cooper became the first artist he felt was his, rather than another record coming from his parents’ collection.
That idea of feeling something before fully understanding it feels pretty bloody relevant when you look at where Joel eventually ended up. SOEN’s music has always carried that same ability to hit emotionally before you have worked out exactly what all the moving parts are doing.
Sometimes the feeling gets there first.
When The Audience Takes The Songs Away From You
Reliance arrived in January, which means SOEN have now had most of the year to live with an album that previously existed almost entirely inside the band.
That gap between creating an album and discovering what it becomes once everybody else enters the picture has always fascinated me. A band can spend months or years knowing exactly what a song represents to them, then release the fucker and suddenly thousands of people start attaching their own relationships, memories and experiences to it.
For Joel, performing tracks including “Primal”, “Discordia”, “Indifferent” and “Mercenary” has already begun changing what those songs represent.
They become attached to places, crowds and moments. “Primal” is no longer simply something that existed inside the creation of Reliance. Joel can now connect it to performing at Summer Breeze and remember what happened between the band and the audience during that particular performance.
Eventually, something shifts and the songs no longer belong solely to SOEN.
“The crowd takes them over. They sort of make the songs their own. And then from that point, we share the songs together.”
That might be one of my favourite ideas from our entire conversation.
Joel reckons that exchange is also part of why an artist can continue performing songs without necessarily becoming completely fucking sick of them. The music keeps evolving because audiences keep adding something new to it.
As he put it, that is the beauty of the whole process. The songs continue developing through the people listening to them.
Reliance Does Not Mean Weakness
Something that really caught me while digging into this album was Joel previously describing Reliance through five words: courage, vulnerability, independence, hope and transcendence.
There is a contradiction sitting right through the middle of those ideas that also runs through much of the record: reliance and independence.
We are constantly fed this idea that strength means needing nobody. Stand alone. Do everything yourself. Never depend on anybody enough that they can hurt or disappoint you.
Joel sees things differently.
“It’s always easier to be standing on the sideline as a person saying that, ‘I’m strong, I don’t depend on anyone, I do everything in my own way.’”
The more difficult thing is trusting somebody enough to actually rely upon them.
Building something with another person means giving them a degree of power. It means accepting they could disappoint you, hurt you or simply not be there when you need them. That vulnerability can require considerably more courage than standing safely outside everything and declaring yourself completely self-sufficient.
“It’s harder to rely on people and to trust other people and to build something together with other people. That’s actually the hard part.”
There is plenty of that bullshit strong-man thinking floating around already, and when I suggested we have probably had a little too much of it over the generations, Joel certainly wasn’t arguing.
The Push And Pull Inside “Huntress”
That contradiction becomes particularly interesting on “Huntress.”
Going through the song, what grabbed me was the push and pull between someone insisting they do not need another person carrying them through life while simultaneously remaining emotionally bound to that person, their pain and everything they have shared.
I asked Joel whether that battle between trying to stand independently and still being emotionally connected to somebody sits at the heart of the track.
It does.
Joel connected “Huntress” with “Discordia” as different perspectives on just how difficult it can be to trust somebody and completely give yourself to that connection.
“It’s hard to rely on other people, you know, and to trust and to give yourself away.”
Musically, “Huntress” also captures something I have always loved about SOEN. There are moments where Joel sounds incredibly defiant, yet underneath that strength is this unmistakable vulnerability. Neither emotion cancels the other out. They are allowed to exist together.
Joel sees that contrast as something bigger than one track.
It might be the essence of SOEN.
“The balance between power and vulnerability… all the sides of a human being are reflected in our music.”
That ability to live between extremes can occasionally throw people who want an easy box to put the band into. Is SOEN heavy? Progressive? Atmospheric? Aggressive? Melancholic? Is this a ballad? Is this metal?
The answer can quite comfortably be all of the above.
Joel suggested that some listeners might be confused by those different sides colliding, but if you can accept several emotions and sounds existing at the same time, then SOEN are probably going to make a hell of a lot more sense.
Making The SOEN Box Bigger
That same evolution has happened inside Joel’s voice.
Early SOEN leaned heavily into an incredibly controlled, clean emotional delivery. Across the records, though, more grit, aggression, desperation and rawness have worked their way into his performance.
For Joel, developing that heavier side has never meant sacrificing the vulnerability that makes his singing immediately recognisable.
“It’s been an interesting journey to sort of add the elements of more powerful, gritty vocals without losing the vulnerability and the sensitive things.”
He has deliberately expanded his range too, becoming increasingly comfortable allowing his voice to sound more desperate and less controlled.
That last part really interested me.
When SOEN were beginning, Joel says there was naturally more concern about experimenting too far beyond what they had established. When a band is still finding its own identity, there is always that possibility that stretching too far leaves everybody, including the musicians themselves, wondering what the fuck the band is actually supposed to be.
That isn’t where SOEN are anymore.
They know what SOEN sounds like.
And because that identity is strong enough, they can now play
around with the edges of it.
“You feel that, okay, the stuff that we do sounds like SOEN. So then we can allow ourselves to experiment… make that little box a little bit bigger.”
For Joel, that means enough freedom to move between powerful, gritty vocals and something far more sensitive without worrying that either side somehow stops being SOEN.
That is a pretty good place for any band to reach.
Putting Ego Beneath The Song
Then there is “Indifferent.”
Where much of Reliance can hit with enormous weight, “Indifferent” almost goes completely the other way. Piano, strings, Joel’s voice and a huge amount of space sit at the centre of the track.
Most notably, drummer and SOEN founder Martin Lopez doesn’t play on it at all.
For a band packed with musicians capable of doing technically ridiculous things, there is something almost more impressive about knowing when not to demonstrate any of it.
Joel sees that restraint as another part of SOEN maturing.
Every musician has developed enough confidence in their own ability that they no longer need to prove it inside every song. Sometimes Joel needs to step back vocally. Sometimes another instrument needs the room. Everybody has to be willing to put their individual ego underneath whatever the composition actually needs.
“We try to give each other space, and we try to put our egos below the song, to give the song what it needs.”
Martin choosing not to play on “Indifferent” might be the clearest possible example.
Rather than forcing drums into the arrangement simply because he happens to be the drummer, Martin listened to what the song needed and recognised something that can be incredibly difficult for any musician to admit.
I’m not needed here.
Joel understands how significant that decision really is.
“To say that yourself, that you are not needed, it takes a lot of courage.”
That is musicianship that goes well beyond technical ability.
You can learn chops. You can learn scales, fills, runs and all the insane shit required to play progressive metal at this level.
Learning when the music is better without you might be considerably harder.
Digging Deeper With “Unbound”
Anyone who has followed my interviews for a while knows I am a whole album kind of guy.
Singles are great, but give me the deeper cuts too. Give me those tracks sitting halfway through a record where a band can often start taking stranger turns because they don’t carry the pressure of introducing the entire album to the world.
On Reliance, one of those tracks is “Unbound.”
The song carries ideas around belief, righteousness, tolerance and the certainty that one particular path is the correct one. I put it to Joel that there seems to be a point where belief can stop giving somebody strength and start demanding that they surrender themselves to it.
He was genuinely pleased somebody had brought the track up.
“I think it’s good that you bring up ‘Unbound’. I really like that song.”
Joel described the track as a perspective on tolerance and intolerance, focusing on somebody with incredibly strong beliefs about the righteous way and the certainty that their path is the correct one.
It is not unfamiliar territory for SOEN either.
Joel noted that it is a theme the band have explored across several albums, and while we could easily have disappeared down that particular rabbit hole for another half-hour, the clock was moving bloody quickly.
And Australia was waiting.
Seven Albums, Ninety Minutes And One First Australian Tour
After years of Australian fans watching SOEN tour just about everywhere except here, that wait finally ends in October.
That also creates a pretty unique problem.
How the hell do you introduce a band with this much history to an audience that has never had the chance to experience any of it live?
Joel knows Australian fans who discovered SOEN during completely different eras are going to walk through those doors wanting different things.
Some will be there for Reliance. Others have been waiting since Cognitive. There are fans hoping the band digs into Tellurian, while Joel specifically mentioned “Savia” as another older song people may have waited years to finally hear.
And they have 90 minutes to somehow make all those chapters coexist.
“We’ll have to figure out some way to play some old stuff and new stuff. We have 90 minutes, so we’ll do our best.”
For Australian SOEN fans, that sounds pretty fucking good to me.
There is a nice little personal circle in there for me too, with The Omnific joining SOEN across the run. They were one of the first bands I interviewed around seven years ago, so seeing them now sharing these stages with a band of SOEN’s calibre is bloody cool.
More importantly, this is not SOEN returning after some long absence.
This is the first one.
Australia has been sitting on the band’s bucket list, and after more than a decade of records, tours and fans waiting down here, October finally gets to cross it off.
Joel had a simple message before we wrapped things up.
“Hope to see all you guys there. This is on our bucket list, so it’s going to be a great thing to come to Australia now.”
You heard the man.
Reliance is out now through Silver Lining Music. Grab the album, go beyond the singles, throw on “Huntress”, “Unbound” and “Indifferent” and give the whole bloody thing the time it deserves.
Then get out in October and finally welcome SOEN to Australia.
Crank it loud. The neighbours are going to want to hear it anyway.
SOEN + THE OMNIFIC — AUSTRALIA 2026
Friday 16 October
170 Russell — Melbourne
Saturday 17 October
Manning Bar — Sydney
Monday 19 October
Crowbar — Brisbane
Tickets From The Phoenix AU: https://thephoenix.au/soen-omnific-2026/
