Formed a few years ago by current and former members of Junius, Caspian, and Constants, SOM has sought to bridge the gap between shoegaze, post metal, post rock, and dream pop with a sound that had crushing waves of intensity merged with noisier pop sensibilities. Their sophomore effort The Shape of Everything manages to find a fairly seamless balance between these two worlds, offering songs that take a more direct approach to their sweeping atmospherics and hooks and others that sprawl outwards for a much more laid back and drearier aesthetic. While it’s a sound that’s sure to immediately grab listeners who gravitate towards both ends of the spectrum, the results sometimes don’t reach the same level of grandeur and showcase a band that’s strong but haven’t completely found their own sound yet.
Don’t get me wrong with that last statement, SOM still provides some absolutely incredible moments that will likely be on many people’s playlists for some time. At their core, the band moves between crushing, huge hooks that incorporate the weight and grit of post metal with the shimmering qualities of dream pop and shoegaze. How they get there varies a bit with each song, with the tempos sometimes favoring a more direct approach and other times letting things sprawl outwards at a more relaxed pace. With their pop sensibilities coming out across The Shape of Everything, SOM often falls somewhere between the likes of Jesu, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, and Failure with hints of post metal thrown in for good measure. That’s a mixture that’s immediately appealing to me, and when the band hits peaks on songs like “Wrong” and “Son of Winter” with their sad yet entrancing melodies I find myself mashing that repeat button. Unfortunately, SOM doesn’t quite reach that level on each of the eight songs, with some of them coming and going with a big sound but not quite having that same staying power. Other times they fall a little too close to other bands templates, with “Animals” in particular sounding like it could have been ripped right off a Failure album. Yet even with these criticisms the group is still onto something here, as the compactness of the songs and moments where they hit their peaks do manage to stand tall above some of the more meandering shoegaze and post metal, and that makes The Shape of Everything a genuinely enjoyable listen even if I don’t always remember every bit of it.
With SOM emphasizing a significant amount of melody to their sound, it makes sense that their singing brings more of an alternative rock and shoegaze style rather than a metal one. Right from the start, “Moment” brings forth light and airier singing that seems to soar higher and higher with each passing minute. Despite the softness of the performance, there’s still a sense of power behind each verse and this helps to keep things more interesting than your average shoegaze leaning band. I also like how much space the vocals are given throughout The Shape of Everything, as rather than letting them be washed out under layers of distortion the singing is just as prominent as the rest of the band and that confidence really shows. The way the vocals are layered sometimes reminded me of more ethereal dream pop like England’s Engineers, and if SOM can continue to leverage that I think it’ll really work to their benefit as they continue to move forward.
Even with my criticisms I feel like SOM is channeling a mix of shoegaze and post metal that’s tailor made for me, and that makes me excited to see how they can further iterate on this formula. The likes of “Wrong” and Son of Winter” along with a few other key tracks make this an album I’ll still return to, but there’s still room for these guys to make some tweaks and not only reach these peaks more often but also branch out more and find a sound truly their own. If the namedropping of Jesu, Failure, or Slowdive grabs your attention do yourself a favor and check this album out but expect even greater things still to come. The Shape of Everything is available from Pelagic Records.
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