SOEN have been slowly making their name in the Prog and Metal scene for the past couple of years with exceptional releases, one after the other. Two years ago, “Lotus” put them at the forefront by earning a great deal of praise and a great deal of new fans. This year’s “Imperial” comes to cement their place as the Prog leaders of this new decade. We had the opportunity to speak to Martin Lopez, the soul of the band, about their new album, the message of SOEN as well his time in some of Sweden’s legendary extreme metal bands.

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– I am going to start by saying congratulations for your new album “Imperial” which came out today. I’m still waiting for my copy, so I’ve only heard it on Spotify and I can say it sounds amazing. So well done! How has the feedback been so far?

Martin Lopez: It’s been great. It’s been really good so far. I think that we’ve reached a point where the band has grown a little bit and the feedback we’re getting is quite broad. It’s kind hard to follow all the reviews, but it’s been overwhelming I think.

–  That’s really good. With “Lotus”, which was my favourite album of 2019, it felt to me that you kind of reached a new level as a band. Musically, you kind of perfected what you were doing in your previous albums. And this led to you getting a bit of a wider exposure, as a band. It wasn’t just the prog fans talking about you anymore, but people from different genres of metal and different tastes. Did it feel that way to you?

Martin Lopez: Yeah! “Lotus” did that. It changed something and maybe introduced us to a whole new audience, which is a great thing. Because even though we’re a prog band we are always metal heads and we kind of identify as metal heads in the prog community. So as the quality of “Lotus” is better than the albums that came before, it’s the same with “Imperial”. We are finding our identity now and “Imperial” is improving this a bit more. It seems like some people appreciate that sound of us.

– So, with “Lotus”, you kind of refined your sound to a really high level. Did you see it as a challenge now with “Imperial” to make something even better?

Martin Lopez: That’s what we always go for. I think the whole meaning of this band is that there’s two points; To always make a better album than the last one and always try to deliver a message. It’s not only about the music. The music is of course who we are and what we love, but we always really tried to say something. Not just, lose ourselves into poetry and our own, you know, love stories that may not have happened (laughs). We really want to just go to bed knowing that you’ve done whatever you can to change things for the better.

– That’s what we all hope for. Listening to the album for the first time today, I can say your heavy parts sound even heavier – did someone piss you off or something? (laughs). The production is different, and you also have some songs like “Modesty” or “Fortune” that follow a bit of a different approach from the rest of the songs. How do you feel that “Imperial” is different than “Lotus”?

Martin Lopez: I personally feel that it’s a heavier album. Not only because of the riffing and the sound but it’s because it’s more direct. It’s more intense and lyrically a little bit, maybe not as friendly and a little bit more denouncing and pissed off. But I feel of course that we have all those things that somehow are our identity by now; The dynamics and the somehow beautiful relaxing parts, where you have some time to reflect. And then you know a few punches to the face (laughs). But it’s a bit more of an aggressive album and it can be that we kind of grow, just looking around, well, you know, the world that we have. The older you get and the more you realise what’s happening then the less friendly you become… the more angry you become.

– So, would you say that you were inspired by the current situation that led to you sounding more aggressive on the album?

Martin Lopez:  Yeah, I will say so. I will definitely say so.

– I believe many people share the same sentiment.

Martin Lopez: I mean, our own point is trying to unite and to connect and to actually have some kind of dialogue with people who may not think like we do. But at the same time, it’s like you want to just burn the whole world and everyone can just go fuck themselves. (laughs) But nothing good will come out of that.

– It seems like the easy way out. But yeah, dialogue should be the way forward.

Martin Lopez: Exactly, but it’s a normal reaction…

– Oh yeah absolutely, we’re human beings. We will get angry sometimes! (laughs)

Back to the music, are there any things that you or the other members have thought of trying, but haven’t managed yet to do, like for example, a song with acoustic guitars or a really fast song?

Martin Lopez: Not yet. I think what we have been focusing on is mostly being comfortable and finding our own identity. Find the music that we feel belongs completely to us and making it so that you can actually recognise you’re listening to SOEN after hopefully a few seconds. This is something we’ve been working on all of our albums until we reached “Lotus” and felt comfortable with it.  So now we’re just going to try to improve that and see how far we can take it just because we love where we are musically; It feels comfortable, it feels honest and true and that’s what we want to do now. I think that maybe with time, of course, we might get bored of it and try to find new ways. I guess, you know, that being a creative person I would normally react to doing the same thing too many times, but for now we are just really enjoying the music that we’re doing. So, yeah, we’ll see in the future.

– In the future then. For the production of the album, you had again Inaki Marconi and also Kevin Churko. They both did a great job I must say, especially with the sound of the drums. Did you still try to combine the digital with the analogue like you did with “Lotus”?

Martin Lopez: We have learned to leave all those things in the hands of the ones who know what they do. Because we had these ideas in the past, like, you know, “No, I’m not going to use this microphone or I’m not going to do this” and at the end of the day we’re just musicians, we don’t know anything about that. We’re not rock stars. It’s stupid. So, we just kind of talk to the producer and say, “Alright, this is the kind of music we want to do and we want the album to be heavy yet very emotional. We kind of explain what we want and then we let them use whatever they need to use to try to reach ours and their vision, pretty much. It’s a mix of analogue and digital and everything in between.

– It works really well for your music. Would you consider going fully analogue in the future, or is it too much of a hassle?

Martin Lopez: I don’t know. We did it in “Lykaia” and it was okay back then, but then maybe in the future we might feel the same. For now, to be honest, we don’t really care at the moment.

– I see. Something that I love about the way you write songs is that almost in every track there’s an extra part, a one-off bit, that elevates the song to an even higher kind of place. Like for example the ending of the “Monarch” song which is truly beautiful. So, do these parts come out naturally when you write music or do you kind of say, “Oh, I have to write something really really impressive for the song”?

Martin Lopez: No, they do come naturally. For the most part is that you just want to push things. You can find something on a song that is emotional and you kind of want to push it even further because it gives you that kind of ecstasy for a little while. And then you come back to the chorus, and the chorus gets some of that emotion from that part and it gives you goosebumps.

Emotion is pretty much what we do. We try to get into the heart of the listener and not just make them you know headbang. We don’t want to be just entertainment. We want to be a little bit more than that; we want them to feel stuff. And it comes naturally for us. Usually when we write a song, I sit with Joel and we go through that song and we always somehow end up raising the bar a little bit on every song to get that extra little emotion.

– I think this is one of the things that makes you stand out. Your songs are more than just songs.

Martin Lopez: Thank you.

– Let’s talk about your latest additions, Cody and Oleksii. They’re both really good musicians. Especially Cody’s solos, I think they have added something extra to the music. Where did you find them? Did you have an audition?

Martin Lopez: No, we found both of them on Instagram actually. Cody was through a friend who sent me a link and I heard him playing some guitar solos. We really love the melodic kind of solos, not the fast ones, and his page had lots of stuff that we really really liked. So, I sent him the song that became “Lotus” and I said, “Look, you’re great, but play some solos to this song so I can hear. And he played the “Lotus” solo which automatically brought him into the band! (laughs) Some people have talent you know, and I’ve been very blessed through my career to have played with amazing guitar players. And he’s just a young kid but he has that window to the heart, where he can just bend a note and kind of make you cry like a baby. So, I’m very happy to have that boy in the band. And it was same with Oleksi. We didn’t have a bass player and a friend of ours who plays the bass – but he’s not good enough to play with us (laughs) – he sent me a link and said, “Look, check this guy out. He is amazing!” I saw some videos and he’s a beast. He’s amazing technically and he has a really good ear for melody and groove. So, I started sending files back and forth with him and yeah, we decided to bring him into the band.

– Did you manage to play any gigs with him before the lockdowns?

Martin Lopez: Not yet unfortunately. We’re just looking forward to it.

– I can imagine. Now from your interviews and the lyrics of the songs I have to say I agree 100% with the messages you’re trying to convey. The things you talk about although they’re not political, nowadays it feels that when you want to support people in need, it’s a political choice when it shouldn’t be. The more people point out the injustice in the world, the more polarised will become. Do you think we’ll ever reach a point that we’re going to learn to get along with each other?

Martin Lopez:  I want to be positive and say yes, but I don’t think our generation will. Definitely not people that are my age, were too fucked up. But I hope that my kids, the younger generations will understand that if they keep doing what we have done this is not going to go well. We won’t have a planet, to start with. We will have different groups of people living in different areas because everyone’s going to hate each other. But I would say I think something drastic needs to happen for things to change. We are just too comfortable in front of our screen to actually do something. And I’m including myself too. We’re just too comfy here with our Netflix and everything. You don’t even have to go out and buy groceries anymore. They can bring them to your home. We’re completely disconnected from other humans. And the only thing you see is social media, and the crap that is coming out there. Because at the end I mean, it’s the corporations that rules. It’s their platforms. They push whatever they want to push and for the most they want to push that life and success has to be valued in how much money you make. And that is the biggest lie. Ever. It’s a cliche that everyone knows but nobody seems to care about it. Money isn’t going to make you happy; it’s going to make you rich but not happy. The only thing that is going to make you happy is, honestly, doing what you love. Being with the ones that you love. The only thing that we have that we should value the most is time. Time to do what you love, time to be with the ones that you love. But we choose instead to spend more time working more, so we can have more money. So, we can buy stuff that is not going to matter man when you’re there and it’s time to go.

– We’re not taking anything with us in the grave…

Martin Lopez: Exactly, you’re just going to be, “Fuck, I should have been with my kids more or I should have told my best friend that I love him… BUT now I have this beautiful BMW and I’m going to be dead.” (laughs) I don’t want to be pessimistic, but we need to change that. We need to start telling that to each other and kind of talk to each other and realise that it doesn’t work. You know, teach your kids not to chase money but to chase happiness.

– Many people have said that these lockdowns may help us see what’s really important in our lives. Realise how important your family, your partners or your friends are, or you know go for a walk, spend more time doing the things you like. So, let’s hope that throughout this whole madness something good can come out of it and people can change the values.

Martin Lopez: I really hope so.

– Okay. Most of your videos are visually captivating and they all have a bit of a message behind them, but the “Antagonist” I think is surely one of your best videos. It has a very clever concept that matches the lyrics. Who is the antagonist for you or the band SOEN?

Martin Lopez: I will hope that all of us who think differently are the antagonist. All of us that the successful people look down on are the antagonist. All of us who have just tried to do something to stop the fucking madness. All of us the rich neighbours look down on because we ride a bike instead of having a car. And because they cannot understand that this choice of how to live your life that is different than theirs. They see people who don’t follow those money values as underdogs. The song is to honour the ones who choose to be the outsiders; The ones who choose to be the underdog; the ones who choose to be sometimes laughed at because they make different choices and because they resist to be a part of the machinery that is turning us into money chasing robots. There’s a lot of hard choices into this. It’s not as easy. I mean, being a parent, has taught me a lot about things. If you have kids, you want to teach your kid these ideas somehow. But at the same time, you know that life is going to be tough for your kid if they make their choices and don’t follow the same choices that the cool kids do at school, whatever trend is going on and whatever clothes they need to wear and what new cd they need to listen to and all that. Making your kids, individually, confident, and strong will also put them in situations where they can be bullied. We feel that song is for all of those who are ready to take that heat to think for themselves and their ideas.

– It is a great song indeed. What about your album cover? A snake on a black background brings to mind the classic Metallica album cover.

Martin Lopez: (laughs) I actually didn’t think about it until we had decided about the cover and Lars told me, “Look”, he showed me the cover of the “Black Album” and said, “They have a snake too, but our snake is more beautiful!” (laughs)

– Plus, it was also their fifth album and “Imperial” is your fifth album, so let’s hope it brings you a wider audience just like the black album did for Metallica. (laughs) Is there a symbolism behind it?

Martin Lopez: Yeah, there’s a lot of symbolism with the snake and the title. You have this animal that is amazingly beautiful but also amazing dangerous. We can compare it to the kind of life that we live in at least here in Western Europe; amazingly comfortable but at the same time amazingly dangerous because of what we were talking before. We are in front of huge TVs and computers, disconnected from everyone and it’s really comfy and nice. But we have less and less human contact, which is what we really should have. And the title is also a part of that. We see ourselves in a democracy as free people because you know we have the right to vote and such, but we live in empires. Empires driven by huge corporations that are telling us what to do and how to value ourselves. So, everything comes that way.

– And is this something that you came up with, this concept of the album cover, or did you choose from an artist’s portfolio?

Martin Lopez: I mean, we had the title and the idea of what the album was about lyrically, and we were trying to find something that will represent that. Something that would have that kind of “attractive” danger that somehow fascism has. You know the thing where everything is in order and clean and everything to the outside looks beautiful but probably completely fucked up on the inside. So somehow that snake came along, and I was with Joel and we saw it simultaneously and just agreed that this would be the cover.

–  Your record company is Silver Lining. To be honest, I wasn’t aware of them until I saw their name on the back of “Lotus”. I had a look online, and I was surprised to see so many big names in their roster. How did you end up working with them and not someone like Inside Out or Century Media?

Martin Lopez: We went to Silver Living because we wanted to do something different. We could have gone to the normal prog places, but we wanted to do something else. We talked to them and they were really beautiful people. We felt like this is the place for us. We’re not trying to conquer the world anymore. We’re not interested in the business part as much. We just want to do our music without stressing too much about everything else. So, we needed to look to work with people that we see them as friends. We can’t work with someone that we morally don’t respect, just to make more money or sell more albums.

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– I agree. Let’s go back through time now. Do you remember anything from your time with Amon Amarth and could you have predicted that they would become that big after 20 years?

Martin Lopez: I kind of knew that. I mean I would have never joined and played with them, if I didn’t think that they had the potential to be a big band. Amon Amarth is something special. They will always be. They are not “amazing musicians”, they’re not technically amazing but they’re extremely good at doing the best out of what they can. They write great songs and they’re a great live band. They’re driven. They are guys that really follow an idea and I simply love playing with them. I consider them to be really good people and I’m really happy to see that they have become huge. I mean for a band to play the way that they do, to play this kind of music to be so big, it’s amazing! And that makes me just incredibly happy to have been a part of this band.

– So, did you have any special memories from the entire time?

Martin Lopez:  It was a fun time because when I joined the band, I didn’t speak English or Swedish, but I could only speak Spanish and they didn’t speak Spanish. (laughs) They had to bring a friend who spoke Spanish and Swedish to the rehearsals with them to translate. We had parties and we would go and play together and I kind of learnt Swedish by being with them. They were just great guys man. I moved from Uruguay to Sweden and I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have anything, so it was mainly the guitar players that were buying me tickets to concerts and taking me to shows, buying me food and stuff. They were just amazing!

– That was really nice of them. And what about your time in Opeth? Have you got any particular memories?

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Martin Lopez: Yeah of course! I mean I played there for almost 10 or 11 years, something like that. It was beautiful times, mainly during the first albums and also watching this band, going from nothing to gaining a lot of fans. Especially considering the fact that the music was not supposed to make you big you know… We had these eleven-minute songs! Being part of that was amazing. Maybe I was a part of the band, a little bit too long for what I felt. I started to be in a little bit too many shows and then I remember I wasn’t as happy as I was in the beginning. But I mostly have beautiful memories from that time and I’m also very proud of having been part of that band.

– How was it working with Mikael? Was he the main songwriter or did you all contribute to the music?

Martin Lopez: Well yeah, I mean I was contributing to my department which was the drums, grooves, rhythms and stuff. Mikael was the main songwriter and he was great at it. I think I learned a lot about composition, just by working with him. But of course, after some time I wanted to try myself. I don’t want to sit in the bench forever – I want to play. So, a time came when I felt I had enough, and I didn’t want to be a drummer anymore. I wanted to try something else and I actually left music for a while. I thought that I wouldn’t mind. But then I realised that I’m one of the people that are like completely lost and confused without having music, so I started writing songs, and here we are today.

– Thank goodness for that. So, for the biggest part of your career, you have played extreme metal. Are you still a fan? And have you got any favourite extreme metal bands?

Martin Lopez: Of course, I like a lot of death/black bands like DISSECTION. I like a lot of Swedish black metal bands like DARK FUNERAL and a little death metal. My favourite bands are SEPULTURA and SLAYER, the bands that I grew up with. I still love that music and I still listen to a lot of it. I try to somehow always keep that part of me present in my music, even if we don’t do the growl thing. I tried to keep the emotion of the proper black metal riff in our music. The only thing is that I am 42 now and I don’t feel comfortable thinking about stuff that I don’t really connect to. So, I had to change.

– You did make an album though with FIFTH TO INFINITY back in 2015. Is there a chance you’ll make another album with them?

Martin Lopez: It might be, but I won’t be a part of it. I think it’s an amazing album and it is so fucking dark. Jonas is an amazing songwriter. I love him. He has been one of my best friends for many, many years. But we have chosen different paths. And for me, if I’m going to play in a band, I really need to feel the music that I do. I’ve been playing many years and I don’t do any session work; I don’t join bands. When I play music, I truly get into it and it becomes a part of me, so I has to feel right.

– It makes sense. Back to the band now, when you planned the release of “Imperial”, were you hoping that things would be better and you could go out to tour, or did you already know that there was going to be a lockdown and things would be hard?

Martin Lopez: We were hoping but we were a little bit realistic about it too and we knew that there was a possibility that it wouldn’t happen. We had a choice to move the album forward and everything, for the commercial side of it because our label told us that we are amazingly bad at selling ourselves (laughs). But we just wanted to get the music out and if needed we’ll write a new one when the time comes.

– There’s plenty of time (laughs). Ok, my last question has to do with your song titles. Are you ever going to name a song with more than one word? (laughs)

Martin Lopez: Not now, maybe it’s possible in the future, when there’s no more words for us to use. (laughs)

– Thank you very much for your time and the interview. I really enjoyed it. I wish you all the best for the future and I hope the band is back on the road, very soon.

Martin Lopez: Me too. Thank you and thanks to all the fans for supporting us.

Interview: Dimitris Benetatos
Cover Artwork:  Michalis Dimitropoulos
Design & Editing: Alexandros Soultatos
Date: January 29^th, 2021
External Link: SOEN – Official Page
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