Soma - Age Of Strife
Cassette, E.C.T., 2024. Edition of 50 copies.
Age Of Strife by the Spanish project Soma was originally published as a CD-R on this same Greek label in 2023. This tape reissue comes with a 10-minute bonus track though, making it an 40-minute album. Its artwork and track titles deal with hinduism, and while I'm not familiar enough with their topics to comment on them, it's not an obstacle in getting to enjoy the tape. Dubbing and printing quality are both good.
Most of the Soma material I've heard has been quite experimental and often freeform in the vein of how Japanese noise is often perceived to be. There's still that same vividity and motion here, with both distinct electronic squeaks and sputters along with grittier pedal harshness. This is not really a joyful noise blast though. Even the cleanest electronic sounds have a slightly rough and broken sound, and the tracks are most often coated with harsh feedback screech.
So, you get both the colorful experimentation of Japanese noise as well as the more grey and industrial-tinted fierceness of power electronics. The latter part is further emphasised by the hostile, distorted shouting that luckily isn't overused. The tape's final (bonus) track is the most brutish one. Not only it has the most punishing feedback on the tape, but it also drops the most colorful sounds away in favor of rawer physical clangs and rattles of glass and metal.
The tape's four tracks are about 10 minutes each, so they've got plenty of time to explore their palette but don't overstay their welcome. While the tracks are still fairly free-form and loose in their structure, this might be the most immediately hitting and powerful Soma work I've heard so far.
I think the whole tape isn't online but there's a sample here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ciazc3Hkh84Quote from: Minus1 on January 21, 2026, 12:08:28 AMWtf is this?
https://krimkram.bandcamp.com/album/dont-let-me-be-a-burden
An absolute must-buy for me! 😂
This is just one of those things you sometimes stumble upon, and it just hits you like a ton of bricks. I know nothing about this artist. But this crazy-ass 60min "Noise-Collage" (?) has me hooked. I'm in! Maybe in a few weeks I can do a coherent review.
I am still stupidly unfamiliar with Krim Kram catalog, but (especially) if you have an ear for sounds of metal I recommend checking out the Zalhietzli album they published.
