Review: BÅKÜ – Soma
French post metal band BÅKÜ envision their debut album “Soma” to feel like a long dream you only half remember: drawn-out, layered, shifting through heaviness and haze before you find your footing. And the result follows their vision: they have crafted a debut that lives in the margin between sludgy post-metal weight and ambient introspection, five sprawling songs that refuse to hurry anywhere. The titles alone (“Opposite 1” through “Opposite 5”) signal the band’s intent not to provide easy hooks but to build landscapes, to let riffs soak, to let silence press. It is an album you don’t just listen to but inhabit.
“Opposite 1” begins with a slow intro, ache in its tone, guitar drones raising dust, then shifting into doom-laden chords that feel like the rumble before a collapse. “Opposite 2” takes that motion further, when rhythms fragment, samples whisper ancient breath, tension coils tight. “Opposite 3” offers hints of blackened edges amid the sludgy weight, voices that carry anguish as well as force. “Opposite 4” journeys into the quiet first, before erupting again. The closing “Opposite 5” is the catharsis: guitars duel, rhythms surge, then wind down into after-glow. It’s both ritual and release.
Production here is sturdy. The mix gives guitars room to breathe even during the densest moments; bass roars low and drums crash without annihilating everything else. You feel the atmosphere, not just the sound. Occasional ambient or sample-based interludes work to shift mood rather than just filler. Yet here is where the album’s greatest strength also becomes its weakness: the length and ambition sometimes blur clarity. Each song exceeds eight minutes and many push past ten, which lets repetition creep in. Riffs circle, moods revisit themselves, and transitions occasionally feel expected rather than earned.
One of “Soma”’s richest features is its concept and ambition. The notion of “sleep, awakening and waking” threads through the music; the band’s name itself referencing a creature of dreams adds symbolic weight. When the album works, it conjures isolation, internal heavy weather, the feeling of being suspended between states of consciousness. But for all its grandeur, the band also lean heavily on their influences, cult favourites in post-metal like Amenra, Cult of Luna, or Year of No Light whisper in the background. That’s not a crime, but it means that at times the band’s voice struggles to fully break the mold.
It also means that moments designed to shock or surprise don’t always land. A hardcore-tinged breakdown midway through a track feels slightly out of proportion, a gesture more than an integrated part of the arc. In some stretches the tension drags, and the listener’s attention wanes before the next pivot. But then again: maybe that’s the point. Maybe the entire album is about waiting, about the weight of inertia, about the slow haul against sediments of mind. In that sense, the discomfort is intentional.
In summary, “Soma” is a strong debut with high potential. It doesn’t reinvent its genre, but it defines a space for BÅKÜ in it, as a band who want weight as much as texture, who want to drag you into the low end of the mind as well as the deep end of a riff. If their next record finds sharper transitions, clearer identity and tighter pacing, then the promise here could become something substantial.
