See: SOM – Center – Backseat Mafia

With their new album ‘The Shape of Everything’ due next week via Pelagic Records, SOM have shared the new video for the dreamy post-metal track ‘Center’, directed by Samia Zaidi.

Will Benoit from the band comments,

“‘Center’ was one of the first songs we worked on as a band remotely during lockdown. The vocals were originally written for another project that ultimately got shelved, but I really liked what I had come up with and couldn’t just leave them on a hard drive to die. The chorus has this anthemic, almost pop hook, but if you read the lyrics and look under the hood, the song is much darker.”

“I love songs that present themselves one way on first listen, but can take you somewhere completely different the more you pay attention. I felt like there was room on The Shape of Everything to explore a slightly different tone like this one, but outside the vocals, I honestly had no vision for where it could be taken musically. So we tried an experiment: can the band write music around an existing vocal? Particularly in a time when we couldn’t all be in the same room anyway, it seemed like a good time to try out a different approach. I sent the isolated vocal tracks to everyone on top of a simple drum beat. Joel and Justin went back and forth developing the instrumental melodies and dynamics until we settled on this big dirging riff that really only changes to make the verses drive harder. Mike added lush, drippy guitars over the top and brought the whole thing to life.”

“It took a lot of Zoom calls and sending files back and forth, which probably made this the most challenging song to finish on the album — both lyrically and musically — but it’s heavy, it’s pretty, and it accomplishes a lot of what I hope to accomplish with SOM all inside of a 4-minute song.”

The band return with another epic soundscape creation featuring heartfelt lyrics sung with hazy vocals and a heavy backbone from the chugging rock guitars. An all encompassing track that not only sounds great, but highlights the creative ability this band have crafting dark but gorgeous tracks.

Check it out, here