Well, I was enormously surprised, the positive way, when I received a message from Cyclic Law telling that there was a new Sophia album coming up. For more than a decade we did not hear anything anymore, at all, about this project by Arcana’s Peter Bjärgö. And indeed, it was true that there was a new work in the making. Peter did record this new material with assistance of Per Ählund, Ia Bjärgö and Stefan Eriksson once again, and the album, called Unclean, gets released via Cyclic Law. FYI: on April 12th 2016 I did upload a review for the Proslambanomenos-album by the project ONUS, also done via Cyclic Law, which is a new joint collaboration which includes Peter.
Anyway, Sophia once started as a side project for Arcana (at the very end of last century), and several records got released during the earliest years of this century via Peter’s own Erebus-label, as well on the mighty roster of Cold Meat Industry. Then the band was put on hold for a while, but the saga just needed a continuation; and that new chapter starts with Unclean. Cyclic Law release it in an 8-page digipak, and this in an edition of 1,000 copies.
What strikes me the most is the evolution that Sophia underwent. In the earlier years I did truly consider them as a side-project by Arcana; I do not mean this the negative way, because I always appreciated their efforts; but the Arcana-influences were oh so obvious. There was a permanent evolution going on, but the initial basics remained within quite a comparable manner. With this new chapter, another part of the history will be written.
Actually, it starts with the fabulous opener and title-track: what a monumental piece of Martial Art! This is a truly hypnotizing composition to start with, filled with bombast and epic! And actually, The Unclean, and then I’m talking about the whole album and not just the title song, has become more martial than ever before. As a matter of fact: The Unclean just IS Martial Ambient Industrial. Check out hymns like Steel Cathedral (those fabulous percussions and war drums are divine) or Where Steel Meets The Flesh, and march on with me towards victory! Of course the initial elements from the symphonic, ethereal-esoteric and neo-classical roots remain deeply prominent, and this combination offers us an inspired and inspiring listening-experience. There are more experimental phrases too, exploring related dimensions, prudently trespassing those borders. But above all, the whole album breathes an ominous and obscure atmosphere, haunting, mesmerizing, Arctic, minimal, post-apocalyptic, bleak and dense. The many nihilistic excerpts are new (cf. the several shorter intermezzos that exhale the grandiose grotesquery of both physical and spiritual nothingness), but I think that especially the vocal timbre has now come to a peak, like haunting narrations celebrating the end of the human kind…
Totally subjective, of course, but I think The Unclean is Sophia’s strongest work to date! All hail the industrial war machine!