SOTO, the acclaimed metal project featuring vocalist Jeff Scott Soto (Sons of Apollo, Trans-Siberian Orchestra & W.E.T.) is back with its third album, origami, released via the mighty InisdeOutMusic. Joined by Jorge Salan (guitar), Tony Dickinson (bass), BJ (Keys / guitar) and Edu Cominato (drums), Jeff has produced a stunning, state-of-the-art metal album that provides the perfect platform for his soaring vocals. Featuring ten, super-charged tracks (eleven if you grab a copy of the limited digipak edition), Origami is SOTO’s most powerful outing to date.
With an initial synth-keyboard sound drawn from the mid-eighties, little can prepare the listener for the gleaming rows of guitars that explode into action on hypermania. It’s everything we’ve come to expect from SOTO, amped up and magnified through hyper-modern production techniques, with the result that the track captures the classic rock vibe that has been the foundation of Children of Bodom’s entire career. Melodic, yet fast-paced and with blistering guitar-work, hypermania gets the album off to a sparkling start. Even heavier is Origami, a relentless blast of precision-tooled riffing that cannot fail to surprise even the most long-term SOTO fan with its super-charged delivery. An album highlight, it’s difficult to imagine what could possibly follow origami’s sonic firestorm and the band wisely slow the pace for BeLie, a prog-infused track with a dynamic thrust that allows Jeff’s vocals to shine. Jorge gets to show off his chops on the weighty World gone colder, his arcing solos and punishing riffs pushing the track into ever heavier pastures. The first half of the record comes to a conclusion with the tense detonate. A track with a slow-burn intro, it kicks into gear as Tony’s elastic bass lines come up against Edu’s chrome-plated rhythms, recalling classic Queensryche with its grandstanding chorus and subtle keys.
Opening up side two is the monumental power-ballad, Torn. With harmonised, yearning vocals, a soaring chorus and plenty of blazing guitar, it is a show-stopping moment and it paves the way for the thunderous Dance with the devil, which is built around a blistering central riff. A surprising highlight is the seething Afterglow, which has a crunchy, stop-start riff and some great synth embellishments courtesy of BJ. A fantastic potential single, afterglow sums up all of the album’s strengths – Jeff’s fantastic vocals, Jorge’s biting riffs and the joyful interplay between the band as a whole and I could happily listen to it on repeat for hours on end. The final two tracks on the album head in a Dream Theater direction, albeit in unexpected ways. A full-bore heavy prog beast, Vanity lane has the surging quality of systematic chaos-era DT, but it’s the closing Michael Jackson cover of give in to me which is the most surprising, the opening bars (played on an acoustic) recalling Dream Theater’s more expansive moments filtered through Jackson’s unique pop lens. With torrid tales continuing to circulate around the late singer’s behaviour, it’s a bold move to cover one of his songs at this current point in time, and it’s a decision that is likely to prove controversial in some quarters, but there’s no question that Jeff makes the track his own and it brings the album to a suitably bombastic conclusion.
Origami is an undoubtedly impressive offering that covers a number of bases over the course of its ten, varied tracks. For those after SOTO at their heaviest, the title track and afterglow provide the twin peaks, but the album as a whole is the perfect vehicle for Jeff Scott Solo’s expressive vocals and comes highly recommended. 9
