There’s something about falling asleep that feels like surrender. You give up control, slip into a space where time bends, and thoughts spiral in directions you wouldn’t choose if you were awake. Some people fight it—try to stay grounded, keep their grip on reality. Others let go and see where it takes them. Soma, the debut album from Valence-based post-metal band Båkü, lives right in that space. Somewhere between slipping under and snapping back, between clarity and distortion, between letting the dream guide you and waking up unsure if it ever happened.
The band’s name comes from Japanese folklore—Båkü is a yōkai that feeds on nightmares, a creature lurking at the edge of sleep, consuming what keeps you restless. It’s the kind of image that fits perfectly with a record like Soma, where heaviness and introspection don’t fight each other but blur into something bigger.
Recorded at Cordo Studio and mixed by Romain Da Silva, Soma doesn’t sound clean, and that’s a good thing. It’s thick, layered, sometimes overwhelming. Mastering by François Fanelli only adds to the density—it’s the kind of album that hits harder the louder it gets. And it’s not just for the record. The band’s live shows turn the experience into something physical, often performed in a 360-degree setup, closing the gap between performer and listener until everything blends into one chaotic, immersive whole.
The official release show happens on March 29, 2025, at the Théâtre de la Ville de Valence, an ornate, 19th-century Italian-style venue—a strange but fitting contrast to the album’s dark, unrelenting weight. After that, they’re hitting the road, taking Soma across France before turning their focus to a new project based on the Salem witch trials—another dive into fear, belief, and the blurred line between reality and perception.
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Visually, Soma is as detailed as its sound. The Paris-based collective Arrache-toi un Œil designed the album’s artwork, creating a vision that feels just as layered and disorienting as the music itself. A looming beast, a sleeping figure, an eye that seems to watch from some unknowable place—it all ties back to the album’s central themes. Are we in control of what we see, what we feel? Or are we just reacting to something we don’t fully understand?
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Båkü didn’t come out of nowhere. The Valence scene has its own history, shaped by hardcore bands like No Guts No Glory, the noise-driven aggression of Geneva’s underground, and the emotional weight of post-rock acts like Don’t Look Back. But Båkü isn’t just borrowing from what came before. They’ve taken those influences, pushed them into something heavier, something harder to pin down.
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Soma doesn’t offer easy explanations. It sits in that uneasy space between sleep and waking, between clarity and confusion. You can let it wash over you, let it drag you under, or fight your way to the surface. Either way, you won’t walk away from it unchanged.
Track by track breakdown:
Opposite 1
Slow, deep, comforting and disquieting; like the baku beast lurking under our pillow, we bide our time for rest and imagination.
BÃKÜ’s debut album, SOMA, opens with Opposite 1.
The track begins with BÃKÜ awakening as you and I surrender to sleep.
The BÃKÜ joins us in our dreams, and opens our minds to perception, it is the vector to somatics.
The lyrics deal directly with somatics and the ability to observe oneself from the outside, not just the inside.
And the fear that this can arouse: “Who am I or am I going to be?
Towards the middle of the track, we find ourselves at a crossroads, in a meander of thoughts. But already, daylight is chasing Båkü and the path he shows us.
Light dulls dreams, light obliterates the path.
Opposite 2
This track is just the catalyst that will bring out the emotions of everyone who has come to meet this feeling of comfort, a real palliative to the despair that is so typical of human beings.
Some will call it alternative medicine, others extreme music, while others will describe it as accessible despite its post-metal codes. The stretching of these musical movements and waves of sound aim neither at logic nor efficiency, and are ignored in favor of emotional impact. It’s illusory to hope to resist; Båkü explodes all barriers in a long comfort of implausible intensity.
Opposite 3
The important thing is not the events, but the invisible things inside us.
Opposite 4
This track is like the many successive sensations we experience upon awakening. The haze of its introduction, its multiple themes, the explosion of guitars and the nothingness that follows…
It’s undoubtedly also a harbinger of things to come for Båkü.
Opposite 5
This is the closing track. In its many movements, this track is a dialogue between Båkü, you, the Yokai and the Self : to know whether we have become ourselves, to ask the baku to continue to show us our own way. To accept in full consciousness who we have become, to be in total accord with ourselves. The beginning is the slap we sometimes get in the face in life, the end is the intensity of our inner struggle, and in between lies our destiny.
