One hundred and fifty people read the same poem. Their voices were stacked, layered, and buried across the entire length of “Eris,” the second album from Berlin-based four-piece Soastasphrenas โ playing at different volumes throughout the record to simulate the feeling of voices crowding your head. Vocalist Nate explains that the idea came from bands like Psyopus and Combatwoundedveteran, but the execution here is something else entirely: “This album is truly meant to make you feel insane as you listen.”
Soastasphrenas are made up of members from Cyprus and the United States. Their old bands fell apart during the pandemic, and through what followed, they found each other โ starting out by playing Converge and Black Flag covers before expanding on ideas they brought to rehearsals.
That turned into their first album, “Moirae,” released in 2023. By the time it came out, the songs that would eventually form “Eris” were already taking shape. Some of them have been in the live set for three years now.
“To finally release this album really feels like a concrete chapter of history for who we’ve become individually over the years, and the chemistry that took form during the same time frame,” Nate says.
Everything was recorded in-house, with guitarist Alex Loukaros and his friend Fabio Machado Rodrigues helping engineer parts of the process. Alex also mixed the record, and Nate describes him as having “meticulously chosen all distortion levels and built a universe through noise and soundscape.” Mastering was handled by Alan Douches at West West Side Mastering.
The conceptual thread started with “Moirae” and its broader interest in cycles of death and rebirth. For “Eris,” the band wanted to put that idea under a microscope.
“We needed it to be more in every sense of the word, finding the extremes and making them the focal point,” Nate explains. They compiled mood boards and had regular conversations about inspiration, pulling from ideas around urban decay, loneliness, mania, and defeat. “It all felt too right considering how awful recent times have been globally, where each day feels like we’re in no control of this descent into catastrophe we are living through.”
The phrase “it only gets worse” stayed permanently on their minds throughout the writing process.
Lyrically, Nate moved away from the full rebirth arc and zeroed in on the decline โ the pull toward collapse and the devil on your shoulder guiding you there.
“This whole album is meant to be a descent into chaos, but also into vast nothingness. The uncomfortable feelings that we don’t necessarily want to give a voice, but instead it’s amplified and given a place to thrive.”
“Eris” is split into three parts: passion, pleasure, and pain. The lyrics take the listener from a place of feeling invincible in one’s own skin, to crawling back toward comfort through things that offer pleasure, to sitting with pain and wanting it all to end so something new can begin. “It’s a treacherous story that at least I live through consistently,” Nate says, “and the hope is that many people can also relate to these intense feelings.”
The band pulled from a wide spread of influences while writing. They needed the drums and bass locked in the way Glassjaw records are. The guitar playing and tracking drew heavily from Fugazi. Nate wanted the overall chaos to match digital hardcore acts like Comfort._ and Machine Girl.
Post-hardcore influence came from Unwound and Slint, with mood and energy borrowed from Death Grips and Show Me the Body. Screamo touchstones included Soul Glo and Nuvolascura. Playing shows with other bands fed into the process too โ friends in Colored Moth, Jeromes Dream, Konoha, and Tendres all left a mark. There’s also heavy influence from Cypriot folk music, with some rhythms taken directly from classics of that tradition.
Community runs through everything Soastasphrenas do. Nate describes the worldwide screamo scene โ especially in Europe, and even more so in Berlin โ as something the band tries to give to and take from as often as possible.
“We believe it breathes a lot of fresh air into it and keeps it from settling,” he says. “The Berlin scene is pretty strong right now, and well integrated with members all collaborating and building off of each other, as well as growing and including a diverse crowd of people. It feels very open and accepting, and also very strong and energetic. It’s an infectious feeling that seems to keep it alive and exciting.”
“Eris” came out on March 13, 2026. The band pressed 500 copies of the vinyl in three variants, with DIY labels from across the world getting involved. The label that held it all together was Dancing Rabbit Records, also based in Berlin. “Passion.” features a guest performance by Joshua Alex Daniel.
