SOF - Lub (2025)

Solitude & self-preservation through destruction define the core principles behind Lub, the debut album of Berlin-based, Portuguese artist SOF. Eschewing social forms of musical structure that delimit pre-fabricated tropes, SOF carves out a dissonant anarchitecture thatwhile still managing to be a panegyric to metal & noiseelicits a singular vocabulary of chaos, disorder & rupture. Lub is a celebration and radical affirmation of the sovereign individual striving toward autonomy, as one who can overcome the norms that continue to lead society into its current numbness. The raw power, excess & virulence of disfiguring distortion serves here as a palimpsest where all sonic elements conspire. & yet, there is a constant sensation that the fragments could well fall apart at any moment, that the overdriven lines might be losing bits, that we (as listeners) can only cope with snippets of this pareidoliac chaoid. The tracks are mid to slow tempo, with themes of existential anxiety, cultural conditioning & political entrapment. The overdriven guitars wail against clipped drums that oscillate between blast beats & doom grooves. The dark, atmospheric synths counterpoint agonizing screams. Its oversaturated atmosphere beckons the listener to catch glimpses of the clamorous depths of an inner revolution.Lub is a document of SOFs unrelenting thirst. The album is released as a collaboration between the art gallery Soft Commodity and Perf.