Album Review: Soma, Your Soul is the Holy Sound
Posted in Reviews on May 23rd, 2025 by JJ KoczanThere’s a lot to unpack here, even before you get to the audio. Soma — or SOMA, all-caps to highlight the acronym Sacred Order of Mystic Apogees — is a five-piece-and-then-some collective from the Asbury Park area of New Jersey. The music they play is connected to psychedelic rock in its rhythmic underpinnings and some of its tonal presence, but it is not rock and roll and while Your Soul is the Holy Sound is definitely interested in communion, the carefully arranged five tracks across the 30 minutes of the record aren’t getting there with volume or riffs. Instead, Soma perform a kind of devotional music known as kirtan, which is call-and-response chanting set to music.
At least some members of the group are rooted in the Jersey Shore rock underground, however. Stephen Triolo (Slow Rise, Constellation of Angels) and Robert Ryan (ex-Lord Sterling) take part, the latter under the assumed name of Shivanesh, and the lineup is completed by Kalpa, Nataraja and Vasudeva, also presumably assumed names, while Krishnadas Sharma, Madhuri and Bhakti Devi contributed backing vocals, John Krajewski, Triolo (who also mixed) and Nicholas Sudol recorded and Adam Vaccarelli at RetroMedia Sound in Red Bank mastered. It was recorded in an episcopal church. It is a cultural blend that is particularly New Jerseyan.
My beloved Garden State houses about 10 percent of the US population of Indian immigrants, and the town where I grew up, Parsippany (farther north from Asbury/Red Bank, and only in the state itself does that in any way matter), is an enclave to the point that the schools take off for Diwali and other holidays. At the same time, I don’t think I’ll be the first to note the Italian cultural influence in the region. They made The Sopranos about it, if you want to go just by the stereotypes or get a lesson in the state’s secondary, not-really-legal bureaucracies. But the Jersey is there in Soma‘s kirtan chants as well, and with the 10″ edition of the record put together through Samaritan Press with art by David V. D’Andrea (Om, etc.), the overarching impression is surprisingly encompassing for something that’s still just a half-hour long.
“Chamundaye” begins with a singular joy in its execution. As promised, the crux of what Soma do is in the call and response — a voice leads, others follow and repeat. If you’re open to it — and that’s going to be a question of some magnitude depending on how you feel about worshiping gods — the song is made to be sung, and that sense of outreach, of bringing the listener into the proceedings of Soma‘s homage, is the presiding impression across Your Soul is the Holy Sound. In addition to opening, “Chamundaye” is the longest inclusion (immediate points) at 7:53, and it grows to some proportion by the time it’s wrapping up, but while it has an instrumental melody, the bulk of its impact is in the percussion, whether that’s handclaps or hand-drumming, along with the melody of voice and (I think) sitar drone.
Your Soul is the Holy Sound does not get so danceable again, but it stays reverent. “Father of Ma’at” has a spoken part over an instrumental exploration that winds up in a meditative flow, mellow again with hand percussion and a variety of string sounds and rhythmic nuances. It’s more than just an instrumental transition piece, but no question it and the penultimate “The Tarot Will Teach You,” also sans vocals, were placed to offset “Chamundaye,” the centerpiece “Shiva’s Grace” and the closing “Garland of Names” that brings the ceremony to a rousing conclusion in calling out various deities, among them Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Vishnu, Buddha, Jesus, in succession. “The Tarot Will Teach You” is shorter and more directly keyboardian feeling, but the tabla and jangling bells provide organic movement beneath.
The big question here, as regards Your Soul is the Holy Sound and Soma more generally, is whether we’re talking about cultural appreciation or appropriation, because even if these guys have been on this track of influence since the krishna-core days of NJ’s 1990s punker underground, to look at the basic superficial optics, you’ve still got a bunch of dudes from Jersey playing traditional music from half a world away, under assumed names. There’s no getting away from that, obviously, and Soma‘s methodology deals with it through the deep respect for the source material. This isn’t Elvis Presley taking the music Black people were making in the South and making it palatable for white folks. It’s a celebration of form.
If you’ve ever read up on the Hare Krishna movement or anything like that, you know the goal is to curry favor from the gods basically by calling them out and saying their name over and over again. I have no religion and no gods, period, but I do find the idea charming of being able to basically nag one’s creator-figureheads into doing what you want them to do, and I think anyone who’s ever been a parent asked the same question 50 times in a two-minute span can appreciate the image as well. Kirtan is a part of this, and in “Chamundaye,” “Shiva’s Grace” and “Garland of Names,” and even in the drones and flow of the instrumentals, Soma bring these songs to life in a way that bleeds love.
Its not always a soothing listen, and it’s not supposed to be. The idea is to get your blood moving, to get you excited, to get the gods excited, and then I think everybody just parties and things are cool until someone comes along and is like, “Yeah my god is named Sassafras” and then war has to happen forever or somesuch. The net-negative cultural effect of religiousness notwithstanding — though that’s a big ‘un to put aside — Soma seek spiritual enrichment through time-tested means and find ways to make traditionalist sounds their own without cheapening the presence of history in the material or giving up raw sonic impact. It is a work of outreach such that nearly every second doubles as an invitation to the one hearing it: “Come. Be a part of this with us.”