Set to arrive June 11 through Centripetal Force with a full-color eight-page artbook, SOMA‘s new album, Songs of the Lotus Born follows 2025’s devotional Your Soul is the Holy Sound (review here) and seems to have drawn inspiration from the travel the group undertook to support that record. Fair enough, one thing leading to another, great rivers of time flowing and such. There’s no audio yet from Songs of the Lotus Born, but if the New Jersey-based five-piece say they’re pushing deeper, I’m inclined to take their word for it and look forward to hearing. At least viewing from the outside, it seems like that kind of progression is part of why the band exists at all.

June 11 is the release date. The info below all came from the Centripetal Force page on Bandcamp, linked below for preorders in case that’s how you roll — very neurotypical of you — and I’ll hope to have a review going at some point soon. For now, here’s this:

SOMA – Songs of the Lotus Born – June 11

Preorder: https://somakirtancf.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-the-lotus-born

Songs of the Lotus Born, a limited edition of 100 vinyl copies, includes an eight page full color booklet with artwork by Robert Ryan and Kevin Craig, inspired by the art found in Shambhala Publications.

New Jersey ensemble SOMA returns with Songs of the Lotus Born, a deeply immersive new release that expands the group’s sonic and spiritual vocabulary, while remaining rooted in the exploratory musicality that has defined their work to date. The album is presented as a limited vinyl pressing of 100 copies, accompanied by an eight page full color booklet featuring artwork by Robert Ryan, an artist known for his intricate and symbolic visual language, and Kevin Craig, a collaborator whose work complements the album’s devotional tone.

Serving as the follow up to 2024’s Burning is Learning, released via Centripetal Force, this latest offering finds SOMA stepping into more devotional territory, a shift in intention that never abandons the richly textured, music first approach that listeners have come to embrace.

The seeds of Songs of the Lotus Born were planted during a transformative 2025 California tour, a journey that began under a full moon as SOMA opened for Tyler Childers, a singular voice in contemporary American music, at the legendary Hollywood Bowl, an enduring cultural landmark in Los Angeles. From there, the group moved through a series of intimate and spiritually resonant spaces, including the Philosophical Research Society, a hub for esoteric study and inquiry, the Laguna Beach Kali Mandir, a sacred space supporting an active ashram community, and finally a gathering in Ojai, a kirtan and live discussion hosted by Jaymee Carpenter, the voice behind the Love Is the Author podcast.

A pivotal moment occurred during an opening ceremony led by Sam Bercholz, the visionary founder of Shambhala Publications, a teacher, author, practitioner, and lifelong bridge builder between spiritual communities, and his daughter Sara, a collaborator in both ritual and intention. It was through Sam’s request, his inspiration, and his guidance that SOMA stepped onto the path that would become Songs of the Lotus Born.

In that meeting, a moment both immediate and enduring, the Guru Vajra mantra was revealed, a sacred utterance that the group began to integrate into both their collective work and their personal practices, a thread that now runs throughout the album.

This mantra, understood as the life essence of all buddhas and deities, offers a direct connection to the compassionate energy of Padmasambhava, the Lotus Born, a central figure in Tibetan Buddhism whose presence resonates through the work.

With Songs of the Lotus Born, SOMA invites listeners into a space where sound becomes practice, and practice becomes sound, a continuum that bridges the ecstatic and the meditative, the communal and the deeply personal.

For listeners attuned to SOMA’s evolving voice, this release signals not a departure, but a deepening, a further step into the unknown that remains grounded in sound.

Tracklisting:
1. Prayer of Padmasambhava
2. The Thunderbolt Way
3. Vajra Guru Mantra
4. Song of the Lotus Born
5. Mother of Liberation
6. Guru Rinpoche Mantra

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https://www.centripetalforcerecords.com/
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SOMA, Your Soul is the Holy Sound (2025)