On a surprisingly warm April night, I was walking out of a Garden City McDonald’s after a house show. I was deep in conversation with my friend, Collin, about what bands we would like to see live. After he mentioned Switch Full Lotus being near the top of his list, I was immediately transported in my memory to the CRLB. The prog-metal outfit held the attention and energy of the crowd: an incendiary performance that had the floor shaking at our feet. The album that had brought us all together on that fateful night in March was Switch Full Lotus’ second project, Succumb Solara. After I recounted the experience, I explained to Collin the prediction that put the reasoning behind why I loved the album so much.
New album from a well-known band? If it was just recorded, the lo-fi-driven production of Succumb Solara will be replicated on a few songs. First album or demos from a newer band? You might mistake it for a new Switch cut. You’re going to the first show of a brand new band? The math-y prog sides of Succumb Solara will be uncanny to what they are playing. Now you are hitting up a garage in Nampa to see a band who explicitly call themselves hardcore or metal? The sounds that had me dying in the pit at CRLB will be blasted in your ears for an hour.
The way I think of it, in 5 years, if you were to ask a new band or artist what their biggest influence is, Switch Full Lotus will be mentioned as a driving force. The electric soundscape of Succumb Solara has created new possibilities that I whole-heartedly believe will happen. Collin confirmed my suspicions almost immediately after hearing all this. He reminisced on how his band, Twin Falls punk outfit Heatray, had to take a break from writing any new material because of how similar everything sounded to Switch Full Lotus’ style. I knew then and there that this was something I needed to highlight.
There is no doubt that Succumb Solara has been embedded in the scene as a great album. It is a truly unique listen with genre-blending production and style choices. Death metal vocals are met with lo-fi processing. Polyphia-like guitar riffs are sprinkled with late-hardcore and emo influences. Every track feels so perfectly compressed, I feel like I am listening to the cover art in audio form. The project left me with so much I wanted to explore and cover. If this sound is going to be influential, then where did this sound come from in the first place? The band cites different influences to their sound, whether it be the conditions at which they recorded the album or other bands. But first, with any project, the writing comes first.
“All of the songs start as a guitar riff,” Switch Full Lotus told me in May, “The player will have a sometimes vague or sometimes very specific idea of a song. Once presented with foundational aspects, the group would collaborate to fully form song arrangements.” The process of writing took a lot of time, having been in development since the release of their self-titled record in 2021. This is evident in how meticulous and clean-cut the instrumentation on the album sounds. But it didn’t come from a few jam sessions, or without hardship. According to the band, they “endured a lot of iterations and frustrations and criticisms from each other,” while coming up with the material. “[It] honestly can cultivate a competitive and stressful environment, but ultimately we do it because we want to push each other to be the greatest version of ourselves.” What came out of that stress was the lightning-struck guitar work and rhythmic pulse that makes the project sound alive, which is how the band describes it themselves.
Recording itself was a regimented process. They started with the drums, recording with Andy from Chop Shop. “He engineered a killer punchy drum tone”, they explained, giving background to the polished percussion that is displayed across all 11 tracks. After recording the rest of the stems on their own, the band sent the LP to Andy to glue it together and put the finishing touches on it. Switch Full Lotus expressed that they “wanted to achieve an entire range of dynamics sonically, from soft to loud, harsh to beautiful, distant and spacious to upfront and aggressive”. This goal to keep a wide array of sounds was achieved beautifully. The opener “Cascade” doesn’t sound like any other song on the album, yet sets the sonic baseline that is followed for the rest of the project.
Switch describes the album’s sound as “timeless”, elaborating by saying, “We opted for a mostly dry signal on the album because reverb-y tones go in and out of style… We wanted to keep it pretty raw and capture the true essence of how we perform, so we kept the processing to a minimum”. The “raw” energy the group was aiming for is prevalent. The whole thing feels like a garage jam recorded at Electric Lady. They concluded the discussion of the album’s sound by giving props to Andy and his production.
When asked about specific artists that influenced the sound of the record, Switch Full Lotus gave many answers, all of them contributing to different aspects of the project. “In general we take a lot of inspiration from progressive metal, post rock and skramz,” the band explained, “There are even hints of drone and EDM sprinkled in there.” The soundscapes that the outfit conveys come from the cores of these genres and they do it well. Specifically, the band gives credit to many different groups from throughout time. “CHON and Tool are influences that we share,” they expressed, “As far as local bands go, Barn inspired us to get better at our instruments and hone our skills, and Vinyl Knife is one of our favorite bands ever (RIP)”. In this regard, SFL is, as the kids say, “based.” When it came to their project they said, “The Fall of Troy influenced a lot of the guitar playing and songwriting. Botch, AFI, Altar of Plagues, Russian Circles and I Hate Sex lent a fair share of influence on this album too.”
“Harmonically rich and rhythmically complex. Deeply emotional,” are the words Switch Full Lotus use to describe their album, and the group falls right on the cusp of a transition in the scene. A new generation of artists are coming, and Succumb Solara proves that Switch Full Lotus will become one of the most important forces to the sound and aesthetic of that new generation, while still participating in it. I haven’t met an artist who hasn’t mentioned the album or band when asked what has been in their current rotation, or what is driving them to make more music. When you have something as unique as Succumb Solara, there is no way it will go without leaving its mark, and we will definitely start seeing the fruits of the group’s labor in the next year in the output of the scene. Overall, whatever steps the band takes next are something that time itself will tell us, but there is no doubt that it will be anything short of skillful, intentional, and downright dirty in its delivery.
