Tomo started S.o.M. in 2005 as a personal home recording project after realizing there are not many doom movements in Croatia. Being a fan of slow metal as well of ethno music, especially from Medjimurje, a northern part of Croatia, it came natural to combine those two styles to one - ethno-doom.
The initial name of the project ("Sons of Medjimurje", in Croatian "Sinovi Medjimurja") sounded nice in the beginning, but was shortened after some time to make it easier to pronounce in other languages (this step made it harder to find us on web search engines, so the word "somdoom" is associated with the band).
Tomo produced several lo-fi recordings ( www.soundclick.com/somcro ), but public exposure resulted with quite a few excellent responses, so the one-man-band was formed.
Matija joined Tomo with his bass and regular weekly rehearsals started. During that period a computer was used as a drumming section, which was pretty much boring. Matija sure did show extreme dose of patience and belief :-)
Thankfully, Zoran joined the team with his drumming skills and finally the group of a few people started to look and sound as an actual band.
February of 2007 will stay remembered in band's history thanks to first gig in Mocvara, a club in Zagreb (thanks to an invitation by Good day to die, extraordinary stoner band from Croatia). Although the number of spectators was not impressive, excellent feedback and reviews on public forums encouraged the band to carry on with the plans and harden its style.
During the April 2007, we accepted another member - Pero, guitar-master who fattened our sound. Summer 2007 - we were so dark that Lea decided we are too dark, joined us and brought vocals, optimism and some light with herself. Now, being able to see, we found sample-master by the name of Marko, who joined us in early autumn 2007.
STYLE
Band plays a mixture between funeral-doom, death-doom, gothic, stoner metal, whatever. Ethno music has massive influence on authoring and a number of songs is based on existing folk tunes with addition of doom style riffs to vocal melodies. In other cases, ethno-style is used in riffs, solos or vocal parts. Major influence came from Medjimurje, a northern region of Croatia, but band is not geographically limited and will use any kind of world music that is transferable to doom style.
We sing in Croatian. We believe there is fair enough english-singing bands across the world and that we can not give anything new in that part.
No instrument or person could and should be called a "leading" one in band. There are some songs with guitar solos, but they are melodic and slow and planned to serve only as an integral part of a song, not as a solo exhibition, often following vocal melody.
We believe it could be said that S.o.M. is one of few ethno-doom bands in world, and very likely the first one in Croatia.
SOUND
The sound we seek for should be a brutal, thundering earthquake followed by a tsunami or two. This evil should be broken with nice, gentle female voice. That should depict our physical world which is based on contrasts. The original idea of the band imagines a keyboard/sampler that should create a creepy and horror atmosphere, but still with some hope in it, thanks to female singer.
S.o.M. - ethno doom - Official web site
S.o.M. - ethno doom - YouTube channel
S.o.M. - Mura, Mura live @ Boogaloo, 01.10.2007.
