Soul Sign, featuring Mark Boals, Rob Math, Bjorn Englen and Mike Cancino, have today released their second single, Out Of The Dark, an Englen composition, which runs into an impressive version of Cream’s White Room. The song follows the previous Soul Sign single, Clean Soil.
“My girlfriend put on some sleeping music for us,” Bjorn Englen told MetalTalk Editor Steve Ritchie. “So I’m listening to the sleeping music. I’m hearing this chord progression, and I keep waking up in the middle of the night.”
It was the dream that inspired the Soul Sign version of the Cream classic White Room. “I’m hearing Rob [Math] playing his guitar solo over this live,” Bjorn says. We’re in concert. And then, all of a sudden, I wake up. I hear, ‘In this white room.’ It’s going right into the Cream song. This is brilliant. We gotta do this.”
The first part of the song is the Out Of The Dark, a Bjorn Englen composition. “I sort of mimic the chord progression,” Bjorn says. “I did tapping bass for that and then just let Rob do whatever he wants to do over that. It worked out really well.”
After the hypnotising musical intro, it’s then right into White Room. “The executive producer’s idea was to go straight into the chorus,” Bjorn says. “Don’t start with the intro, just go straight into the chorus. I liked that idea. It was just like the Beatles. How can you argue with the Beatles? I always say that to people. How can you not want to go straight into the chorus?”
There is a certain irony that Bjorn’s girlfriend playing music as a sleep aid pumped his mind into action, getting his brain working when he was supposed to be sleeping. “It was almost like it was meant to be,” Bjorn says. “I don’t know if you felt that about yourself and your life when you think it was just meant to be, and it fell into place. The label said let’s start with the chorus. Mike Cancino and I, in five minutes at rehearsal, came up with a new arrangement. Let’s cut this chorus out, cut this verse out. Make it shorter and get to the point. Let’s do something with that to bring it up to the energy of where it needs to be.”
I love the way that the two pieces map together. The chorus is an earworm, although the first couple of listens it sounds like a pre-chorus, which makes you think. Its an attention grabbing effect.
“It’s a kind of song that I couldn’t tell you what the chorus is,” Bjorn says. “I couldn’t label the pre-chorus. I don’t know which is which, which is very rare because you could normally say I lean towards this being the chorus. But in this case, I still couldn’t tell you. It is what it is. It’s just a song and I like that. It’s beautiful. It’s just a piece of music where you treat it for what it is. Whether you label something as a chorus, or you don’t label it a chorus, that’s ok.”
Soul Sign have changed the original word ‘station’ to ‘graveyard’. “It was a conversation between me and the label,” Bjorn says. “We both realised that we needed to do something with this and change it up. That one word, I don’t remember if it was my idea of the labels. We were taking the song and the lyrics into a different direction slightly.
“I kinda felt it naturally would fall beautifully according to where the bands at, where the music today is at, and rock music is. Not that we follow any trend, by the way. It felt right.
“Now we have lyrics, now we have a song, and we got more content the darkness of it. White Room is supposedly written about them doing heroin or something like that. Its speculation. But taking it to darkness, where it doesn’t necessarily have to do anything with drugs or being on acid or anything like that.
“The song is in a place that we felt worked for the band. We felt like it worked for the video to get it into more of a dark place. I told them let’s go dark. We can go to a church, but it needs to be dark. When you give them that vision, then they can go and run with it.”
The video is impressively shot and lifts the impact of the song wonderfully. “Our director, John Haggard, did a great job,” Bjorn says. “He took it and ran with it and did a beautiful job. It shows you that communication between people in any profession is so important.”
The song is very well suited to Mark Boal’s vocals. “I think Mark is different from any singer in the world in my life,” Bjorn says. “His capabilities as a singer are beyond anybody’s. He’s also a team player, and he doesn’t challenge things. It’s like, ok, this is just the way the song was written, then this is the way I’m gonna sing it. He’s great like that.
“He will speak up if there’s something weird or something wrong. But it’s rare that he’ll do that. We’re very lucky to have him in the band.”
Following on from the last single, Clean Soil, it is apparent that this is an outstanding four-piece. Drummer Mike Cancino is cool to watch and hear, and I do love the guitar style of Rob Math.
Soul Sign have signed with Legendary Artists for this single, a label and management company. The hopes are now that we will see the album out later this year.
“It’s moving in the right direction,” Bjorn says, “which is great.”
