(ABRIDGED)

There's cetainly no hint of compromise in the raw material. Reynolds 853 is a highly advanced post weld hardening steel that delivers huge tensile strength that welding increases at the tube junctions after building.
The thin wall oversize tubes also create a very precise and taut mainframe structure that has been designed deliberately low and long. This means plenty of top and down tube length to soak up the vibration and impact spikes that you'd associate with an alloy frame this accurate, plus a long, compliant seatpost extension. The inlcuded Salsa Flip Off seat collar adds a real touch of class too.
The back end is strikingly different both in build and intent. By using slim 4130 cromo pipework in a thin, curved shoulder wishbone design, the Soul removes much of the sting in the tail through technical sections. This is no noodle though, as deep chicken 'drumstick' profile chainstays plug into cowled dropouts so large they look like the mudguards from a 1940's tractor.
What really sets the bike apart, though, is the way it integrates the tall Fox fork into it's geometry without even a hint of the strike capability it's packing. While the DMR flaunts its big fork and demands you ram it down the throat of any trail obstacle you encounter, the Cotic really does talk quietly whilst carrying a very big stick. In fact, the invisibility of the extra fork travel is almost it's undoing. We often thought the back end was kicking around more than the others before we realised that the forks wre thumping around at full travel.
Hit technical stuff and the enhanced capability is obvious. Even with the less than aggressive cornering tread of the Conti Verticals, hitting corners with the bike as flat as possible, saddle tucked well down towards a dropped knee and rear wheel sliding became second nature. Saw the big bars back and forth as you stamp down the power through the exit and there's no trace of tuck from the front end and every watt you can muster goes straight into the trail rather than being scattered across roots and rocks.
Weight balance is also superb. It's easy to pop the front end up over trouble or skip the whole bike sideways to a new line, but it's still totally planted on even the most vertical climbs. In the coimpany of the Cove and Inbred we soon became blase about cleaning crux moves that we were normally only accustomed to managing on race specials. In fact, the longer we spent with the bike and the harder we pushed it, the better it responded. Even on our most cack-handed days it lifted our riding to new levels.
There are some downsides though. While it certainly helps cornering stability, we occasionally crunched the pedals on rocks due to the relatively low bottom bracket. There's also very little clearance between fork top and down tube (This was due to a very low stack headset on the test bike. This hasn't been a problem on bikes fitted with Hope, King, or any other headsets as far as we know - Cotic).
The Soul was designed to deliver big fork performance but with the agility and 'sprung' responsiveness of a classic steel hardtail, and it delivers exactly that. The fork clearance is a niggle (see above - Cotic), and we'd advise discs, but for a technically adept cross country rider the handling is pretty much flawless.

CONCLUSION

If you're after a bike that gives the spring heeled responsiveness of a classic steel hardtail, while taking maximum advantage of the latest long travel fork technology, then you have to give the gong to the Cotic Soul. Cut and pasting from line to line, ripping through corners in a spray of earth, slam dunking drop-ins and step downs or just cruising the ridge lines between technical sections, however much we provoked it, it never put a foot wrong. There's a couple of minor points to tidy up, but otherwise it's a superb first attempt with undoubted potential to become one of our all-time favourite hardtails.