Somewhere in the goopy crenelations of my brain, time is folding away and I’m still a thirteen year old music nerd who’s just picked up the electric guitar for the first time. I plug into my rented tube amp, stomp on a Fuzz Face distortion pedal, and play Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” for hours at a time learning every note, riff, and chord. I clearly recall that by the end of 7th grade, I’d developed a sense of pride around becoming skilled at something actual adults were out there doing. I began to imagine a life of bands, gigs, weird sex, psychedelic drugs, and all sorts of grown-up mayhem. Somehow, playing music had become my chosen vehicle for the passage into adulthood.
But before this, back in elementary school, I liked whatever was on the radio. This would be the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Elton John, Carole King, and the Carpenters – treacly 70s stuff for the most part. But once the hormones kicked-in it was suddenly all about Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple because of course it was. The sound of a distorted guitar is inherently rebellious after all. It is literally the sound of a physical system being pushed to the breaking point and if that isn’t a metaphor for adolescence, I don’t know what is. Iggy Pop’s Raw Power aside, there is probably no finer introduction to the textural possibilities of the electric guitar than these bands. And soon enough, I was pulled into Bowie, Eno, punk, post-punk, and songwriting proper. But the unlikely gateway drug to everything was the Black Sabbath record Paranoid. This music was approachable, human, something an adolescent of limited means could figure out with a cassette deck and a garage sale guitar.
As an adult however, I have largely avoided heavy metal for reasons that go well beyond Spinal Tap. So if an algorithm somewhere hadn’t randomly played a deep cut off Elder’s 2017 stoner epic Reflections of a Floating World, this post wouldn’t exist. But play it did, and turns out this record fires up my adolescent hippocampus like nothing I’ve heard in a very long time. Who cares about clever meaningful lyrics when you have heavy, prog-inflected riffs like this ripping through an overloaded amp? For those about to rock, let us simply behold the beauty of saturating tubes and cresting waves of harmonic sludge. The sonic vibe here feels more akin to a wild natural phenomenon than music to me. Think roiling fissures of magma, or the North Rim of the Grand Canyon at sunset on mushrooms, or waking up to a blazing aurora borealis on a backpacking trip and seeing a gray-haired Sasquatch nod knowingly in your direction from across the meadow. Mythic shit happens and friend, Elder are here for your moment.
Clearly, I can’t be remotely objective about Reflections. It blows past whatever good taste filters I may possess and makes my brain feel like a floppy, juiced-up 7th grader. For this is heavy prog my dudes, a mutant species of Math Metal replete with algorithmic time signatures, smashed-up arpeggios, and guitar solos that edge like banshee sex. And everything is carefully constructed, there is no filler, just blood-red orc meat and shimmering plasmas. It feels like what might have have happened if Swervedriver went to doom metal school and got whipped by a sadomasochistic principal. Or maybe if Sigur Ros had followed their darker, Norwegian black metal impulses to some forbidden wasteland inhabited by creatures more sinister than singing elves.
Ah but I hear you barkin’ big dog… You’re gonna say it’s all been done before. And you’d be mostly right. The sonic territory covered from say Hawkwind to Bongripper, is ridiculously vast. But I’d still argue Reflections carves out a wee bit of geography all its own, a jagged peninsula of basalt with patches of Day-Glo moss sprouting on the north end.
So I’m just going to come out and say it: This record is a one-off classic even if it doesn’t quite transcend the genre. No other Elder record has this effect on me (I tried) but it did motivate to check out other bands in the stoner/doom category. Because if this kind of shit is going down, what else have I missed out on since the heady days of my beloved Fuzz Face?
The best I could come up with were: Swan Valley Heights, Mastodon, Baroness, Isis, Psycada, Horn of the Rhino, Red Fang, Sleep, Electric Wizard, All Them Witches, Pallbearer, Kyuss, and a handful of others. These bands each have their moments for sure, but not an entire record’s worth imho. And some of these recordings are sonically quite harsh. In contrast, there is something almost inviting about how Reflections sounds, like it was recorded to analog tape, or the top-end was gently rolled off. You can crank this record up and it doesn’t hurt, it just gets thicker.
It’s now Saturday morning.
I fired this record up, drank a couple cups of coffee, and reviewed this post while listening back. I re-affirm this record is fucking sick. It is a molten, psychedelic distortion-fest from “Sanctuary” to “Thousand Hands.” It is relentlessly cinematic, unnecessarily complex, and for songs that average 10+ minutes, somehow manages to remain in possession of thematic focus and exuberance.
Alas, if feral guitar riffs sandwiched between aquatic mellotron moonscapes aren’t your thing, you’re gonna hate this record. Indeed, on the vast majority of days I honestly can’t be bothered. But when I’m feeling like an ignored 7th grader and in the mood to party with Garth, this record is coming out and the neighbors are gonna be pissed.