Sludgelord Records released Time Immemorial, the second album by Heron from Vancouver, BC, in May 2020. I began listening to it in late March of that year, right around the time I contracted the delta variant of covid and everything around most of us worldwide was going into a panic. Little did I know that I’d spend the next year hunkered down at home, with few places to go and fearful of going out anyway.

What a wretched year that was. In mere months the death toll became shocking (and the toll included two of my oldest and closest friends). Cities became ghost towns. Bizarre theories circulated. Time seemed to warp in odd ways. In my case a kind of numbness eventually set it, and shorn of most human contact my normally gregarious self experienced a rare long-form depression. Day-drinking became my therapy of choice. There seemed no end in sight.

Of course it was just a coincidence that Time Immemorial was released in the ravaging early months of the pandemic, but the music seemed tailor-made for the experience because it was so damned punishing in so many ways. For better or worse, it’s hooked in my head to a lot of traumatic memories, yet I valued it as a form of catharsis for a lot of black moods over a lot of days and months.

Now here we are, two and a half years after Time Immemorial made its harrowing initial impact on me and a lot of other listeners. The world is open again, though the virus continues to kill, apparently at an acceptable rate. Other catastrophes now dominate — extremes of weather and authoritarianism, of war and starvation, of prejudice and hate, along with plentiful new sources of hopelessness. If the virus were sentient it might be jealous of these competitors, though who knows, it might find a way to seize the spotlight again. Continue reading »