Dec 012022
 

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 »

Nov 052022
 

 

As you know if you’ve been here routinely, I make lists, lots of lists, of new music I want to check out. Last night when I began making my way through the latest one (an extremely long one), it happened that the first five selections were so good and fit together so beautifully that I decided to go no further, for fear of breaking a powerful pattern that had serendipitously taken shape. When I listened to them again this morning, it still made sense.

I’ve set out these songs in the order I heard them. I said they created a pattern, but they were also a journey, and one that ended in stunning fashion.

THY CATAFALQUE (Hungary)

Well of course I started with a new video from Thy Catafalque, especially because the video is for a performance of my favorite song from one of my favorite albums of 2011. Yes, more than a decade ago! But until senility encroaches I’ll never forget “Fekete mezők”. Continue reading »

Mar 252020
 

 

This makes the third time in our long, wretched history that we’ve had the honor of premiering music from Vancouver’s Heron. First, three-and-a-half years ago, it was a stream of their second EP, Fire Twin. The second occasion, two years ago, was a track from their debut album, A Low Winter’s Sun. And now, we present “Void Eater“, while helping to announce the new Heron album on which it will appear.

That album, entitled Time Immemorial, will be released in a variety of formats on May 15th by Sludgelord Records. And while Heron have already proven themselves through their previous releases to be a formidable force for skull-fracturing, soul-shattering intensity, Time Immemorial leads them (and us) even deeper into dark dimensions of dread and despair, of physical trauma and mental dislocation, and its ravaging, visceral impact is undeniable. Continue reading »

Apr 022018
 

 

The wail of an air-raid siren ends the song you’re about to hear, but it comes too late — by then, the bombs have already fallen, the damage has been done, and it’s damage on a cataclysmic scale.

The name of the song is “Of Gods and Goats“, and it’s the opening track from A Low Winter’s Sun, the new full-length album by the Vancouver sludge/doom band Heron, which will be released on Friday the 13th of April. The album follows on the heels of two Heron EPs, their self-titled debut in 2015 and Fire Twin in 2016. Continue reading »

Oct 312016
 

heron-fire-twin

 

After a self-titled debut EP released in 2015, Vancouver, B.C.’s Heron now return with a new one named Fire Twin. It’s being released today — in fact, it has just today become available for streaming and download on Bandcamp, and you’ll find it down below as well, since we’ve eagerly agreed to help spread it around.

It’s well worth your time, especially if you have a taste for bleak, blasted sludge/doom that’s heavy enough to split concrete and powerfully atmospheric enough to cast a deep and dark spell. Continue reading »