It’s kind of amazing how Elder has maintained their identity over the course of nearly 20 years and seven albums (plus EPs, a collaboration, and live albums), because, when you put Elder right up against their latest album, Through Zero, the contrast is striking. In many ways, it seems like it just can’t be the same band. Elder is so heavy, lumbering by comparison. Yet each, and every album in between, is instantly recognizable as Elder.
Sound, of course, is so important to a band’s identity, but Elder’s has morphed quite a bit over the years, even as they’ve remained faithful to that fat, heavy, sexy stoner rock tone that cemented the foundation way back when. So it’s not (just) sound. Feeling is at least as important and, considering Elder’s arc, there’s definitely a special energy that persists across changes in tone, tempo, and time, breadth, depth, and intensity. There seems to be a core process that yields a sense of natural movement, an ebb and flow that feels organic, like a sonic reflection of nature. The riffs are important, and the beats, and the melodies and harmonies, but at the center of it all, the lifeblood of an Elder song is that natural sense of movement, untethered, fluid, searching.
Any Elder album might conjure images of nature’s actively moving shapes: pods and schools, swarms and flocks, herds and packs, the random walk of root growth, insect trails, and migration. Conversations about Elder albums and songs over the years, in reviews and around social media, frequently emphasize the feel of the music in terms of those natural dynamics, with references to a warm summer breeze, soaring through the clouds, or the night sky and its slowly rotating starscape. Through Zero is reminiscent of all these in turns but its six songs and 53 minutes seem to recall most often the smooth, concerted, magical movement of birds in flight.
Nothing captures this phenomenon quite so effectively as Elder’s use of complex time to make songs that feel as smooth and natural as a standard waltz. Consider the movement of a starling murmuration, in which the flock’s core is dense and tightly synchronized while smaller clusters, still of the whole, swoop and swirl at the edges like solar flares. Allowing some license, one can imagine Elder’s rhythm section as the body, and guitars, synths, and vocals animating the edges.
“Sigil To Ruin” establishes the organic flow straight away, opening with vague, hazy synth notes that hang in the air like the first rays of morning sun. Bass guitar and drums roll in like a gust of wind that just keeps gusting, pulsing, as the synths continue to float and drift around them. Guitars join with great swooping arcs of light and then everything falls to near silence, save for softly picked guitar and bass. This is barely two minutes into a 10+ minute song, the remainder of which is spent on a few cycles of that opening soundscape’s slow reintegration, punctuated by sweet fat riffs. Gentle melody builds to a beautiful harmonized bridge, a ringing solo, and a big build to the explosive finale. It’s notable that each piece telegraphs pretty clearly what’s coming next; the movement is predictable, but not exactly. “Sigil To Ruin” is an effective opener precisely because it gives the brain what it expects with just enough variation to create a bit of suspense, pieces flowing smoothly together then surging and separating and coming together again, signifying the distinctiveness of each as well as its significance to the whole.
Through Zero is full of this kind of rewarding songwriting, but its most perfect example comes at the 2:10 mark of “Capture/Release” after a smooth, gently rolling atmospheric intro with new agey synths. From the outset, it is absolutely given that this intro is the fuse and a kickass riff explosion is imminent. And when it happens it still knocks the socks clean off. Every time.
And once you let it in, it ain’t letting go, as catchy as any vocal melody to have made permanent lodging in the ol’ hippocampus. A song ought to be more than a riff, obviously, and “Capture/Release” delivers ringing harmonic runs around that resounding core, rippling alongside complementary synthesized accent and drifty vocal melody. This must be what it feels like inside the flock as it rushes and dives and careens all around.
Of course, one of the most notable things about Elder’s development over the years has been their increasingly progressive approach. Elder’s songwriting has, arguably, always had at least a touch of progressive flair and, as they’ve come to fully embrace it, their sound has become more overtly proggy, as well, with ever more complex songs affording more time and space to various synthesizers and their expansive sounds. Through Zero naturally continues along this trajectory, most plainly on the title track where guitars make modern prog metal sounds, thick and heavy and smooth but with sharp edges that slice the air. That sound with the melodies and harmonies around it expands Elder’s Venn of RIYLs to include top notch heavy proggers like Scale The Summit and Sometime In February.
“Strata” is so proggy in that way, so light and airy, that it might be the one to push some hangers-on to finally abandon the S.S. Elder. At the same time, this is a band that’s used to shifting tides and we know they’re just as likely to pick up some new fans, too. In any case, “Strata” is a beautiful song that also remembers to rock. At roughly two-thirds of the way through, after a few minutes of syncopated rhythm work lay the foundation like a bed of jostled rocks and a sweet lead rolls over it like a river, Nicholas DiSalvo and Michael Risberg drop a fist pumping riff and lead sequence that feels like it was blasted from forty years back.
It’s surely worth mentioning that, even without historical comparisons, DiSalvo sounds great. He is not a naturally gifted singer but, especially since the collab with Kadaver, he has become a capable vocalist, shaping his voice to the music Elder makes and respecting his own limitations. The result is a bunch of songs that sound like he is the only person to sing them.
The latter third of Through Zero is decidedly low key relative to the first four songs. “Sight Unseen” is an instrumental and such a sweet, quiet piece for most of its run that it feels like an interlude, which doesn’t make sense for a nearly nine minute song. It does pick up the tempo and heavy intensity near the end with some nifty riffing and lead work, giving it a bit of closing track energy, which itself feels pretty weird with one more song to go.
Actual closing track, “Blighted Age,” is also an instrumental, aside from a couple early verses, and takes a long time, like 60% of the song, to build to its twilit climax before gently fading to black. It’s another very nice song that ushers dusk to the dawn of “Sigil To Ruin,” and imparts a sense of being suspended on a balmy breeze, but ends up feeling superfluous on the heels of what already appeared to be the closing song.
In light of the album before it, the closing pair is a mildly strange experience that may change with time but for now seems to beg for a more judicious approach. Saving one of them for an EP or one of their wonderful side ventures would leave Through Zero at about 47 or 44 minutes, ideal for an LP, either way.
Subjective views on the closing sequence aside, Through Zero is a wonderful album that flows with natural grace and bursts with the extraordinary energy of a band at one with each other and dialed fully into their artistic process. It’s what Elder’s always done, of course, riding familiar winds with a slightly adjusted bearing to arrive someplace new even as the pathway back home is easily traced.
