Elder
Reflections of a Floating World

As a sci-fi enthusiast, I have a rather low opinion of a certain genre of cinematography. I mean, I think of all those big Hollywood productions, whether A-list or B-list, whose only justification would be the famous 'special effects'.

I'm referring generally to everything involving large spaceships firing laser beams and battling each other in the infinite cosmos for possession of entire intergalactic empires. Things that, frankly, when brought to the big screen, are mostly stupid and of a naivety devoid of charm as, for example, could be the case with the early picturesque sci-fi film productions of the fifties.

And I'm only referring to cinema, in particular, because it is also undeniable that there are literary works of the genre that are thoroughly enjoyable and from which reading — but the printed production is necessarily purified of all those distortions and exaggerations of the big screen — I continue to sincerely derive good satisfaction.

There's this album here, anyway, that, by listening to it, inevitably made me think of what might be great atomic cannons installed on huge battleships engaged in epic and apocalyptic clashes worthy of the great naval battles fought in another era by ship captains and admirals of Her Majesty the Queen's Empire, like British national hero Lord Horatio Nelson.

And so as the Geni of the return were implored by the brave, who cut the triumphant ship, of the biggest pine, and dug his grave, here comes this album by Elder, an heavy-psych band from Boston, USA, which with this second double LP (released last June 2nd on Stickman Records in Europe and Armageddon Label in the United States) entitled 'Reflections of a Floating World' forcefully enters the scene proposing with great forcefulness sounds that perhaps aren't original and unprecedented but are always a real boon for all those who feel the need for completely hallucinated space travels shot at the speed of sound.

Nicholas DiSalvo (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Jack Donovan (bass), Matt Couto (drums), Michael Risberg (guitar), Michael Samos (pedal steel) propose a sound formula and a revisitation of heavy-psych and stoner whose derivations, starting from the most celebrated Kyuss and Josh Homme's sunlit Desert Sessions from the genre's fathers are as evident as certain heavy-metal influences (Mastodon or Neurosis) or 'sludge' (Melvins).

We're talking about a double LP where all six tracks have a duration close to or exceeding ten minutes and thus compositions that are seemingly complex and that in some cases can be considered as inclusive of different 'sections'.

Essentially, most of the tracks properly capture the most visceral and forceful sounds of heavy-psych mixed with a certain ideal apocalyptic vision of metal derivation. The sounds of a song like 'Sanctuary' are truly 'mastodonic': the sound of the band blasted at full volume from your stereo gives exactly the same sensation as witnessing the Millennium Falcon being hit by fireballs from imperial troops. The metal influence is evident in the singing but also in certain sound solutions that are perhaps too schematic in their execution like in 'Staving Off-Truth' (where you can also hear the echoes of bands like the Melvins and even Soundgarden and Screaming Trees) or 'Thousand Hands', but the overall acidity of the sound makes it so that even what could theoretically be a stylistic flaw ends up being a peculiar characteristic of the band's sound. Which at times perhaps exceeds in the claim of breaking through every possible sound barrier, as in the doom composition in three acts of 'The Falling Veil', while other times suddenly makes you discover a certain devotion to the more classic cosmic sounds of kraut-rock ('Sonntag').

Forceful and majestic like some Swans derivations or certain post-rock genre episodes like Explosions In The Sky or Godspeed Black Emperor! and at the same time also devoted to a certain progressive and hard rock of the seventies, I consider Elder a transversal group whose album in question has more than a few bullets to shoot in diverse directions and always hits the target.