Boston, MA · stoner rock · progressive rock

Elder

1 festival played

Long-form psychedelic stoner rock that abandoned riff-worship for genuine composition somewhere around album three — twenty-minute pieces that earn every bar.

Elder formed in Massachusetts in 2005 and spent its early years working in a fairly orthodox stoner-doom idiom, with slow tempos, fuzzed guitars and songs built around a central riff. Over subsequent records the band moved steadily toward longer, more intricate structures, drawing on progressive rock and heavy psychedelia while keeping the density of tone that marked the earlier material.

The current approach favours extended tracks in which sections develop and give way rather than repeat, with layered guitar lines, keyboards and largely instrumental stretches broken up by sparing vocals. Elder is often grouped with the wider heavy psych scene, though its arrangements sit closer to progressive rock than to conventional doom metal.

stoner rockprogressive rock