ELDER – Through Zero

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  ELDER
• Duration: 00:53:56
• Available from: 05/29/2026
• Label:

• Stickman Records

It seems that the term 'twilight' – understood as a sort of melancholic and simplified music, close to the thinning of the lights at night – is increasingly used to define a certain type of music, especially in the progressive and post metal fields: the sunset painted on “Through Zero”, Elder's latest studio work, fully reflects this mixture of melancholy, musical simplicity and poetry.
After “Innate Passage”, the band has now undertaken a profoundly different path from that of the initial albums: a path that began with the masterpiece “Reflections of a Floating World” and which, with this new chapter in the studio, finds a further evolution.

From the initial “Sigil To Ruin”, in fact, in addition to the elements already mentioned regarding the previous album, we notice the now predominant presence of synthesizers and the idea of ​​stratifying every single song with recurring riffs albeit with some variations, refrains that return and meet again, expanded bass lines and drums that are never too intrusive.
It is not easy to describe Elder's music as they are today, precisely because in its extreme simplicity it is possible to find new ideas with each new passage of the album in the player: from the initial arpeggios of “Capture/Release” to the peak of “Strata”, where the instrumental layering over an obsessive guitar riff continues to add elements, as in a pictorial composition with different levels of color and details.

Nick DiSalvo and Mike Risberg's obsession with detail, as well as the now definitive move of the band to Germany, inevitably led them to introduce even more elements that we would define as kraut-rock: for those who know bands like Agitation Free and Amon Düül, or for those who were struck by the path of death metal with “Absolute Elsewhere” by Blood Incantation, this album will sound incredibly dense and familiar.
Tangerine Dream are mentioned perhaps often inappropriately nowadays, but there would be no other way of describing the riffs of “Slight Unseen”, which towards the end of the song also recovers a distortion capable of taking us back to the ancient glories of Edgar Froese's band: that peculiar way of saturating our ears with a ton of volume, then leaving room for a delicate stream of piano and electronic effects, typical of one of the most important bands in the prog and stoners.
The acoustic guitar riff repeated obsessively throughout the final “Blighted Age”, on which the rest of the musicians rehearse, improvise, hint and create, is emblematic of what we have written so far: Elder have changed a lot over the last few years, and even more so since with “Innate Passage” they arrive today matured and elusive like the sword that can be glimpsed on the cover.

It is inevitable that some people (perhaps more fond of a more hardened sound) will not like this path, but the album is certainly a step forward compared to “Innate Passage”: the ambition of wanting to sound 'spacey' at all costs can at times be vaguely forced, despite being a natural continuation of the quartet's evolutionary path, increasingly distant from the stoner of the first albums.
“Through Zero” is however a point of arrival, or turning point, which confirms the greatness of this band and its desire to continue to find the complexity of progressive rock in the simplicity of immediate and strongly electronic compositions.