Blue Heron coalesced in 2018 around a compulsion to fill the wide New Mexico skies with massive volume, and saturate their piece of desert with thunderous riffs, drums that pummel and swing, deep, thrumming tones and vocals that rip and roar. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, their firsthand relationship with the desert is inextricable from who they are and how they sound.
Ephemeral, Blue Heron’s debut full-length, is an 8-track, 47-minute exploration of heavy rock at its fullest. Excavating the far reaches and connected strata of stoner rock, sludge, doom, heavy psych and post-metal, Blue Heron transmute years of engagement with rock and metal’s profuse branches into a singular, sand-scorching epic. With lyrical threads ranging from mortality and failed civilizations to mythic fables and cinematic re-imaginations, Ephemeral is stylistically diverse, thematically ambitious and unassailably relentless in its raw, desert power.
1.Futurola
2.Sayonara
3.Push the Sky
4.Infiniton Field
5.The Buck
6.Black Blood of the Earth
7.Where One Went Together
8.Salvage
Interview
Greetings from Metalheads Forever Magazine, I’m Keith Clement, How are you guys doing today?
Good, we just finished jamming, so yeah, we’re good! Thank you for having us, we really appreciate it!
Your debut album “Ephemeral” is to be out on 27th this Friday, Can you tell me about the songwriting and production behind the album?
Half of the songs were written before the pandemic hit. Then as everything closed, we were still meeting up to practice, because what else could we do. During that time period we wrote the rest of the songs and in addition to the previous songs that were already written we really wanted to record them all. So, we decided to book some studio time and went in and just busted all the songs out, plus a cover of Walk All Over You for Magnetic Eyes’ companion album “best of AC/DC that was released with their Back in Black Redux. Since we had been playing a lot during the shutdown, we really wanted to record something that if you saw us live, you’d know exactly what you were in for. So, there weren’t very many overdubs at all. We pretty much just went in and had fun and busted everything out.
Was there any particular concept that goes behind this album?
Although everyone of us contributes to the songwriting process, the lyrics are all Jadd. He picked the title of the album as well, “Ephemeral” which basically means lasting for a short time. So along with the album cover showing the end of civilizations. You know, like everything comes to an end, and in the bigger picture our civilization is only a brief moment of time.
8 amazing heavily doomed desert stoner rock album, Great work behind this, amazing musicianship, the musical progression is just mind blowing, a real pleasure to listen to the album in it completeness, how as a band do you feel about this amazing album?
We are so stoked to be able to put this album out to the masses. All four of us are obviously huge music fans in general and we all really like and enjoy playing music together, so it’s awesome that we are fortunate enough to be able to put this album out. Thank you Seeing Red Records and Kosmik Artifacts!!
What is the release day plans for this friday?
So, the album officially gets released on Friday May 27, 2022, but unfortunately a few of us are traveling during this release day so, no show on Friday. We are however, having a record release show here in Albuquerque on July 8 which is going to be killer!
How does touring look for the band in 2022?
We are playing in Austin during The Ripplefest Festival which is July 21-24th, it will be awesome, we are so stoked. So many great bands are playing during the four days of the festival it’s crazy. If you can make it, I’d highly recommend it! Then we are playing The Monolith on the Mesa Festival in Toas which is September 16-18th, with another onslaught of great bands.
Push The Sky and Futurola two great videos that has been put out, can you tell me about the making of the videos?
For the Futurola video we had an animator role with the cover art concept, which goes with that song. You know, end of civilizations and all that. For Push the Sky, we really wanted to capture the desert around us and the vast , open sky we take for granted. So we took some footage of us in our jam room and then went out to the open desert right around sunset with a generator in hand, set up and recorded some more footage. All three videos we did for songs on the album turned out great! The third video, that we released first, is for Black Blood of the Earth, which was just a live video recorded during one of our shows.
Would you like to tell me how it all started and how you guys got together as a band?
Jadd and I were in a band in the early 2000’s and we had kept in touch over the years. At some point in around 2018 he reached out and asked if I was interested in maybe recording a cover of Pink Floyd’s song “Stop” that’s on The Wall Redux for Magnetic Eyes’ Redux series. It’s like a 30 second little ditty. That’s all it took, from there we needed to find a drummer and a bass player. So, Jadd reached out to a good friend of ours Steve that we’d known since our first band, that knows everyone in our local music scene. He recommended Ricardo to us, who is a sick ass drummer! We then found a bass player, but it didn’t work out with him. Fast forward a bit and we had booked our first show but only 10 days prior parted ways with the bass player. So, I reached out to our buddy Steve, who normally plays guitar in his bands, and persuaded him to learn the four or five originals that we had at the time on bass so we could play the show. He did, and had a blast playing bass, and we all meshed well with each other stylistically and musically. So lucky for us Steve became the bass player and it was set, Blue Heron was ready to make some noise!
What would be the biggest dreams?
I would say just being fortunate enough to play music that we all love as a band and being able to put that music out there and hope some people will dig it. It’s all for the love of heavy music!
How do you look into the future?
“Ephemeral” comes out on the 27th, but we already have some songs that we’re going into the studio at the end of June to lay down. They’ll be on a split EP with another great heavy band in the scene, can’t really name names at this point, but it will be awesome. Stay tuned for that release!
Will there be any change in the musical direction?
When we write any music, we all as a band must agree that we like what we’re doing. If we don’t particularly like something or as a music lover wouldn’t listen to it, then what’s the point of creating this music? So, there’s no specific direction that we try to achieve musically. We just get together, hangout and bullshit with each other, grab out instruments and what happens, happens. Just like any other band I think you just end up playing and writing songs that are related to what’s happening in your life at the time. Things change over time, and so does a band.
Finally what would be the message for the fans?
This is only the beginning! We hope you like ‘Ephemeral” because we love it and stay tuned for more things to come from Blue Heron. You can purchase our album at Seeing Red Records, Kosmik Artfacts, and Blueheronrocks.com via our Bandcamp page. Support the heavy music scene everywhere!
Thank you, Keith!! Appreciate your interest!
