ELDER

Omens

STICKMAN/ARMAGEDDON LABEL

Germany-based doom/psych voyagers ascend to the next level

ARRIVING JUST AS the world goes into a state of fearful lockdown, Elder make the task of self-isolation a bit easier with this labyrinthine, exploratory opus, specially crafted for solitary playback through the best headphones you can find.

The five tracks here average a little over 10 minutes each, and are all charged with keenly cosmic transportive qualities, continuously shifting, warping and radiating like a Mandelbrot Set fractal display. Elder’s flying carpet sometimes flutters peacefully over serene lunar seas, other times lurching dangerously over roiling supernovae.

Debuting in 2006 as a relatively orthodox stoner doom outfit, Elder gradually moved away from workaday bong-metal plod, before disappearing into the epic psych/prog black hole where takes place, albeit a rather more blissful and. Truth be known, other than a few residual traces of Black Sabbath and Kyuss, there’s not much of any kind of metal on .