#Jadd Shickler

[doomedandstoned]

Albuquerque’s BLUE HERON Reveals Gnarly New Music Video “Dinosaur”

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Get ready for gritty heavy rock from Albuquerque with a new album from BLUE HERON. Raspy, terrifying roars meet brooding, turbulent low end. "Dinosaur," the band's latest music video, comes midway through the new 9-tracker, 'Everything Fades' (2024), their second full-length, which is just about as down to earth as you could ask for.

"Dinosaur" begins ominously with a dank, questioning riff that leads into a mysterious cool-of-the-morning desert-stoner metal groove, with bittersweet bluesy touches throughout the song. Jadd Shickler's vocals are reminiscent of those epic early High on Fire tracks, somewhat cleaner than Matt Pike's singing approach but no less gravelly and fearsome. Meanwhile Mike Chavez on guitar and Steve Schmidlapp on bass rustle up a storm of gut splitting heft, driven by a fierce and determined rhythm from drummer Ricardo Sanchez.

Towards the 4 minute mark things get slow and doomy like the steady advance of pregnant rain clouds draping across the sky, perhaps an omen of whatever great and mysterious calamity befell the alpha predator's of planet earth's past (and a warning that we too may go the way of the dinosaurs).

Blue Heron's Everything Fades is rooted in the mood and verve of the High Desert. The band's sound on this record has a tangible feeling of mass, weight, and depth. It comes out on September 27th on Blues Funeral Recordings and can be pre-ordered on vinyl, compact disc, and digital formats right here. Stick it on a playlist with High on Fire, Egypt, Lamassu, Forming The Void, and Red Messa.

Give ear...

SOME BUZZ

Blue Heron expand on their unyielding desert sound with a new slab of propulsive, sun-scorched riff-heaviness. 'Everything Fades' (2024) finds the band reveling in low-tuned roil and amplifier hum, churning out swerving grooves as if the primordial spirit of the desert itself compels them.

Balanced between laid-back, meditative atmospherics and heavier, more aggressive lunges, Blue Heron’s cruising jams and gritty stoner romps call to mind echoes of Kyuss, Clutch and Monster Magnet, as well as modern contemporaries Valley of the Sun and Greenleaf.

Full of rhythmic intensity, sledgehammer riffing and vocals ranging from clean and moody to howling and raw, 'Everything Fades' covers a wide expanse of musical ground that shows how familiar influences can always be molded into inventive, exciting new forms.

Surrounded by endless horizons, Blue Heron formed in 2018 out of a compulsion to fill the vastness with massive volume, saturating their piece of desert with rolling, thunderous riffs, drums that pummel and swing, deep, thrumming tones and vocals that rip and roar.

Everything Fades by Blue Heron

Blue Heron’s guitarist and singer were founding members of Spiritu, possibly Albuquerque, New Mexico's first desert rock band, whose brief burn in the early aughts included a Jack Endino-produced LP, a European tour with Clutch, Spiritual Beggars and Dozer, and a compilation appearance alongside Entombed and Mastodon.

Their debut LP "Ephemeral" arrived in May of 2022 via Kozmik Artifactz in Europe and Seeing Red Records in the USA. Substantial appreciation in the underground led to performances at Ripplefest Texas and Monolith on the Mesa and opening slots for The Well, Elder, Black Mountain, Ruby the Hatchet, Howling Giant, Heavy Temple and The Obsessed, along with a swath of positive reviews throughout the heavy media.

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[riffrelevant]

Riff Relevant Interviews: HOWLING GIANT [Video] (By Pat 'Riot' Whitaker, Senior Writer/Journalist, RiffRelevant.com) My enamored enjoyment of the Nashville-based, genre-warping musical entity…

[doomedandstoned]

Blue Heron Light Up Desert Skies with “Futurola”

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Imagine the clash of colors borne of a cosmic collision between late-stage Kyuss, primordial Clutch, and Down On The Upside era Soundgarden and you've an inkling of the fuzz phenomenon that is BLUE HERON. The raunchy, bristly desert rock crew from Albuquerque recently gave us a gnarly interpretation of "Walk All Over You" for the Back in Black redux on Magnetic Eye Records. Fusing elements of the earth with wide open skies, the Blue Heron verve is best ciphered by the band itself:

Surrounded by endless horizons that spark a compulsion to fill the vastness with massive volume, we saturate our piece of desert with rolling, thunderous riffs, drums that pummel and swing, deep, thrumming tones and vocals that rip and roar.

Today, Doomed & Stoned brings you an effective demonstration of Blue Heron's prowess with their music video "Futurola." I suspect the song has less to do with primo paper for rolling your blunts, and more to do with vision of the future one sees in those ethereal wafts of smoke. Heading out with a rumbling Truckfighters vibe, "Futurola" unfurls like a hearty desert plant, brushing aside flecks of parched soil to reveal a stark crimson bloom. There is less pomp here than melancholy here, with lyrics lamenting the apathetic quagmire of a post-COVID world:

There was a time when common good Kept the wolves from our doors Now the pull of self-interest Undermines who we were before

This is a land of followers Disappointed with our hand Give us the mirage of leaders to hail And without water we'll drink the sand

Jadd Shickler's vocal intonations are full of heart and gristle, an apt companion to the ultra-low notes generated by Mike Chavez’s guitar. Bassist Steve Schmidlapp and drummer Ricardo Sanchez make a robust rhythmic pair to match to complete a sound born of extended days in the arid Rio Grande rift and cold, starry nights among the Sandia Mountains.

And this is only the beginning, with seven more tracks to follow "Futurola" on Blue Heron's debut album. 'Ephemeral' (2022) makes its explosive entrance on May 27th as a joint release between Seeing Red Records and Kozmik Artifactz. You can pre-order the record here.

Give ear...

WATCH: Blue Heron - Futurola (music video)

SOME BUZZ

For decades now, bands across the planet have blasted out their versions of heavy, fuzz-driven rock, driven by a deep and mystical fascination with the desert. Blue Heron is a heavy rock band from Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose firsthand relationship with the desert is inextricable from who they are and how they sound - they embody the tag 'Desert-Rock' to its core.

Blue Heron’s guitarist and singer were the founding members of Spiritu, possibly Albuquerque's first desert rock band, who burned briefly yet brightly with a Jack Endino-produced debut LP, a European tour with Clutch, Spiritual Beggars and Dozer, and a compilation slot next to Entombed and Mastodon.

On December 3rd, 2021, Blue Heron self-released the 'Black Blood of the Earth' EP, the same month contributing a track to Magnetic Eye Records' Best of AC/DC [Redux] alongside Kryptograf, Kal-El, Supersuckers, Domkraft and more.

Of the debut EP, 'The Big Takeover' said, "Blue Heron hits the sweet spot at the center of a vortex around which swirls sensual stoner doom, thuggish heavy blues and bad trip psychedelia," and Real Gone Rocks called Black Blood of the Earth, "an instantly classic slab of stoner."

Black Blood of the Earth / A Sunken Place by Blue Heron

'Ephemeral' (2022), 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.

Blue Heron's 'Ephemeral' arrives on May 27th from Seeing Red Records in North America and Kozmik Artifactz in Europe.

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