Elder at Desertfest London 2025

Few contemporary bands come as highly recommended as Elder. Ask anyone in the more experimental stoner/psychedelic rock community and they will tell you about the Holy Trinity of King Buffalo, All Them Witches and Elder. KB delves deep into the meditative nature of desert rock, ATW incorporates much of the American folk tradition and the blues, while Elder are firmly rooted in progressive rock’s monumental layering of ideas.

The way this praise translated for me was that their music was cerebral, the technical prowess maybe not overshadowing the storytelling, but certainly standing as its own entity amid an immense body of work. Theirs are albums of 4 songs of 15 minutes each, theirs are solos of a virtuosity to rival classical violinists, theirs was the chance to open for Tool on their latest US tour after 20 years of becoming their own genre.

Originally hailing from Massachusetts and currently based in Germany, the quartet’s cosmic sound, taking the listener to the far reaches of what chords progressions and keys allow, has been growing, ebbing, flowing, changing from one release to the next, but nothing could have prepared them for the reach and following their third album, Lore, would bring. Five songs and just under an hour long, the fan-favourite celebrated its 10th anniversary on the Desertfest stage, with a back-to-front performance.

Playing albums in full on tour has become a growing trend – everyone from Clutch to All Them Witches to King Gizzard have been treating their fanbase to multi-date residencies in the same cities, playing one or more albums in their entirety, a unique treat for long-time fans to finally hear their favourite B-sides or hidden gems, while remaining a great introduction for new fans into the band’s core sound.

Starting off with the mesmerising math-heavy Compendium, easing into the post-rock melancholy of Legend, the immense buildup into the album’s eponymous middle child – by the time you’ve gotten your bearings again, the mosh pit has been frenzied into the sort of Brownian motion you get under a heat gun.

When listening at home, Lore seems to draw more inspiration from a mellow era of Dream Theater than the doom scene, never experimenting with time signature changes quite as indulgently, preferring instead the journey of steadily building a soundscape, a world for the listener to populate with their own imagination. The use of synths, the fuzzy shimmering interstellar pedal effects, all are there to give space, to set up the scene, to suspend your disbelief.

Live however, their relentless pace, with very little room to catch a breath, felt almost hardcore. The bass turned up to chest-shivering tremors, it allowed guitarist and frontman Nick DiSalvo to lasso onto a comet of their own making and speed into the upper reaches of what can be performed. The ending piece, Dead Roots Rising, with its danceable groove, lulls you into a sleepy rest, only to grab your hand halfway through and remind you this is stoner doom after all – if you don’t hold on, you’re gonna miss out on the most exhilarating ride of your life. You have to hang in there, believing in the redemptive moment at the end of each piece, even if you can’t see where the road ends. You have to trust that they’ll bring you back to earth, dishevelled, bewildered and radiant.

Elder is currently on a 5-date tour with Elephant Tree across France, Switzerland and Germany, and will be back in the UK in October, supporting All Them Witches. Check their tour dates at https://beholdtheelder.com/tour/