Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows - Inexorable Opposites

 

 

Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows - Inexorable Opposites
Magnetic Eye Records – 2026 
Rock, Psych, Stoner, Blues
Rated: *****

As usual, we’re late to the party. I’m pretty sure Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows invited us before, and I hope we RSVP’d. But even though I am sure we were at one of their shindigs and The Magnetic Ridge album even made it to the Number 6 spot of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2021, we can’t remember being this enamored and blown away by their music. The new Inexorable Opposites album, officially released through Magnetic Eye Records on February 6, sounds like the work of a couple of boys who’ve been searching for the fabled crossroads on every dreary midnight and finally found it… 

And as they rode away, twenty-one grams lighter, lightning flashing in the distance, that electric edge of a world half made, half imagined on Inexorable Opposites, blurs the line between mythic outlaw and the man behind the gun even more. Eight tracks surging like that desert storm, where opener Moss immediately roars like a horizon split by fire and the final To Die drifts like sun-bleached bones beneath a vast and indifferent sky. 

The devil does not care. He also does not forget. But with new drummer Brayden Becher driving the gallop, they might just stay ahead of him. They sound larger, heavier and alive with the chaos of creation itself. The drums and the scars, it’s what holds this record up to the light where the guitars can shine and burst alight with holy fire. For even though the songwriting feels like a reckoning and a map, stitched together from personal trauma, there is always the spectral weight of the imagined Jack. No sympathy for the devil, keep that in mind…

It’s a journey away from the crossroads, through all the wreckage and the ruin, and ultimately beauty, where every riff becomes a brush with violence and transcendence, with dark fire and glimmering light. And as those contrasts envelope you, the atmosphere ever more grandiose, you will find out the relentless motion of the album has brought you back to those dark bottomless eyes, they see you, they see your soul. And as you stare into that sun-scorched void, you suddenly feel  yourself surrounded by a serene form of tranquility, escape remains possible, everything remains possible… 

(Written by JK)

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Number 6 on The Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2021

Magnetic Eye Records

All Noir PR