ELDER
Through Zero
Two decades into their existence, Elder remain an anomaly in the underground rock scene - a rare band with the ability to absorb and shed influences from a myriad of genres without falling into pastiche or losing their own identity. Their new record Through Zero is a strong reaffirmation of a commitment to pushing boundaries in the world of heavy rock and cements the group’s status as leaders of the pack in heavy psychedelic rock.
Elder has long since mastered crushing riffs, melodic jaunts, progressive patterns, hypnotic grooves and ethereal atmosphere along their path of music-making in the past twenty years. On Through Zero, Elder takes these years of experience and forms possibly their most immediate and engaging record to date, while allowing seeds from outside the sphere of rock music to take root and bloom within their progressive framework. Listeners will find familiar elements of new textures, sequences, and sounds alongside Elder’s iconic take on heavy rock. As always, every spin reveals new details.
Recorded in Berlin across several months between tours in 2025, Through Zero is the first album which the band not only produced but also co-mixed together with longtime collaborator Richard Behrens. The album sounds more like a full extension of the band’s creative intentions than ever before.
Elder was founded sometime around 2006 or so - nobody remembers exactly - in a small coastal town in Massachusetts by three longtime friends with a passion for heavy downtuned music. Over the years, the band has gained a guitarist, lost a drummer, relocated (mostly) from the States to Germany, played hundreds of shows from small clubs to arenas across the world and released six full-length albums, four EPs and two live records. Though this pedigree isn’t a requirement for anything, the twists and turns along the group’s winding road to today might explain the group’s refusal to stagnate.
Elder:
Nick DiSalvo - Guitar/Vocals
Jack Donovan - Bass
Mike Risberg - Guitar/Keyboards
Georg Edert - Drums
About the album title (from Nick’s personal perspective):
“Through Zero” is a term borrowed from engineering and the world of music. It describes the property of a frequency being able to pass through the zero point and continue into the negative. While it isn’t a concept rooted in philosophy, it resonates with me on a conceptual level: the zero point is not an end, but a midpoint along a partially unseen path. Interpretation is open: the journey is the destination, beginnings and endings may be arbitrary, or perhaps reality is simply less linear than we tend to assume.
The songs on the album explore related themes that reflect my own observations and personal philosophy. Life and death, frustration and fear, helplessness and hope — all of these exist along the same “signal path.”
