Blue Heron – Emulations

by Mark 'Yeti' Richard · Published November 3, 2025 · Updated November 3, 2025

Blue Heron are a desert rocking stoner metal band from Albuquerque, New Mexico. The quartet have released two full length albums, 2022’s Ephemeral and 2024’s sophomore record, Everything Fades. They also released a Split EP with High Desert Queen in 2023 called, Turn To Stone: Chapter 8 the Wake, on Ripple Music. The current lineup consists of Jadd Shickler on vocals, Ricardo Sanchez on drums, Steve Schmidlapp on bass, and Mike Chavez on guitars. The band just released their latest, Emulations on October 10th 2025. It features eight tracks around forty one minutes long and was released on Blues Funeral Recordings.

Blue Heron’s Bandcamp page describes the origin of the album perfectly. “Emulations is an interim release comprising new Blue Heron studio recordings paired with tracks from a live-in-the-studio session at Albuquerque college radio station KUNM, all recorded in the Spring of 2025. The idea for the release came together when Blue Heron were making plans to record their song for the Magnetic Eye Records Best of NIN Redux project, and decided to see what else they could pull together to get the most of their studio time. The result was four new studio tracks, three being cover songs, along with four live-in-studio recordings from the radio session. The release title Emulations came from a lyric in one of the covers, and fit the concept of a record where the desert rockers are playing other bands’ songs or performing live versions of their own tunes.” Vocalist Jadd Shickler runs both Blues Funeral and Magnetic Eye Records and was also the founder of Meteor City Records back in the nineties.

“Grey” opens Emulations with a blistering Fudge Tunnel cover from their 1993 Creep Diets album. The dense fuzz and doomier version of the track is excellent. Blue Heron really makes it their own and the song fits nicely with the band’s sound and style. The second track “Marigold” was the first single from Emulations and the only new original studio track on the record. It starts with guitar and rips into a heavy riff of Blue Heron trademark desert rock. The vocals are what we come to expect from Shickler, with his raspy yet melodic delivery. The hammering drums and driving bass tones open the gateway for the guitars to flourish fuzzy riffage and noisy psychedelic leads. It’s a fantastic song and a step ahead for the band to follow up with after last year’s excellent Everything Fades (review here) album.

The third track is a classic Clutch cover called “The House That Peterbilt”, which was featured on their 1995 Self Titled album. Blue Heron do a bang up job with this one and layer some massive fuzz on top to make it work with their sound. The fourth track is “Find Away”, a song from the band Floor. Once again, the band does a terrific job making the song work with their crushing style. The Blue Heron version is more downtuned and viscous sounding but they honor the original perfectly, especially with the vocal performance from Jadd.

The last four tunes were recorded live in the studio for a radio session. The first being the title track from last year’s massive “Everything Fades”. The sound quality is excellent and the gritty and raw sound is right in the wheelhouse of what Blue Heron are all about. The next track called “Day Of The Comet” was originally on the Split release with High Desert Queen, 2023’s Turn To Stone: Chapter 8 the Wake. The next song is the first track off their debut Ephemera, entitled “Futurola”. Finally, the band gifts us with another banger from the Everything Fades album called “Swansong”. It’s a great closing track for this sort of compilation album. I am definitely digging this release for what it is and it satisfies the craving for yet more Blue Heron music.