Blue Heron – Everything Fades

by Mark 'Yeti' Richard · October 7, 2024

Blue Heron are from Albuquerque, New Mexico and formed in 2018. Their sound is a mix of stoner, doom, heavy psych, and metal. Their debut album Ephemeral, came out in 2022 on Blues Funeral Recordings. 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 of Blue Heron consists of: Jadd Shickler on vocals, Ricardo Sanchez on drums, Steve Schmidlapp on bass, and Mike Chavez on guitars. Their latest album Everything Fades was released on September 27th 2024, on Blues Funeral Recordings.

“Null Geodesic” opens the album with a sample about “time and distance” and creeps in with brooding music and raspy vocals. It has a cataclysmic and haunting feel about it and sets the tone for the rest of the record. The title track, “Everything Fades” starts out slow with drums and clean guitars and then lays the carnage of heavy stoner doom rock goodness. Jadd Shickler‘s throaty bellows are unique and very effective. The Motörhead rawest is applied in his delivery but he has a cool and dynamic singing voice also. It kind of reminds me of The Mighty Nimbus but not as growly. His voice allows the music to execute freely as is the case with “Swansong”. The song begins slow and doomy but derives into a heavy metal master class of groove. There is something very interesting about Blue Heron’s music that I can’t quite put my finger on. Everything Fades starts off quite slow and sinister cemented with “We Breathe Darkness” as it lays heavy in the doom rock dungeon and allows Shickler‘s voice to really excel. The music has a nice rawest to it and the low rumbling bass and heavy drums give room for the guitars to explore ring out chords at times and noisy and fluid leads. The execution works really well combined with the varied vocals of Shickler.

When the fifth track “Dinosaur” comes on, Everything Fades amplifies the stoner metal sound. The Kyuss like beginning riff sets you up for the prehistoric death march. Blue Heron continues to pummel through with an amplitude wave of fuzz. At around the 3:30 mark, the song crawls into bass and drums with heavy guitar chords accentuating the destruction as it concludes. “Trepidation” appears next with a laid back jammy feel to it. The instrumental has a funky yet psychedelic aura to it and displays some great guitar leads, courtesy of Chavez. The next song “Clearmountain” has a steady desert rock vibe throughout and expresses Sickler’s clean singing. “Bellwether” begins with clean guitars and thundering drums. Sickler’s vocals appear in a soft tone and the music builds up into a heavy rhythm with more aggressive vocals. The song plays on the soft to heavy dynamics and goes back and forth. It’s a fantastic song that keeps Blue Heron grounded in the stoner rock groove. The final track on the album is another instrumental entitled, “Flight Of The Heron”. The short song gets right to the point with chugging riffs and pounding drums. It’s more of an outro, clocking in at 1:17 total time.

Blue Heron has achieved a landmark record with Everything Fades. The songs seem to have been carefully constructed through “time and distance”. Not one of the tracks are overdone. The longest song is “We Breathe Darkness”, which is just over six minutes and nothing is overplayed on the album. The total run time is 39 minutes which is the perfect distance, for the recording. I really think Blue Heron are unique in their sound, mostly because of the variety in the vocals. I can see this record being a top release for many people, as I for one, enjoy it immensely.