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The profile · researched 26 September 2026
Elder: twenty years, one sabbatical and the long way round to Through Zero
The Massachusetts-born, Berlin-based heavy progressive band released their seventh album, Through Zero, on 29 May 2026 to the best reviews of their career, and are halfway through a North American headline run that ends in Boston on 3 October.
Massachusetts, then Berlin
Elder started in Massachusetts in the mid-2000s as a three-piece: Nick DiSalvo on guitar and vocals, Chas Mitchell on bass and Matt Couto on drums. Their first release was a 2006 split with the psychedelic group Queen Elephantine, followed by a self-titled debut on MeteorCity in 2008 — doom and stoner rock played at length, with tracks that already ran past the point where most bands stop. Jack Donovan came in on bass that same year and has been there ever since. Dead Roots Stirring arrived on MeteorCity in 2011.
The turn came with Lore in 2015, issued by the German label Stickman Records, and with DiSalvo's move from Boston to Berlin in the same year. Louder points to that relocation as the moment the band's centre of gravity shifted from riff-led heavy rock towards progressive rock proper. Mike Risberg joined in 2017 on second guitar and keyboards. Couto, a founder member, left in 2019 and was replaced by the Berlin drummer Georg Edert, giving the band the line-up it still has.
DiSalvo has named Colour Haze and Dungen among his reference points, and the writing bears it out: melodic guitar lines built off pentatonic shapes, laid over grooves heavy enough to keep the music in the metal racks even as the arrangements drift somewhere else entirely.
The records that changed what the band was for
Reflections of a Floating World, released on Stickman in 2017, is the album that widened the audience. Rolling Stone placed it fifth in its list of the best metal albums of that year. The Gold & Silver Sessions, an instrumental EP from 2019, then opened the door on the krautrock and retro-prog textures that have dominated the band's work since; Omens followed in 2020.
Two collaborations and a detour sit in between. Eldovar – A Story of Darkness & Light, made with the Berlin band Kadavar, came out in 2021, as did the In Procession / Halcyon EP. Innate Passage, the sixth album, arrived on 25 November 2022 with every track running between nine and nearly fifteen minutes. Reviewers singled out Coalescence and the closing Merged in Dreams – Ne Plus Ultra, and noted that DiSalvo's singing — for years the most argued-over part of the band — had audibly improved.
By that point Elder were an established fixture of the European heavy underground: long songs, no shortening of them for anybody's benefit, a German label, and a touring schedule that would eventually cost them.
Burnout, Delving and an eighteen-minute surprise
DiSalvo has been unusually direct about what the post-pandemic years did to him. Speaking to Louder, he described a band playing something in the order of a hundred shows a year and a writer whose working life had been swallowed by administration: "I spend more time writing emails than playing guitar these days. That really bums me out. I'm trying to bring the joy back into creation." On The Sonic Road podcast, published on 24 May 2026, he talked about approaching burnout, about deliberately scaling the workload back to make room, and about a quiet pride in twenty years of work alongside the admission that the absence of mainstream success still stings. His summary of the economics was blunt: "The underground scene runs on love of the creative process."
Elder took most of 2024 off. DiSalvo spent the gap on Delving, his solo outlet for psych, krautrock and early electronic music, which produced Hirschbrunnen in 2021 and All Paths Diverge in 2024. The band reconvened in Berlin in the winter of 2024.
What surfaced first was not the album. On 22 September 2025 Elder released Liminality / Dream State Return with no warning — eighteen minutes of music written as a single composition and split into two halves, put out through Stickman. The material had been written between Omens and Innate Passage and, in DiSalvo's words, "never quite fit either album"; he called the finished piece "another bridge between worlds", adding that "after many years of making music together, it's nice to know that we can still surprise ourselves". The filmmaker Malachi Cull made an accompanying video. The band then toured Europe with All Them Witches that October, carrying on through headline dates in Portugal, Spain and France until 1 November.
Through Zero
The seventh album was recorded at Big Snuff Studios in Berlin across 2025, in the gaps between tours. It is the first Elder record the band produced themselves, co-mixed with their long-standing collaborator Richard Behrens and mastered by Carl Saff. It came out on 29 May 2026 — Stickman in Europe and the UK, Blues Funeral Recordings in North America, Bird's Robe in Australia. Six tracks: Sigil to Ruin, Capture/Release, the title track, Strata, Sight Unseen and the acoustic-leaning Blighted Age. Most run past eight minutes; Strata is 10:49.
The reception has been the strongest of the band's career. The Obelisk, reviewing it on 26 May 2026, called it an obvious album-of-the-year contender and wrote that Elder "are arguably the best the heavy underground has to offer, period". Angry Metal Guy gave it 4.0 out of 5.0, describing a record that folds the whole discography together, with Risberg's synthesisers given far more room and DiSalvo's voice pushed towards a Jon Anderson-style tenor. Louder, on 31 July 2026, heard Pink Floyd and Yes crossed with Sleep and Electric Wizard, and judged it more stylistically balanced than anything before it. Several reviewers made the same point independently: for a record built from ten-minute progressive rock pieces, it is remarkably easy to sit inside.
DiSalvo's own framing is procedural rather than grand. "We always try to reset and refocus between records so that we're doing something that feels fresh to us," he told Louder — which, after a year away, is close to a description of method.
Autumn 2026: where they are right now
The touring cycle opened in Europe over the summer: Download Festival at Derby on 13 June, The 1865 in Southampton on 15 June, Hellfest at Clisson on 18 June, Das Bett in Frankfurt on 21 June, P8 in Karlsruhe on 24 June with the Chicago band REZN opening, and Monolit in Budapest on 24 July.
The North American headline run — the band's first full headline tour of the continent behind the new record — began in September. Richmond on the 9th, Asheville on the 10th, The Masquerade in Atlanta on the 11th, Levitation in Austin on the 13th, Mesa on the 16th, San Diego on the 17th, the Regent in Los Angeles on the 18th, San Jose on the 19th, the Rickshaw in Vancouver on the 21st and the Roseland in Portland on the 22nd. Still to come: Federal Theatre in Denver on 26 September, Avondale Music Hall in Chicago on 28 September, the Opera House in Toronto on 30 September, Théâtre Fairmount in Montreal on 1 October, Webster Hall in New York on 2 October and the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on 3 October. Bask, from North Carolina, opened the first half of the run; Blackwater Holylight took over for the remaining dates. Songkick logs 37 Elder performances across 2026.
The cycle continues into next year. On 3 July 2026 the band confirmed sixteen European dates between 3 and 21 February 2027, from Kulttempel in Oberhausen to Le Trabendo in Paris, taking in Melkweg in Amsterdam, Rockefeller in Oslo and Festsaal Kreuzberg in Berlin on 13 February. A five-date UK leg follows immediately: Trinity Centre in Bristol on the 23rd, the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds on the 24th, The Garage in Glasgow on the 25th, Academy 2 in Manchester on the 26th and Electric Brixton in London on the 27th, with Temple Fang and REZN supporting throughout.
The show, now
Sets on the current North American run are short in count and long in minutes: setlist.fm logs six to eight songs a night, which at Elder's writing lengths fills a headline slot on its own. The shape has been consistent since Richmond on 9 September — Sigil to Ruin opens almost every night, Capture/Release lands early, and Blind, Coalescence, Catastasis and the title track rotate through the middle. The centrepiece is the 2025 EP played whole, Liminality running straight into Dream State Return, as logged in Atlanta on 11 September, San Diego on the 17th, San Jose on the 19th and Vancouver on the 21st. Closers vary between Halcyon, Sanctuary and Gemini; Portland on 22 September ended on Sanctuary and Gemini after six songs. Fabien de Menou has been added on keyboards for the tour, freeing Mike Risberg's synth parts from Through Zero to be played rather than compromised, and the band project psychedelic animations behind the stage rather than relying on lighting alone. Bask opened the first half of the run, Blackwater Holylight the second, and REZN filled the slot on the European summer dates. Coverage has been warm rather than analytical — a reviewer at The Masquerade in Atlanta on 11 September wrote that "the vibe check across the venue was great, as I saw many people smiling and enjoying themselves", which is roughly the register of a crowd that knows how long each song is going to be and is there for exactly that.
Researched from doomed-nation.com · en.wikipedia.org · theobelisk.net · angrymetalguy.com · loudersound.com · thesonicroad.substack.com · theobelisk.net · setlist.fm
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