Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows – Inexorable Opposites
Release Date: 6th February 2026
Label: Magnetic Eye Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Psychedelic Western Rock, Psych Rock, Stoner Rock, Blues, Sludge Rock.
FFO: (early) Monster Magnet, All Them Witches, Wo Fat, Greenleaf.
Review By: Paul Franklin
The sci-fi/space western is a genre that has provided us a huge cultural output, consider Star Wars or Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels. It is therefore only natural that, on their fourth album, antipodean fuzz lords Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows have their eponymous gunslinger halt in his journey across a fictional dusty west to tilt his head back and take in the vast, imposing cosmos stretching endlessly above his head. Pausing to consider issues that might affect those of us in the real world.
This is summed up by the album’s title Inexorable Opposites that hypothesises that ‘real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites – day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil’, perhaps then intentionally the album also includes both the ‘heaviest’ and ‘gentlest’ songs the band have ever recorded. Final track To Die is a mellow, meditative reflection on what has come before, whilst the Doom Metal riffs of Venomous make it sound like it’s being dragged kicking and screaming into the heart of a black hole.
The band’s atmospheric dark Western sound draws explores a wide range of genres and incorporates elements of blues, stoner rock, lo-fi fuzz, spaghetti western scores, and doom metal among others. With this new release there is also a strong pull towards Space Rock, in particular similarities to Spine Of God era Monster Magnet can be heard throughout (and no, in case you’re wondering Dave Is Done is an ode to a good friend of the band’s who sadly passed away, rather than a reference to Mr Wyndorf). But, whereas the style of Space Rock produced by MM and other bands of their ilk could be seen as a druggy, introspective trip through the light fantastic, Inexorable Opposites is more of a head on collision with an exploding supernova.
Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows make a big sound, a very big sound. A big sound that deserves to be heard through big speakers, in a big space, by a big audience.
(4 / 5)
