Last week Sweden’s Dozer oversaw reissues of their final two (to-date) albums through Heavy Psych Sounds. The Italian label has been making its way through the Dozer catalog, and so has this interview series. Below, bassist Johan Rockner takes us back to 2005’s Through the Eyes of Heathens (discussed here), following the discussion yesterday of the demo collection recorded in the same era, Vultures (review here; discussed here), originally issued in 2013.

Through the Eyes of Heathens is a special album, and to be completely honest, I’m just happy to have the excuse to put it on while I write. From the bombastic opening of “Drawing Dead,” it establishes Dozer as a more dynamic outfit than any of their prior material could have, even as it hinted toward what was coming. “Born a Legend,” “From Fire Fell,” “The Roof, the River, the Revolver,” are more than just catchy tracks. They find Dozer more fully realizing the brash side of 2002’s Call it Conspiracy (discussed here; also discussed here), as they moved farther away from the desert-style heavy of 2001’s Madre de Dios (discussed here) and 2000’s In the Tail of a Comet (discussed here) and deeper into their own identity. Recording in Finland, they nonetheless set a standard for Swedish heavy rock that few beyond themselves could hope to meet, try though they might and have.

Their fourth album was also their 10th anniversary, and Rockner, as well as guitarist Tommi Holappa, guitarist/vocalist Fredrik Nordin, and then-drummer Karl Daniel Lidén rose to that occasion in songwriting and performance. Complete with a guest vocal spot from Troy Sanders of tourmates Mastodon on closer “Big Sky Theory,” Through the Eyes of Heathens is the moment at which Dozer became the band they were meant to be, and the identity of their craft has not been dulled in the least by the ensuing 16 years. It is a thing of beauty right unto Peder Bergstrand‘s willfully weird cover design, and whether you’ve embraced and been embraced by the record before or you’re a stranger to it, as someone listening to it right now, I’ll tell you flat out that you’ll only find welcome and refuge in its course.

This interview series, the other parts of which are all haphazardly linked above, will conclude tomorrow with Rockner discussing Beyond Colossal.

Until then, here’s this and thanks for reading:

Through the Eyes of Heathens Q&A with Johan Rockner

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Tell me about where you see Through the Eyes of Heathens in terms of Dozer’s overall progression. How does it relate to Call it Conspiracy in your mind?

That album was a big turning point, in the same way Call it Conspiracy was, but different. I think it relates mostly through songwriting. But also, we learned alot from the making of Call it Conspiracy, which was a big project from start to finish. Especially for us. Best producer and best studios.

So, take all the good lessons we learned from CIC, and carefully use those, but in our way in the process of THEOH.

This was the first album Dozer put out with Small Stone Records. How did that deal come about and what did that change in distribution mean for the band?

Haha! I guess all the money ran out on the CIC project, and we were in urgent need of someone else to pay for the next album. ;) I guess distribution was a part of it, and also other connections the label had. But I guess, we needed a change over and all and Small Stone was back then a place for bands like us to be.

Looking back on them now and revisiting them for this reissue, what do songs like “Born a Legend” and “Man of Fire” mean to you now? What do you remember about writing or recording them?

For me, all the songs are great, and the songs “Big Sky Theory,” “Until Man Exists No More” and “From Fire Fell” stick out the most to me, but they are also songs we always love to play live. But this album is the album that I guess had the best impact for us as a band.

A lot of things happened before recording it, Erik [Bäckwall] left the band, Daniel joined the band, European tour with Mastodon and two years of making songs. So the band was full of new energy and the direction of the songs just came naturally. We made 16 songs for this album, 10 on album and six of them ended up on Vultures. Says a lot about our creativity at this time, we were definitely on a roll. :)

What’s the story behind the album cover?

Love the cover that Peder [Bergstrand, Lowrider] made. I don’t know the story, but I guess Peder had some weird fantasies about crossing different animal species and see what kind of strange new ones who would appear. We’ll never know.

Anything in particular you’d like to add about Through the Eyes of Heathens? Any other standout memories to share about this time in the band?

This album recording sticks out for me. A lot of good memories. This was around Midsummer’s Eve on an island just outside Helsinki, Finland. Two weeks of good times. Good recording days, music, friends and parties. Troy [Sanders, Mastodon] came by to sing some guest vocals, went to see their show with Iron Maiden. Good hang with them and Fantomas, who also toured Europe at that time.

The only video recording diary we ever made. Which also reflects how much fun, crazy and weird stuff that was going on during our recording. Watch it!

Dozer, Through the Eyes of Heathens

Dozer, Through the Eyes of Heathens Studio Diary

Dozer on Thee Facebooks

Dozer on YouTube

Dozer website

Heavy Psych Sounds on Thee Facebooks

Heavy Psych Sounds on Instagram

Heavy Psych Sounds on Twitter

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

Heavy Psych Sounds website

Part of the magic of listening to Dozer is being able to say, no matter which of their five albums you put on, that, yes, this was the moment when they came into their own. Even going back to their 2000 debut, In the Tail of a Comet (discussed here), as their sound was so highly influenced by the desert rock coming out of California, they inevitably brought their own spin to those established elements. 2005’s Through the Eyes of Heathens was their penultimate album ahead of 2008’s Beyond Colossal (discussed here), and it was their first release through Small Stone Records in the US, which became their home after moving from Man’s Ruin Records to their own Molten Universe imprint. They were, of course, an absolute monster of a band by then, and given the swath of early and later splits and singles they released and the touring they did, it’s easy to forget that only five years separate their first and fourth long-players. But that momentum can be heard as well across the 10 songs on Through the Eyes of Heathens, and it sounds utterly unstoppable.

From the very start of “Drawing Dead” through the memorable lead line in the slower-paced closer “Big Sky Theory,” Dozer assembled a work of impeccable songwriting and deep-rooted character. In the arc of their career, every record was another step forward, and just as 2001’s Madre de Dios built on the debut and 2003’s Call it Conspiracy (discussed here) built on that, so too did Through the Eyes of Heathens pick up from where its predecessor left off. Its sound was still rooted in a heavy rock feel, but Dozer were able to translate that into something more aggressive when they wanted — their sound had bite as well as lumber, and while a cut like “Born a Legend” could be traced back to their desert-minded beginnings in its basic structure, by the time it was finally executed, it was something else entirely. Working with the core trio of guitarist/vocalist Fredrik Nordin, guitarist Tommi Holappa (see also: Greenleaf), bassist Johan Rockner (now of Besvärjelsen), the band had parted with drummer Erik Bäckwall (also now in Besvärjelsen) after the third LP, and they brought in Karl Daniel Lidén to fill in behind the kit.

No minor change. Lidén had played in Greenleaf with Holappa as well as in Demon Cleaner, and was already by then well into honing his craft as a producer/engineer. On drums for Through the Eyes of Heathens, he added to the propulsion of songs like “From Fire Fell” and the underlying intensity of “The Roof, the River, the Revolver,” while holding together the airy groove in the volume-surge chorus of “Days of Future Past.” His approach to the riffs was to meet them head on, such that every turn of “Blood Undone” seems punctuated and “Man of Fire” seems to run at a clip trying to convey putting itself out. His work, alongside Holappa‘s leads and riff construction, Nordin‘s ultra-distinctive and ever-more-confident vocals, and Rockner‘s classic you-guys-just-go-ahead-and-have-fun-if-you-need-me-I’ll-be-here-being-the-foundation-of-these-songs style of bass, helped bring the pointed energy of Through the Eyes of Heathens to live, such that it wasn’t just heavy, or grooving, or loud, or whatever else. It was vibrant. On a sheer delivery level, Dozer evoked a sense of shove that spoke to the urgency of its own creation. Putting it on was like having Arnold Schwarzenegger hold out his robot hand and say, “Come with me if you want to live.”

And while, yes, definitely some of Through the Eyes of Heathens‘ highlight moments were found in its intense push, there was never a lack of atmosphere. Sure, flourish of piano, organ, percussion, etc., helped with that, but most of it was owed to the breadth of the guitar tones and to Nordin‘s ease of melody. His shouts in “Born a Legend,” and the standalone lines in “Until Man Exists No More” — which almost made the guest vocal spot on that track from Mastodon‘s Troy Sanders feel superfluous — made for an essential presence throughout, and as much reach as there was in the songs, Nordin‘s performance was one more standout factor tying the material together. One could say the same of Holappa‘s work on guitar. I already said it about Rockner on bass, and the same applied to Lidén‘s drums. It was everything in these songs. There was no “miss” anywhere on the album.

Which is what it came down to. It was the songs. There was a memorable line, or a riff, or just something about the way it was played, to go with every single track on Through the Eyes of Heathens. It’s a 44-minute record, so not short — though the standard has gotten shorter in intervening years with the vinyl resurgence and so on — but a cut like “Omega Glory” seemed to move from hook to hook to hook, and even in the eight-minute stretch of “Big Sky Theory” at the end or in the quieter verses of “Days of Future Past,” there was ultimately nothing spare about it.

There are arguments to be made for each of Dozer‘s full-lengths as being their best work. Through the Eyes of Heathens, for me at least, seems to summarize much of what made them so rich and hard-hitting as well as the individualized sensibility of their material. I won’t take away from anything they did before or after — their last offering, 2013’s Vultures (review here), was the compiled pre-production demos for this album — but I still find myself going back to Through the Eyes of Heathens not infrequently and it feels each time like not only does it still have something new to offer, that it’s not just nostalgia, but also that it stands up to the time since it first came out with an ease that makes almost a decade and a half seem like nothing at all. Maybe that is nostalgia in itself. Fine, and well earned. True front-to-back releases are rare. They don’t happen every year, contrary to what hyperbole and promospeak tell you. Through the Eyes of Heathens is a blueprint for how to make an album last longer than its runtime.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

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I went last night and saw Yawning Man and Freedom Hawk in Brooklyn. First club show in a while. I get too anxious these days in crowds. Fests I can kind of get away with it, because usually I’m going back and forth from one thing to the next, taking pictures, writing notes, whatever it is, but just standing around at a gig waiting for a band to go on, I feel like I’m losing my mind. It was a good show though, even though The Drunkest Guy in the Room kind of accused me of being a CIA agent. I guess because I looked stiff and was standing in the back? I don’t know. I was just glad he didn’t stab me in the throat with a piece of the glass he subsequently broke. New Yorkers, such as there are any, delude themselves in thinking that a kind of charm.

The baby was up this morning by the time I was done writing about Dozer. 5:30 or thereabouts. Brutal. I got in a little after midnight from the show, which ended a bit before 11, and was up at 4. My alarm had been set for 6. Just up. So it goes. Got some writing done, grabbed the baby, read books — One Fish Two Fish, Hop on Pop, and whatnot — and had breakfast. Gave the baby a bath and put him down for a nap, which The Patient Mrs. rightly decided also to take.

I meanwhile did the voice tracks for Sunday’s episode of ‘The Obelisk Show’ on Gimme Radio, answered some email to the best of my limited ability, and settled in for this. We’ll see if I can finish by the time The Pecan awakes.

Seemed silly to post about it, but this week I put up the 11,000th post on this site. Not bad. They’re not all gold, but you know, it’s a pretty significant number anyway.

So Monday will be the Yawning Man/Freedom Hawk live review. Here’s what else I’ve got in the notes. There’s plenty:

MON 01/21 Yawning Man live review; Hollow Leg album stream.
TUE 01/22 The Sabbathian album stream.
WED 01/23 9Doorsopen track premiere; Benthic Realm video premiere.
THU 01/24 Thermic Boogie track premiere; Sundrifter video.
FRI 01/25 Swallow the Sun review.

Subject to change something something blah blah.

It’s a lot of cool stuff, and it means I won’t just be spending this weekend filing my secret undercover CIA report about the vape-quotient at the Yawning Man show and instead will have plenty of writing to keep me busy. Seriously, what the hell would the CIA be doing at the Vitus Bar? I would love to know what the reason would be. Why would they be there? What’s the operation? Testing the effects of the sustained awesomeness of Mario Lalli’s bass-playing on the fragile human psyche?

Again, I was glad to not be stabbed.

Or slashed.

Alright, I’m gonna punch out so I can go read reviews of the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery season two before I actually watch it so I can sound smart when I make “observations” about canon connections to The Patient Mrs. Don’t tell her.

Have a great and safe weekend. Forum, radio, merch.

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