Album Review: Author & Punisher, Nocturnal Birding
If the notion of Author and Punisher putting out a record themed around birds seems counterintuitive, fair enough. Nocturnal Birding wasn’t on my Bingo card either. In 2022, the San Diego-based, mostly-solo outfit of auteur and machinist Tristan Shone released Krüller (review here), which was a consuming soundtrack for the apocalypse humanity had just lived through in the years immediately preceding, and not only the lyrics, but the feel of the production seemed to embody a sci-fi analog for the times. Obviously the mission across the eight-song/34-minute Nocturnal Birding is different, and well it should be.
Each track represents a species — the exception is “Titmouse” and its pluralized counterpart “Titmice,” which follows — and while “Meadowlark” feels like a departure in some ways, it functions across its four and a half minutes not unlike Krüller opener “Drone Carrying Dread,” establishing the atmospheric backdrop against which the album will take place. Here, that involves birdsong. Some of it is manipulated digitally as one might expect, some of it echoes over imaginary canyons, but it is one of a few threads running throughout Nocturnal Birding, and it starts early over the first, clean-sung two minutes of “Meadowlark,” from which the lead cut transitions to the hard-chugging guitar that — guess what — is another thread.
In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote a bio for Nocturnal Birding and as part of that spoke with Shone about his experiences in volunteer groups near the Mexican border, handing out water bottles to migrants and helping people in the hyperspecific ways that wouldn’t also get him arrested by a government that consistently seems to get off most on its own cruelty. Those times, outdoors, at night, hearing the birds, inform not only the lyrics — handwritten in the album’s liner notes — and themes of “Meadowlark,” the closer “Thrush,” and other pieces, but they underline the core message of the work on a meta-level as well, which is that no one is coming to save you. There is no Jesus on the way, no white knights to come make things ‘right,’ whatever that even means in an era that’s nullified and commoditized truth, and the only way we get through is together. Collaboration.
This is shown not only in “Mute Swan,” where Megan Osztrosits of Couch Slut adds vocals, or “Titanis” where Indonesia’s Kuntari contribute live drums, or “Black Storm Petrel,” which was written together with French industrialists Fange, but in the deepening of the collaboration between Shone and guitarist Doug Sabolick (also of Ecstatic Vision, A Life Once Lost, Plaque Marks, etc.). The latter joined Shone in the wake of the last record to help bring that material to life onstage, and in addition to the head-spinning leads in the second half of “Titmouse,” his stamp can be heard in throughout the LP, whether it’s following the rolling procession of “Titanis” or in a more forward role, casting notes into the bleak ether about a minute into “Black Storm Petrel” or setting the bed of drone that becomes the undulating riff of “Rook,” penultimate to “Thrush,” where an omegachug bookends with “Meadowlark” righteously.
The expression of togetherness — which is to say nothing of breaking with the expectation of Author and Punisher as being a solo-project, even if Shone‘s still driving the songwriting — further extends to the construction of the album itself. While not at all devoid of ambience, whether that’s the soon-contrasted minimalism that opens to such breadth in “Thrush” or the echoing, otherworldly birds at the outset of “Mute Swan” joined by high-end wubs as it begins moving toward its also-clean-sung culmination, the airy aftermath in the end of “Titanis,” etc., this collection of songs was very clearly composed with the live presentation considered. To put numbers to that, Krüller had two tracks under five minutes long; Nocturnal Birding has seven. The shorter they are, the more you can play live, and the more generally direct they’ll be perceived as being. This puts Nocturnal Birding more in line with 2018’s Relapse Records label debut, Beastland (discussed here), but the context is different in sound and concept. The lessons of Krüller haven’t been forgotten so much as refined as part of an ongoing creative evolution.
Physical presence becomes important, the physicality of the songs, whether that’s Shone and Sabolick working through ideas together or the audience in front of the stage waiting to be flattened by the results. Author and Punisher remain largely in an echelon of their own when it comes to conveying aural weight in industrial music. The ‘kick drum’ alone in “Black Storm Petrel” conveys this superlative heft, as one layer goes to 16th notes — double-kick — and that core thud remains in place underneath, a punctuation unto itself. It grounds the angularity of “Titmice,” which tempo-wise moves away from the lurch in “Titanis,” and amid the stuttered verse hooks of “Mute Swan” and the cacophony that backs the arrival of Osztrosits‘ spoken part, it remains central to the movement of the piece. Complemented by the higher-register synth in the last crescendo of “Thrush,” it is another element tying the work together. A crucial difference is the corresponding prominence of the guitar.
Godflesh have always been a touchstone for industrial metal anything, and especially with the increased focus on live, by-human guitar, that lineage can be heard in “Rook,” the extreme-feeling middle of “Black Storm Petrel” and the way “Meadowlark” makes the riff the basis of its final build. But more than 20 years on from Shone‘s outset with the project, Nocturnal Birding finds Author and Punisher less beholden to aggression even in some of the outright nastiest stretches. “Meadowlark” is fierce and yells into the void with barking vocals up front as it resolves, but in the conclusions of “Mute Swan” and “Titmice,” leading into the apex of “Rook” and the Steve Von Till-esque beginning of “Thrush,” Shone sings soulfully and with no less striking a presence than one finds in the harshest, noisiest reaches of “Black Storm Petrel.”
Perhaps, then, the ultimate message of Nocturnal Birding is that as much as Author and Punisher have a core, identifiable sound, no two records issued under the moniker have ever been the same, and that the progression of craft has led Shone (and now Sabolick) to a place where notions of breadth and pinpointed impact can combine. “Thrush” is the longest inclusion on the album at 5:49, and sets forth mournfully into the slow churn of its first half, with maybe too much longing for it to have opened, but an apparent answer to “Meadowlark” just the same. And like the opener, it grows fiercer with the guitar, transitions via birdsong and shifts into a finish that feels like a summary of the album as a whole; complete in ways that go beyond just bringing back the earlier movement after the chug and building it out to end.
Between the themes, worldmaking, continued development of sound and complexity of the songs, Nocturnal Birding isn’t lacking for ‘stuff going on’ at any point. It is a testament to Shone and Sabolick on a compositional level that it’s also engaging in a way that music so outwardly bludgeoning rarely is. The mix is vast and there is room for you in it, should you also want to be a part of the collaboration just through the experience of listening. In doing so, one might even find comfort of a kind, as well as catharsis.
Author & Punisher, “Titanis” official video
Author & Punisher, “Thrush” official video
Author & Punisher, Nocturnal Birding (2025)
Author & Punisher on Instagram
Tags: Author and Punisher, Author and Punisher Nocturnal Birding, California, Nocturnal Birding, Relapse Records, San Diego
