The Howling Eye ERF Archives

Album Review: The Howling Eye, ERF

Posted in Reviews on September 4th, 2025 by JJ Koczan

As Will Smith said once upon 30 years ago, “Welcome to ERF.” Thankfully, Polish weirdo-specialist psychedelic trio The Howling Eye offer a friendlier context for the welcome than punching an alien in the face, but their four-song/47-minute full-length has its own otherworldly aspects and moments. Issued through Interstellar Smoke, it is the band’s follow-up to 2023’s List Do Borykan (review here), and its 17-minute leadoff title/longest-track (immediate points) has been around longer than that, since it featured on the band’s 2024 live album, Riffields, which was recorded in 2022.

Temporal displacement? Think of it as a multidimensional theme for the record. Comprised of drummer/vocalist Hubert Cebula Lewandowski (also recording), bassist Miłosz Wojciechowski (also guitar) and guitarist/keyboardist Jan Chojnowski (also bouzouki, synth, recording), the latter of whom is listed as producer alongside Jacek Stasiak (who also adds alto sax and guest guitar throughout), the three-piece sound almost from the get-go like they’re working in their own time. A mix of birdsong and synth blips opens backing a pastoralist, King Buffalo-circa-“Orion”-style flow and resonance of guitar. “ERF” will ultimately parse into distinct movements, but as the far-back mellotron enters the mix and the likewise-dreamy first vocals arrive, the procession makes it absolutely clear that the band are in no hurry to go anywhere and, as melodic, drifting and welcoming as the opening few minutes of “ERF” are, that becomes the root of the challenge they issue their audience.

It’s not just about the songs being slow, but about the way The Howling Eye dwell in parts and execute their songs not just as jams or structured pieces, but as manifestations of place and time. As the initial build of “ERF” recedes to set up the next one (with sax) en route to the back-end stretch of speedier boogie-swirl and a return to the subdued to draw it down, the movement is hypnotic, sure, and as immersive as one would expect for a piece that leaves so much open room for the listener to put themselves. But if you come into it restless, or expecting something less molten in the flow that defines it, the gradual nature of their craft is going to test patience. Heavy psychedelia as meditation goal? Maybe. What ultimately makes it work is the inviting sound of “ERF” as the suitably-enough worldmaking lead-in for what follows in the likewise-all-caps “WEED,” “FIRE” and “MOC WIELKIEGO BUCHA,” the latter of which bookends at just under 14 minutes; the fact that as far out as The Howling Eye go, they adjust the context of normalcy to suit their craft.

They make their own kind of sense, in other words. Even the succession of “ERF,” “WEED,” “FIRE” — as opposed to, say Earth, Wind and Fire — plays a part in conveying the personality of the band, obviously not taking themselves too seriously, but at the same time telling a story as well. The stated theme for ERF reportedly derives from the life of Chris McCandless.

Known as the inspiration for the novel/film Into the Wild, McCandless was a ’90s-era offgridder, who left behind what probably would’ve been a mediocre suburban life in order to venture into the wilds of Alaska, where he died of apparent starvation due to a lack of actual survival skills. His story has been romanticized by naturalists, and not without reason. On some level, even if you feel like it’s a question of your own survival, it takes courage to leave behind the life you’ve been told you want for, well, your entire life. That it ended with McCandless dead alone on an abandoned bus in the middle of nowhere is secondary; he went out on his own terms and that’s not nothing.

The lesson The Howling Eye seem to take from this is accordingly working toward their own goals from their own point of view. Rather than sublimate their experience of time or the impulses that drive their songwriting, they portray an honest, unpretentious weirdoism as “ERF” gives over to the acoustic-but-grows-shouty-and-loud-later “WEED,” which leans willfully, rightly, into its guest-harmonica-laced hook in a ’90s-type singalong that’s part MTV Unplugged but that they let get entrancing and psychedelic before they turn it around and click on the clarion distortion, well doomed as it reveals an Electric Wizard lumber that it turns out was in the song the entire time. With this, they flatten and scorch — still distorted in time as well as tone — but as it will also at another, non-human timescale, “FIRE” is a reset, balancing drift and low-end heft across its six and a half minutes such that the restlessness that emerges in the guitar gets smacked with the return of the alto sax and a clear silence precedes the arrival of “MOC WIELKIEGO BUCHA.”

With its title translated to English as ‘The Power of the Big Bang,’ “MOC WIELKIEGO BUCHA” might just be the source of the rest of what’s happening throughout ERF, or at very least, its roomy exploration and heavy repetitions give an appropriate summary of a lot of what has worked best in the other material while enacting a more dramatic build that, as it would, takes time to reside in its minimalist reaches before they arrive at a more traditional payoff toward the conclusion. The returning vocals after “FIRE” have a grounding effect, and lend emotion to that last volume swell and nod as the band make their way toward and into the finish. They let it go all the way to silence and there’s a clip of some laughter echoing, but that’s it.

Imagine being able to have a conversation with trees. The record’s kind of like that. It happens on a wavelength of time that, for many brains, will be pointedly incongruous with modern life. And this, we see, becomes how the band’s theme manifests in the material itself. It is about stepping outside of norms or expectations, maybe even putting your (my) phone down for a minute or 47 in order to have a lived experience, yes, but more to be transposed from one place to another by art. The Howling Eye aren’t without their indulgent aspects — I’m sorry, but that’s the nature of a 17-minute-long song; I don’t make the rules — but the potential rewards for those who can follow where they lead far outstrip the effort required to actually hear what they’re doing.