San Diego industrial doom/drone metal act Author & Punisher presents new full-length album »Nocturnal Birding«; out now via Relapse Records!

San Diego, California based one-man industrial doom/drone metal band Author & Punisher has just released new full-length album »Nocturnal Birding« on October 3rd, 2025 via Relapse Records.

Listen to »Nocturnal Birding« on all major streaming platforms!

Tracklist:
01. Meadowlark
02. Titanis (feat. Kuntari)
03. Mute Swan (feat. Megan Oztrosits of Couch Slut)
04. Black Storm Petrel (feat. Fange)
05. Titmouse
06. Titmice
07. Rook
08. Thrush

Courtesy of Relapse Records:

Author & Punisher is an industrial doom and drone metal one-man band utilizing primarily custom fabricated machines/controllers and speakers called Drone/Dub Machines. The devices draw heavily on aspects of industrial automation, robotics and mechanical tools and devices, focusing on the eroticism of the interaction with machine.

After celebrating 20 years since the inception of Author & Punisher in 2024, founding composer, vocalist and mechanical engineer Tristan Shone embraces the project’s broadest scope to-date with »Nocturnal Birding«, in terms of concept, execution and the shape of the ‘band’ itself.

As stated in the album’s credits, »Nocturnal Birding« is “dedicated to those who have lost their lives travelling across the border from Mexico to the USA through a cruel policy of prevention by deterrence. This land is not ours to hold onto nor was it ours to take.”

In addition to the strong and poignant messaging contained throughout the music, lyrics and artwork, »Nocturnal Birding« sees Tristan Shone synergizing with an array of artists from across the globe like never before in his career. From the artwork, meticulously designed by French artist Lucile Lejoly (Chat Pile, Roadburn Festival) to the mixing and mastering by Will Putney (Knocked Loose, Heriot, Body Count, Machine Head) to the musical guest appearances from France’s Fange, Indonesia’s Kuntari, and New York City’s Megan Oztrosits of Couch Slut, these outer creative inputs shine throughout the work.

Shone has welcomed collaborators in the past, but guitarist Doug Sabolick (Ecstatic Vision, Plaque Marks, A Life Once Lost, etc.) is the first genuine bandmate in Author & Punisher contributing creatively on guitar in ways that shape the persona of »Nocturnal Birding«, complementing Shone in melody and wrought tonal heft.

Sabolick is a factor in the dynamic throughout »Nocturnal Birding«, but it’s the theme behind the album that ties it together. Shone takes the bleak, cinematic futurism of Krüller and pares it down, sharpens the edges of the structures and removes what might be taken as spare or might lessen impact. The songs are shorter, fiercer, and reside in the post-apocalyptic low-end with a severity that, for a record named »Nocturnal Birding«, is almost completely counterindicative.

On the album’s concept, Shone notes, “When I sat down to start writing this album, I knew I wanted to make songs based on birdsong. The actual first guitar riff is one of the meadowlark’s songs. When you listen to »Rook«, that melody is the rook’s sound. That track is us mimicking one of the rooks’ many songs. I wrote all my tracks around the rhythms and melodies of birds I researched or heard in the wild. I’ve been doing my waterdrop work, which has been eye-opening for me. Border Angels is a group that drops water along the US/Mexico border. Two years ago, they opened up for volunteers again and I got to go out on a hike with them. I was out in Jacumba where I started doing hikes once a month, dropping water and getting to know some people, and I’ve been doing it ever since. It was very humbling and there was always this soundtrack of the birds out there through different seasons. For me it was an awakening: my eyes and ears were open to nature and this cruel and unnecessary humanitarian crisis at the border.”

Removing himself from an artistic comfort zone proved fruitful inspiration. There is literal birdsong all over »Nocturnal Birding«, and transposing those melodies and rhythms to guitar became the root of the material, representing a rare coming together of the natural world and mechanized sounds. “Sometimes it really worked,” says Shone, “like with »Thrush«, »Rook«, and »Meadowlark«, and other times it led me down a path of riffs like »Titmice« / »Titmouse« that brought me back to the days of Godflesh’s »Selfless«, and really chug-based, simple riffs. I recorded those riffs at home and took them to the studio and played my drone machines rig over the guitars through the P.A. Then Doug sort of sifted through the riffs and made changes, added melodies and a hell of a lot more finesse.”

The birding concept and migration stories speaks to a general deepening of processes within the band, and »Nocturnal Birding« is also the furthest outward reach Author & Punisher have fostered on a studio release. The collaboration with Sabolick extending to the writing is a ready example. There are definitive riffs here, and the guitar begins to come forward, chugging on »Rook«, »Titmice«, and so on, in a way that feels transgressive even in the industrial doom that A&P have helped pioneer. The breaking of rules turning inward. This too is growth.

As previously highlighted, further collaborations cross imaginary borders stylistic and political, as Indonesian noise artist Kuntari appears on »Titanis«, and Couch Slut’s Megan Osztrosits adds layers of haunting spoken word and harsh vocals to the start-stop pummel of »Mute Swan«, and French industrialists Fange add a number of elements to »Black Storm Petrel«, including a second layer of double-kick-drum thud that highlights the superlatively heavy, mushroom-cloud nature of Shone’s own; arguably the heaviest sound industrial music has ever produced.

Sabolick and Shone’s stage-born chemistry is writ large in moments of explosive crush offered in »Meadowlark« and the »Compression To The Forehead« at the start of »Mute Swan« no less than the floating lead notes later in »Rook« or »Black Storm Petrel«. These and other pieces throughout were clearly written with touring in mind, and as Shone and Sabolick push darker, more direct, more aggressive sounds – there are some clean vocals and ambient stretches, but the balance has purposefully shifted – »Nocturnal Birding« becomes less about the chaos and destruction of societal collapse than a lesson in how to live with yourself and with other humans in the aftermath thereof.

But you have to be outside, engaging with the natural world, to slow down enough to notice the birds in the first place. And Shone was out in the mountains south of San Diego near the border, volunteering with groups dropping water and supplies for migrants on well known paths as they move north into the US. These people, some families, from all over the world, taking their lives in their hands, some losing them on the way. This is a relevant narrative under fascism and a reminder that, as a people, we reserve our cruelest intentions for our own.

Shone continues his volunteer work, but as much as they ever stopped, he and Sabolick will be touring for »Nocturnal Birding« for probably the better part of the next two years, bringing to life the ultimate message of the album, which inadvertently relates to survival. How do you make it, when every day seems to grow harsher and meaner, angrier and more bitter?

You find your people – wherever, whoever they are – and you dig in. You understand that just because the other side is loud doesn’t mean they’re right, and you keep moving forward because you’ve seen the decay that’s the alternative. You find your way to make it livable. »Nocturnal Birding« resounds with this in its catharsis. – JJ Koczan / June 2025

Order »Nocturnal Birding« HERE.

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well