Date Signed: July 28, 2021
Label: Metal Assault Records
Band Members: Carson Russell (guitar/vocals), Travis Abbott (guitar/vocals), Rylie Collingwood (bass/vocals) and Michael Mulcock (drums)
Type of Music: Progressive Heavy-Psych
Management: Carson Russell
Booking: Carson Russell
Legal: Andrew Bansal - Metal Assault
Publicity: Andrew Bansal at Metal Assault
Web: EaldorBealu.bandcamp.com, Facebook.com/EaldorBealu
A&R: Andrew Bansal - Metal Assault
For all the strategies on scoring a record deal (attracting massive followings on social media, ponying up for pay-to-play gigs, etc.), sometimes mere kismet does the trick.
Take, Ealdor Bealu (pronounced “elder-blue”), a Boise-based progressive heavy-psych band. In May 2019, Andrew Bansal, owner of Los Angeles’ Metal Assault Records, asked Ealdor Bealu frontman Carson Russell if they would open for his label’s like-minded Solar Haze at their gig in Idaho’s capital.
Russell said the show was fun enough … but when Ealdor Bealu swung through L.A. about a half-year later, and Bansal returned the favor, he tapped them to play a Metal Assault event that Russell called downright “killer.”
“It was one of the best shows of the tour, and we kept in touch [with Bansal] after that,” Russell said during a full-band interview. Later on, “when we were done with the mixes and masters for our new album, I knew [Metal Assault] a little better and what was on [Bansal’s] roster. I was like, ‘I think he’s going to love this.’ And he did.”
So much so that, in July 2021, Metal Assault announced the signing of Ealdor Bealu and reissued their sophomore album, Spirit of the Lonely Places, on CD for the first time. (The group independently released the record on vinyl/digital in 2019, as well as an independent CD/digital release of their debut full-length, Dark Water at the Foot of the Mountain, in 2017.)
Now, Metal Assault is ready to release their third album, Psychic Forms, April 22. “Be Ye Gone”—the first song on the five-track, 40-minute effort—epitomizes the band’s mastery of an expansive, atmospheric sound befitting a hike on a high-desert trail in Boise’s foothills.
“This will be our first album with Mike [Mulcock] on drums,” Russell said. “He came on in February and, shockingly, we were ready to record by April. We clicked immediately, and he’s also a consummate professional. He came in extremely prepared.
“Mike is a drummer,” Russell continued, as Mulcock’s face turned red. “And that’s allowed us to push tempo a little bit, and [bassist/vocalist] Rylie [Collingwood] to really blossom as a bass player.”
Guitarist-vocalist Travis Abbott noted that the new configuration jelled so well, they completed Psychic Forms in four days.
