Release Date: 08th May 2026. Record Label: Self Released. Formats: DD
Endless Skies - Tracklisting
1.The Watcher 11:05
2.Land of Nod 06:12
3.Endless Skies 07:48
4.Bathe In The Light 10:32
Members
Kurt Werder - Guitar and vocals
Jason Chenoweth - Bass and Tambourine and vocals
Jack Henry - Drums and Synth/Keys
Review
Endless Skies is the debut album from Psych/Stoner Rockers Wandering Mind which takes quite a leftfield turn with how the band develop and deliver their mysterious Stoned Out melodies that lay the entire groundwork for the album to fully work. There’s a lot of mystery behind Wandering Mind’s music that has a dramatic WEEDIAN effect but is still grounded in today’s reality with the band moving into areas of Psych, Prog, Post-Stoner, Ambient and Space Rock momentum. The freakish amounts of Space Rock activity allows the music to be quite jam-based with sludgy instrumental sounds holding everything together.
The vocals from Kurt Werder and Jason Chenoweth work superbly well together as they have a real underground quality in the way they're fully delivered. I mean that as a compliment as these are brilliantly real and far away from any modern day studio trickery that is humanely possible. The music is grounded but still off shooting into areas of Cosmic Dimensions with some jazzy interludes that allows fuzzy screeching instruments to fully lead the way on the excellent opening track of The Watcher.
Wandering Mind are influenced by a wide range of different musical artists which they fully transform into their own creative image with spellbinding musical passages being quite distorted and fully doomed out into areas of menacing Drone, Fuzz, Grunge and Blues Rock melodies. The band even play moments of hazy classic hard rock which has a free form style delivery on tracks such as Land Of Nod and Endless Skies. One moment the record can be quite playful with a subtle charge of start/stop instrumental passages before transforming into a thunderous style of Psychedelic Stoner Rock/Metal filled with intricate Desert Rock sounds along the way.
There’s an epic style of jam-based rock that becomes the main way for Wandering Mind to play their music against whilst still keeping close to the classic tried and tested way of riff based music which they use brilliantly well on the later stages of the album on tracks such as Endless Skies and Bathe Into The Light. One of the real strengths of the record is how Wandering Mind aren’t afraid to experiment with certain themes, textures and grizzled effects that provides their music with real intelligence and human emotion that gives this a highly undeniable quality of pure brilliance at times.
Wandering Mind are from Australia and they inject their cultural heritage into the record which you can feel from every possible angle. The lyrics can be quite uncompromising to hear at times but it’s a great approach that pays off huge dividends for the band. Even though this record can be superbly “FAR OUT” the best of times, it’s also wonderfully grounded and superbly daring when the time calls for this.
Endless Skies is a superbly entertaining album that showcases another fantastic band to check out from the Aussie Psychedelic Stoner Rock/Metal scene that will surprise you in many ways.
Sublime. End Of.
Words by Steve Howe
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