Dead Meadows Shares “The Left Hand Path,” Announces New Album

Psychedelic rock luminaries Dead Meadows unveil all details for their new album Force Form Free to be issued first as part of Blues Funeral Recordings’ revered PostWax series, and then as a worldwide standalone release on December 9th. 

In 2021, they began work on a collection of jams and experiments for Blues Funeral Recordings’ PostWax series, working up a disparate yet cohesive group of songs that placed new works alongside the culmination of ideas they’d been tinkering with since the band’s genesis. The result of these efforts is Force Form Free, a spacey and dreamy record at times, grimly propulsive at others, and which captures Dead Meadow continuing their effortless exploration of the transporting, astral-gazing form they’ve spent their entire existence pushing forward.

The first track released is “The Left Hand Path.” About the song, guitarist and vocalist Jason Simon comments, “The Left Hand Path starts out ‘Force Form Free’ and in fact, it was written with this in mind. It serves as a statement of purpose of sorts for this unhurried and exploratory record. I find it reminiscent of the long guitar-driven drones of “Shivering King and Others”.  There’s something cleansing and soothing in the swirling sea of fuzz and the repetitive dirge-like nature of the song. We want to clear a space in the listener’s head for their mind to wander and create, for the listener to paint their own mental pictures influenced by the sounds and the songs. The title itself refers to the less traveled often-maligned spiritual path that favors self-willed action and creativity over traditional dogma and belief, though in this case, it also serves as a symbol of the road less traveled, which I’ve often found to be the far more interesting route to take.