On April 21st, 2025, The Eerie release their debut full-length, Book of Reverbations — a record that bridges the dreamy oddity of surf’s golden age with the cerebral punch of experimental rock. It’s eight tracks deep, conceptually playful yet layered with cultural commentary and compositional depth.
Often dubbed “math surf”, The Eerie channel the ghosts of surf and psych through strange time signatures and a sonic palette that lands somewhere between The Shadows and King Crimson. Their music is cinematic but grounded, drawing from hauntological theory, Robert Anton Wilson’s Chapel Perilous, and the sonic mutations of the UK’s tight-knit surf rock scene.
Today, we’re pleased to give you an early listen of first three tracks, along with a complete track-by-track commentary written by the band, capturing the thoughts, inspirations, and technical curiosities behind every cut of Book of Reverbations.
To frame the album’s broader vision: Book of Reverbations deals with cultural memory, liminal realities, and the weirdness of genre boundaries. It’s about navigating the strange feedback loop between the past and present — whether through hauntology, musical dream-logic, or alien-sounding analogue synths — and trying to carve out something new in a world oversaturated with retro signifiers.
Track by track commentary, by The Eerie
Track 1 is the newest composition on the record. The first half fits the style of classic surf, then it explodes into a 3+ minute breakdown and crescendo, a kind of controlled jam. The name of the track gives a nod to our B-movie aesthetic while having a more metaphorical meaning that’s also influential on our project. Hauntology was a term adopted by the great music and cultural theorist Mark Fisher.
It refers to the persistence or resurgence of elements of the cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost. This, to Mark Fisher, describes the 2000s and the current age we live in. If we look back at the 20th century, music evolved and mutated at such a pace that you could literally hear the difference from decade to decade and even year to year – “the sound of ’77” was genuinely different to “the sound of ’78.” Brand new musical forms were popping up all the time. Living in the decade from say the mid sixties to the mid seventies, you would have seen the emergence of psychedelic rock, progressive rock, punk, metal, hip hop, reggae, and more. It’s just crazy to think about.
Where we’ve found ourselves in the 21st century is the ubiquity of retro. Retro was always around, but things were retro in comparison to what was current. What we are missing is the sound that is current – a sound that is unimaginable to people twenty years ago, as hip hop or metal would be to someone in 1955.
We don’t claim to have the answer to this, but maybe The Eerie is our own playful way of overcoming the Slow Cancellation of the Future – using the overtly retro vehicle of surf rock in an incongruous way to create musical mutations that we haven’t heard a great deal before. Math surf is a road less trodden, so we feel like there are still new ideas left to explore in our little musical niche.
The second track Tentacult is always a live favourite. The solos lean on half diminished harmony as a starting point, creating a tension that keeps threatening to ramp up. After a bit of build-up, the solo section gains a kind of uncontrollable momentum which ends in an explosion into atonality reminiscent of Fred Frith. Whereas atonal music is often seen as challenging for audiences, the placement here tends to really light up the room.
The Gommo is the straightest surf number on the album, featuring a classic repeating ‘Andalusian cadence’.
The distorted guitar riffs actually started life back around 2015, in Rory’s previous surf band in Berlin called Ether.
What really stands out to us is the interplay between guitar and bass lines weaving in and out at the tail end of the song. The addition of the cowbell hook was another chef’s kiss moment in the studio.
Next up is Chapel Perilous, one of the darker tunes of the collection. This one features perhaps the most baffling of mathy riffs thus far, which is really only one distortion click away from thrash metal. The breakdown in this tune combines non-Western scales and augmented chords with a growing pulse of ‘wob’ synth bass and drum machine.
The track title is a reference to a concept coined by countercultural writer Robert Anton Wilson. Part of his life’s work was to experiment with systems of belief, as well as to question the whole idea of belief and knowledge itself. This eventually led him to a crisis point which he called ‘Chapel Perilous‘, in which the boundaries between reality and imagination, the supernatural and the real became unclear. In Wilson’s case it turns into a great story – in which he appears to be contacted by aliens from Sirius as well as a púca, a giant rabbit faerie from Irish mythology. More than just a homage to a good tale, the idea of Chapel Perilous is valuable to us as creatives. The concept of the supernatural is inseparable from the imagination, and exploring that boundary has the risk of taking you to the edge of your sanity, but it also promises insights about the role and possibility of artistic and musical creativity.
The next track was inspired by a literal dream of a band that never was, called Exploding Lemon. This is the song that’s been recorded the most. A version ended up on our first and second live recorded EPs, the composition slightly evolving between each take. In this studio version, we wanted to make something a little different. So we went for a stronger rhythm with a thicker bass and an infectious one handed triangle. We also experimented with layers of trancey sine wave synths that filter in and out during the loud, melancholy post rock interludes, to create that dream like quality.
Operation Mindfunk is the next track, and this one perhaps has the closest to what we could describe as a laid back feel in the album. We start with strange diminished guitar riffs over a funky rhythm and bass, with strong percussion upfront.
One of the main tools we used to add sound effects and sonic texture throughout the album is a synthesizer called a Grendel Drone Commander. This instrument is based on two oscillators that each create a pulse wave. Using them together you can move them in and out of phase to create complex interference patterns.
The sound of the Grendel carries through every track of the album, backing up and heightening moments of tension with its alien pulses. However it’s on Operation Mindfunk where it takes the foreground, jumping back and forth from left to right channel in a disorienting breakdown that feels just one step away from a circus march.
Most of the tracks were written initially by Eerie guitarist Rory, with additional arrangement taking shape in the practice room. However, the next track of the album, Jungular, was written initially by bassist Frankie as a guitar line that Rory would then learn and adapt. The song was extended with delay-drenched psychedelic interludes. The dub reggae on the tail end of Jungular is another live favourite moment, the magic of which we’re really happy we managed to capture on this recording.
The eighth and final track Polterchrist is one of the early tunes of the band, with some elements tracing back to the same Berlin band of yore as Track 3. This is a tune where we want to have our cake and eat it. We pay homage to punk and hardcore sensibilities as well as the experimental spirit by fusing distorted power chords, electronic noises and funky breakbeats, while keeping it grounded in surf rock by breaking into an energetic Phrygian jam over a classic 60s surf beat.
UK Surf Rock scene commentary follows below…
In 2025, surf rock in the UK may not dominate the mainstream, but it’s alive, weird, and deeply loved by the communities that keep it pulsing. “It ain’t big, but it’s ours,” say The Eerie — and that statement captures both the modest scale and the strong sense of ownership within the scene. From Brighton to Newcastle, the UK surf underground boasts a spectrum of creativity that’s as diverse as it is inventive. There’s the Cold War punk-surf energy of The Atom Jacks, the prog-soundtrack-surf-metal fusion of Son Of Ugly, and the raw momentum of Shark Stuff. “We’ve met many great characters and been blown away by the creativity in the scene,” the band reflects.
While standout acts like The Milk Lizards (Newcastle) and Cosmic Surf (Norwich) carry the torch in their respective cities, it’s the festivals — intimate, DIY, and genre-fluid — where the scene truly comes alive. Worthing Surf Festival, Surf Bonanza in Newcastle, and Landlocked in Derbyshire have all become essential spots for this eclectic gathering of sound. “Can’t recommend enough – go check out the surf festivals!” they urge.
London, by contrast, isn’t a hub for surf per se, but The Eerie have carved out their own space by linking up with other misfits and outsiders. From experimental noise to unpredictable hybrids, they’ve found solidarity in left-field bills alongside acts like Satan’s Baby and Guiguisuisui. Venues like Biddle Bros in East London are key players here, offering space to “put on something a little different.” Looking ahead, the band is intent on helping grow this loose but passionate network: “In the coming years we’re looking forward to helping build a bigger community for surf and left field music in London and growing our links across the UK.”
And if you want to go further down the rabbit hole, The Eerie have also compiled a curated list of essential influences — from books to albums and obscure experimental films — for those who want to explore the DNA of the record.
Books:
Mark Fisher – Ghosts of My Life
Robert Anton Wilson – Cosmic Trigger
Malaclypse the Younger – Principia Discordia
Music:
Secret Chiefs 3 – Xaphan: Book of Angels Volume 9
Listening to the album Xaphan was a revelation. Led by Trey Spruance, the band arranges compositions made by New York avant garde composer John Zorn. Zorn’s deep exploration of jazz and klezmer melody along with Spruance’s surf guitar, experimentalism and Arabic influences creates an otherworldly masterpiece. Exploring SC3 as well as Zorn’s Tzadik label comes highly recommended.
The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium
Another huge influence is this debut release by TMV. Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez create soundscapes and arrangements that sound like nothing on this planet, mixing theatrically ambitious prog rock with hardcore punk, Latin jazz, ambient and noise.
Camel – Mirage
A favourite from the 70s is Mirage by Camel. Tight instrumentation and a fairly stripped back mix and orchestration, it feels a bit more modern in its sound than other prog rock bands of the time, which helps it to achieve a purer transmission of its complex musical energy. Like the other two albums on the list, Mirage explores time signature changes in a way that drives the energy of the music forward.
