Review: Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows – Inexorable Opposites (2026)
Melbourne’s Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows built their mythology around a drug-addicted gunslinger moving through a science fiction Western landscape. Four albums in, Tim Coutts-Smith tilts the character’s head skyward to consider the cosmos, then brings the gaze back to earth. Inexorable Opposites takes its title from Carl Jung’s final work, Man and His Symbols, where the psychiatrist writes that real life consists of inexorable opposites: day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. Life functions as battleground. Always has been…
“Moss” opens with trippy dissolve before punching into stoner riffage. The band hired Lewis Noke-Edwards to track drums at Black Lodge Studios, their first time working with an outside engineer after years of DIY recording. New drummer Brayden Becher hits harder than anything on previous records. “Venomous” balances melty verses against frenetic percussion, guitars scorched and furious. The album swings between the heaviest songs they’ve written and their gentlest. Coutts-Smith works in mental health, and those experiences bleed into the lyrics alongside his personal history.
The band draws from Spine of God-era Monster Magnet, early Monster Magnet’s druggy introspection crashed into exploding supernovas. Where Dave Wyndorf drifted inward, Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows charge headlong into collision. “Mt. Macedon” rumbles with fuzz thick enough to taste dust. “Dave Is Done” memorializes a friend who died. The track moves through grief in slow, grinding waves. “Seer” hypnotizes with groove that locks into open road velocity, dangerous on highways.
Coutts-Smith founded the band in 2015, centered everything around his fictional outlaw from the beginning. He’d start with real people and events, then transform them into characters navigating that science fiction West. The Outback sits too far away to directly influence the sound, but the band draws a line from Melbourne to Arizona anyway. They’ve toured Australia alongside Greenleaf, Sasquatch, Wo Fat, Whores. Released a self-titled EP in 2016, followed by three albums: Hymns (2018), The Magnetic Ridge (2021), Hail to the Underground: Interpretations (2023).
Inexorable Opposites connects to Cormac McCarthy’s border trilogy, men moving through landscapes that offer no comfort, only the truth that survival and violence share the same breathing space. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series merges Westerns with apocalyptic fantasy, Roland the Gunslinger chasing the man in black through dimensions. Jack Harlon occupies similar territory, addiction and messiah complex tangled in one body. The band channels spaghetti Western scores, Ennio Morricone’s howling harmonicas and jangling spurs stretched across doom metal frameworks.
“Junior Fiction” slows everything to crawl, guitars dragging through sand. “On The Overwhelm” builds from whisper to crushing avalanche, the kind of dynamic shift that requires trust between musicians. The production spreads wide. Mixed and mastered by Coutts-Smith in his home studio, the album demands big speakers in big spaces for big audiences. Space rock elements surface throughout, psychedelia used with restraint rather than indulgence.
Jung believed the psyche contained opposites that couldn’t be reconciled, only balanced. The self versus the shadow. Consciousness against the unconscious. Inexorable Opposites explores these contradictions through riffs that pummel and passages that float. The album refuses to resolve its tensions because life refuses the same. Coutts-Smith screams through “Venomous” about real pain: his own, his patients’, the world’s. The fuzz provides no escape, just a different frequency for processing what can’t be fixed.
“To Die” closes the album. The title sits there plain, no metaphor softening it. The track moves through acceptance and rage in equal measure. Guitars churn. Becher’s drums hit like hammering nails. The band recorded this knowing some opposites remain inexorable: birth pairs with death, happiness with misery, creation with destruction. The battleground extends infinitely in all directions. Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows plant their flag there, ready for whatever comes next.
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