Mortal Prophets have just dropped “Hide Inside The Moon”. This is a descent into the luminous, chaotic, and beautifully distorted unconscious, served up with a side of pure rock ambition.
At the helm is the perennial maestro John Beckmann, who handles the writing, production, and musical direction. Beckmann’s vision is amplified by two new collaborators he affectionately calls “the kids down the street.” On lead vocals, we’ve got Tanner McGraw, whose voice soars, haunts, and snakes through these tracks like smoke in a midnight lounge. Backing him up is Lawson Mars, whose harmonies shimmer, dissolve, and reappear like phantom echoes, adding layers of texture that glue this whole psychedelic puzzle together.
The album kicks off with the haunting opener “Mad Girls Love Song (Sylvia Plath),” a track that sets the stage with its filmic, mercury-rev-like drift. But don’t get too comfortable. The journey twists and turns through the atmospheric title track “Hide Inside The Moon,” where the ghost of Barrett feels most deep, and into the dark grooves of “Devil Doll.” Tracks like “My Future Past” mix 60s nostalgia with Eastern-tinged infusions, creating this kaleidoscopic rush.
The themes here are vast—longing, fractured realities, time folding in on itself. Songs like “Eyes in the Sky” and “My Future Past” operate on dream logic, where the future feels like a half-remembered memory and the past feels like a prophecy. The album doesn’t just talk about this disorientation; it induces it. Synths ripple like heat mirages, guitars melt into prismatic afterimages, and the whole record breathes and hovers rather than racing to cheap crescendos. It’s a slow-burn freak-out of the highest order.
But make no mistake—for all its atmospheric weight, this album has teeth. “I Am A Hermit (Kenneth Anger-Puce Moment)” gives a more conventional, beat-driven groove that anchors the trip, while “Through Colors” feels like a song actively dissolving even as a rhythm drives it forward. It’s this balance—between sheer sonic exploration and raw, human emotion—that makes “Hide Inside The Moon” rock so hard. Its psychedelia is grounded in feeling, not just flash.
This is a collaborative rocket ship, and Beckmann wisely lets his crew shine. McGraw’s vocals are a revelation, equally capable of fragile intimacy and commanding presence. Mars’s backing vocals are the secret weapon, the glue that binds the ethereal to the earthly. Together, they propel Mortal Prophets into a new dimension.
In short, “Hide Inside The Moon” is a bold, brilliant, and brazenly original slab of psychedelic rock. It’s an album that demands you switch off the lights, put on the headphones, and let its radiant half-light swallow you whole. Sixteen tracks of pure, unadulterated sonic lava. Mortal Prophets are building worlds. And this world is one you’ll want to get lost in again and again.