Materializer on Going Heavy, DIY Touring & "As the Body Flies" | Nashville Heavy Psych Duo | Ep. 38

Chris and Conner Poole — the two brothers behind Nashville DIY heavy psych duo Materializer — join The Sonic Road Podcast to talk about their debut album As the Body Flies, out October 2nd on Bandcamp.

Materializer is the next chapter after nearly nine years as The Swell Fellas. This episode traces the whole arc — from playing Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath covers in Ocean City, Maryland bars, to booking DIY tours in a 1991 Chevy van, to the move to Nashville in 2020 after Ben McLeod of All Them Witches invited them out to record. It's also the first episode with Becky Franzel officially co-hosting, making a duo interviewing a duo the right way to kick things off.

In this episode:

How Materializer built a genuinely heavy sound as a two-piece, running a pair of '70s Silverface Fender Twin Reverbs with sub-octave low end, all analog, mostly in drop C.

The writing and recording of As the Body Flies — tracked at their home studio with drums cut at Gnome Recording and mixed by Ben McLeod — and where the album title comes from, pulled from a lyric at the end of the second track, "Walking Home."

What watching bands like All Them Witches, King Buffalo, YOB and Cave In up close taught them about leveling up, the state of the Nashville underground in 2026, phone-bagging shows and the fight for presence in a room, why they chose the name Materializer, the reality of running a fully DIY band on night-shift jobs and endless emails, and the freedom and uncertainty of starting something new after nine years in one project.

If you care about DIY heavy music, analog tone, van life on the road, and bands doing it entirely on their own terms, this one is for you.

Materializer: materializerband.com | materializer.bandcamp.com | @materializerofficial

The Sonic Road Podcast: thesonicroad.com | @thesonicroad on all platforms