Mars Red Sky

The Arc of Mars Red Sky

The pivots — what forced Mars Red Sky to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Rio Pivot

   Original drummer Benoît Busser walked in 2014, making room for Mathieu 'Matgaz' Gazeau behind the kit. The new lineup immediately inked a deal with Listenable Records and flew to Rio de Janeiro to track Stranded in Arcadia with engineer Gabriel Zander. The change in scenery and personnel turned their lumbering pulse into a far more muscular, punchy groove. You hear the shift instantly on tracks like 'Hovering Satellites,' where the rhythms hit with deliberate, skull-rattling force.

2. 02

   The Prog-Doom Expansion

   Bringing Gabriel Zander over to Studio Cryogène in Bègles alongside Jacob Dennis yielded 2016's Apex III (Praise for the Burning Soul). Instead of repeating the fuzz grooves, they stretched the compositions into sprawling, multi-part sci-fi suites that eventually soundtracked the short film Alien Grounds. The fuzz pedals were just as filthy, but the chord progressions turned modal and melancholic. That ambitious, cold atmosphere carried directly into 2019's The Task Eternal, which was tracked in a medieval castle with engineer Benjamin Mandeau.

3. 03

   The Dark Folk Convergence

   Rather than coasting on heavy repetition, the band teamed up with dark folk outfit Queen of the Meadow for a collaborative self-titled EP in early 2023. That collision of delicate, gothic harmonies and crushing stoner dynamics set the blueprint for their fifth full-length, Dawn of the Dusk, tracked once again with Benjamin Mandeau at Cryogène. Mastered in Switzerland by Ladislav Agabekov, the record lets eerie vocal interplay and cinematic tension carry equal weight with the subterranean riffs. It pushed their signature contrast further into gothic psychedelia than they had ever dared before.

Influences

• Black Sabbath — The entire foundation of Jimmy Kinast's down-tuned, blues-derived bass riffs comes straight out of Geezer Butler's playbook. You can hear that sludgy, dragging cadence anchoring songs like 'Strong Reflection.' Without Master of Reality, the rhythm section has no engine.
• Nick Drake — Julien Pras cut his teeth obsessing over British folk fingerpicking and Drake's ghostly, hushed vocal delivery before plugging into stacks. That gentle, breathy phrasing floats all over 'Curse,' defying the crushing doom underneath it. It keeps the band from sounding like every other macho desert-rock power trio.
• Pink Floyd — The spatial delays, phased guitar swells, and cosmic narrative scope trace directly back to Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side output around Meddle. The sprawling, cinematic instrumental passages on Apex III rely entirely on Gilmour-style atmospheric phrasing rather than fast metal leads. It gives their heaviest jams a distinct, drifting sense of vertigo.
• Sleep — The relentless, hypnotically slow tempo that defines their heaviest cuts borrows heavily from the monolithic doom pacing pioneered on Holy Mountain. You hear it whenever Mars Red Sky locks into a single punishing groove for minutes at a time without breaking cadence. They treat heavy repetition as a physical weight.
• Robert Wyatt — Pras's fragile, melancholy falsetto and penchant for unorthodox melodic twists mirror the vulnerable, floating vocal approach Wyatt perfected with Soft Machine and his early solo sides. Instead of trying to scream over the distortion, Pras stays delicate, allowing the melody to hover above the rhythmic mud. That deliberate mismatch makes their entire sound work.