After celebrating 20 years of machine-driven mayhem in 2024, Author & Punisher — the industrial metal project helmed by mechanical engineer and sonic visionary Tristan Shone — is entering a transformative new chapter. On October 3, 2025, Shone will release Nocturnal Birding via Relapse Records, a sweeping and emotionally charged LP that blends his signature doom-laden machinery with sounds drawn directly from the natural world. The inspiration? Birds.
Driven by field recordings and melodies based on actual birdsong, Nocturnal Birding is both a technical feat and a deeply personal statement. The opening riff of the album, for example, is based on the call of a meadowlark, while the track “Rook” directly mimics the song of its namesake bird. Shone composed entire tracks around these organic patterns, transposing them into crushing guitar tones, droning synths, and mechanical rhythms. The result is a record that bridges the natural and the industrial in a way no Author & Punisher album has attempted before.
But Nocturnal Birding also bears the weight of a stark human reality. The album is dedicated to those who have lost their lives crossing the U.S./Mexico border. Over the past two years, Shone has been volunteering with Border Angels, a humanitarian group that drops water along desert migration routes. That experience had a profound effect on him — and the soundtrack to those journeys, he says, was birdsong. In this way, the album becomes both a tribute to nature and a meditation on cruelty, displacement, and resistance.
The album’s first single, “Titanis,” sets the tone. Featuring Indonesian artist Kuntari, the song merges Author & Punisher‘s punishing low-end mechanics with freeform experimentation. The two also appear together in the official “Titanis” video, filmed live in Bali and directed by Manda Selena and Ican Harem. It’s a performance that’s as intimate as it is overwhelming, capturing the raw connection between Shone and his global collaborators.
That collaborative spirit defines Nocturnal Birding. Long a solo act, Author & Punisher now officially includes guitarist Doug Sabolick (A Life Once Lost, Ecstatic Vision), who contributes to the songwriting and guitar work throughout. The album also features appearances from Fange, Megan Oztrosits of Couch Slut, and Kuntari. Production was handled by Will Putney (Knocked Loose, Machine Head), while the artwork was created by Lucile Lejoly, whose striking visuals have also graced records by Chat Pile and Roadburn Festival.
For all its mechanical heft, Nocturnal Birding is Author & Punisher‘s most human record. It is the sound of a creator stepping out of isolation, hearing the natural world in a new way, and letting that awareness reshape the noise he makes. “Removing myself from an artistic comfort zone proved fruitful inspiration,” Shone says. “There is literal birdsong all over this record.”
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