A Very Brief History of Polybomber Via Debut Album Review

By August Edwards

Today there’s a new album in the world. Two things I want you to understand from the get-go: Polybomber are a duo, and they absolutely rip.

Adam Johnstone and Martin Wiederholt

Adam kept asking me, “How are you gonna write a non-biased review?” The answer was obvious. I’m not, and I don’t want to. It feels like a waste, especially when I’ve had a front-row seat to the thing itself taking shape. There was something disorienting about watching a band identity and an album coalesce in real time, like witnessing impact before the sound of a collision. Why would I waste that privilege pretending to be objective.

Adam and I started hanging out again last July because I moved back to Albuquerque. A hangout with Adam is the best because generally it just involves sitting at his computer while he shows me a bunch of music. A desk smattered with cat hair and beer cans. Maybe we’d get to finish listening to a song in its entirety, most of the time not. He showed me shit he’d made over the years—something like over 15 years of making music—and some newer material. Pressure building.

At some point, he mentioned that his high school friend Martin had reached out about starting a band. The next time I came over, they already had a track.

He played me something metal labeled “martin,” I saw on his computer screen the thick layers of riffs translated into cartoony soundwaves.

“Sick,” I probably said, dumb to what I was witnessing.

Seconds later, Adam picked up a guitar and wrote a song in front of me, fast and casual. He titled it “august.” “martin” and “august” became the first real sparks of Authors of Damnation, Polybomber’s debut. (The tracks were later renamed to fit the vibe of a self-described technical metal band, a snub to me which I have handled with grace.)

Two things about Adam: 1) he’s insane; 2) sometimes I think he has more talent than he knows what to do with or even realizes.

Like, I beg you to crank the mesmeric chug of “The Profit Machine,” the spine-shocker “Under the Iron Dome.” Total invocation of destruction. My favorite track, “Sorrow Unending,” sounds like the guitar itself is having a concerning amount of fun, careening before diving headfirst into the sorrow gorge. Around the three‑minute mark Adam goes hog-wild, spewing molten riffvomit. Shredding and being shredded. And the title track, “Authors of Damnation,” hits the hardest to me, a bruiser built for the pit: massive, glorious, maybe the biggest crowd-pleaser.

Before recording, Adam wasn’t even sure what Martin sounded like as a vocalist, and maybe he was unsure about embarking on a bandmateship. That uncertainty lasted exactly as long as it took Martin to open his mouth. Any casual listener will tell you the same thing, that the vocals are a terrifying force. I watched them record vocals for “Under the Iron Dome,” and every time he came in on a phrase, it felt like something physically attacking the room. Not just loud—fucking menacing. He scared Adam’s cat to death.

Listening to Authors of Damnation alone in my apartment was a different experience entirely. It made me emotional. It also genuinely unsettled me. When Martin’s vocals hit on “Eternal Daylight,” it took my breath away just how accusatory it felt.

More than anything, the album is driven by momentum. Momentum enough that witnessing the creation made me start doing things, hitting people up, thinking about my future, thinking phrases like I’m making moves in silence even though I hadn’t been making moves at all. It made me come to terms with how I’d been falling behind in my own life, but it gave me the blueprint to figure my shit out.

Some albums excel in one capacity and collapse in others. I’ve never been someone who prioritizes lyrics. For lyrics to hit me I actually have to catch them, which isn’t guaranteed in metal, and even less guaranteed for me, an idiot. To me, making the music—the actual notes—seems like work enough. If you’re not Paul Simon, why spend two seconds on lyrics? I don’t even care that Paul Simon isn’t metal for this example. Chris Barnes could do the lyrics thing but wasn’t that more of a novelty ticket?

But listening to Adam and Martin talk through this album changed that. Here, the lyrics matter as much as the instrumentals. I think in this album, lyrics are used to take back control while living a life that may seem very void of control.

In this way, “Patricide,” the final track, reframes the album. Beneath the immediacy and velocity, there is deeper thematic architecture. What is initially raw force begins to reveal intention. “The day I die and leave this earth / Is the day you lose your legacy / Your bloodline ends with me.” It’s a brutal sentiment, and not empty. There’s grief in it, and a desire to sever something. Fear stems from asking the question, severing what? The nearly ten-minute runtime, with its somber piano breakdown and gentle percussive focus, forces you to sit with that weight longer than is comfortable. There is so much pain there.

In all my sentimental sap, I’m doing a great disservice to a key, clear element of Polybomber. The big not-secret is that they are funny people and a funny band. “Dinosorcery” was born, so far as I know, because Adam and Martin think that dinosaurs are cool (they are), and using the fictitious plight of a capitalistic, futuristic dinosaur reality is a lot more fun than being here-and-now. Throw in crazy-fucking-sounding synths, gang vocals, and a “rap” section and you have Polybomber.

That’s what makes Authors of Damnation compelling. It’s the sound of two musicians discovering their chemistry and accelerating fast. Watching the album written, I watched the album seized.

I can be idealistic, but the truth is if this wasn’t a good album, then I wouldn’t be so moved. Even so, writing about this record from a distance would be missing the whole point. The urgency, the speed, the heaviness, the sense that something locked into place almost accidentally, the laughing, the feeling shitty. I got to experience that, and now we get to experience the album forever.

My two favorite things about Authors of Damnation: Adam and Martin.