ABRAMS' Zach Amster on Writing Loon, Touring Realities & the Heavy Scene Community |Highlight Reel

ABRAMS guitarist and vocalist Zach Amster breaks down the writing, recording, and touring world behind Loon — the Denver heavy rock band's most intense and hooky album yet, out April 17th on Blues Funeral Recordings. In this highlight from our full conversation, Zach covers the songwriting process behind Loon — music first, then hooks, melodies, and lyrics that can completely reshape a song — and why this record feels like a return to a rawer, angrier, noisier sound with a '90s-infused catchy edge. He also talks about the challenge of singing live while playing guitar, how Lollapalooza 1996 changed everything, growing up alongside Denver heavyweights like Primitive Man, Blood Incantation, and Chemists, and why diverse bills always beat playing with bands that sound just like you. Plus: the financial reality of being a small touring band in 2026, experimenting with odd tunings to spark new ideas, the DIY logistics of self-managed touring, and why Cleveland and Denver remain two of the best rock cities in America. 🎵 PRE-ORDER LOON (Out April 17th — Blues Funeral Recordings): US Orders → https://www.bluesfuneral.com/products/us-orders-abrams-loon-deluxe-vinyl-editions Bandcamp → https://abramsrock.bandcamp.com/album/loon Euro/UK → https://en.bluesfuneral.spkr.media 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to The Sonic Road Podcast: https://linktr.ee/thesonicroad 📲 Follow The Sonic Road Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook & X: @thesonicroad 📲 FOLLOW ABRAMS: @abramsrockband ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 The Estes Park Travel Hack 00:10 Learning to Sing Live While Playing Guitar 00:20 Songwriting Process: Music First, Hooks Second 00:36 The Heavy Scene Community & Why Diverse Bills Win 01:12 How Loon Sounds Different From Previous ABRAMS Records 01:28 Band Origins & Current Lineup 01:52 How the Pandemic Derailed Their Last Album Cycle 02:12 The Demo-First Writing Approach 02:23 Self-Doubt and Sharing Demos With the Band 02:44 Choosing Which Songs Make the Album 03:14 Seeing Lollapalooza 1996 & '90s Pit Memories 03:41 Racing the Studio Clock 03:52 Why Zach Switched to Light Solid-State Amps 04:22 The Reality of Making It as an Independent Band 04:32 Touring Costs, Motivation & Why They Keep Going 05:31 The Theme of Loon: Feeling Like You're Losing Your Mind 06:03 Building Community in the Underground Heavy Scene 06:15 The Spiritual Side of Creating Music 06:36 Chasing the Perfect Vocal Hook 06:49 Using Weird Tunings to Spark New Ideas 07:25 Keeping It Fresh Live 07:34 DIY Touring Logistics & the Nerves of Self-Management ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #ABRAMS #Loon #BluesFuneralRecordings #HeavyRock #DenverRock #RockPodcast #TheSonicRoadPodcast #ZachAmster #SongwritingProcess #PostHardcore #StonerRock #NewAlbum2026 #PrimitivMan #BloodIncantation #TouringMusician #IndependentBand #MusicInterview #UndergroundRock #HeavyMetal #MusicCommunity ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━