If you ask the men of Ann Arbor’s Post Eden what their tagline “musical fusion” means, they really couldn’t tell you. More of a tongue-in-cheek umbrella term than an attempt to grasp a genre, the group really only started taking themselves seriously in the past two years.

Just not too seriously. 

“At the end of the day, we’re doing this for fun,” lead guitarist Nick Noteman said. “Yes, we take a lot of the music we write seriously and some of our songs have deep undertones, but music is supposed to be fun—the ‘musical fusion’ is us noting that we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Former high school cross-country runners Noteman, Pat Murray (lead vocalist and guitarist), Abe Worth (bassist), and Alex Bowling (drummer) started Post Eden after a year and a half of playing together. 

“There’s a lot of time when you’re stuck in the middle of the woods to sit and talk about stuff,” Murray said. “You’re running for miles, and you become really good friends with people.”

Post Eden’s debut album, Solace in Entropy, came out in January. The record was named after the chaos of life, especially during the COVID-19 era, and the comfort that playing together brought the musicians. Solace in Entropy begins with a series of footsteps that guide listeners to 11 tracks that signify months of hard work and fine-tuning. Post Eden’s sound is a mix of Rage Against the Machine, Pink Floyd, and King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard, tied together with ’70s psychedelic and ’90s grunge influences. 

While tracks like “Hot Head” sound like an homage to Led Zeppelin, songs like “Someone Like You” raise a glass to blink-182. The aesthetic of each track on Solace in Entropy seems definitively unique, and yet the sequencing of the album and the crisp production makes it feel like a cohesive experience. 

“We were able to play at The Blind Pig the night [Solace in Entropy] was released,” Bowling said. “It’s our biggest show to date—the place was packed and it was so cool to see people excited for us. I think people were excited to hear old songs in their final form and new ones.”

Because the group is still fairly new, Solace in Entropy is an act of discovery for the group that's still figuring out how each of their talents works best with each other, from the songwriting process to production.

“It used to be someone would make a riff and then we all build on it sporadically,” Murray said. “But now, our chemistry is so good that usually when someone has a starting riff, we’ll jam on it, and then a few minutes later, it’s a song. It’s become second nature.”

Solace in Entropy wraps up with “Thanks for Stopping By,” a somber song that ties up the energetic strings of the other tracks. It surveys the complex feelings of time passing and how our words fall short, leaving listeners with a sense of gratitude for those who are able to stop by on their journey:

But I didn't want things to end this way
I just couldn't find the right words to say
That time kept passin' me by, oh day by day
And I lived in this misery
But if I had one thing left to say
It'd be thanks for stopping by

Worth described “Thanks for Stopping By” as his favorite track on the album.

“It makes me bawl my eyes out,” Worth said. “We had worked on that song for a while and it initially sounded really different. It’s a nice way to end the album.”

In February, Post Eden released the non-album single “Smile at the Moon.” The rest of this year holds promising new releases—and maybe a few more shows at The Blind Pig.

“We've said it a million times just even if somebody shows up to one or listens to one song,” Murray said. “There's no real way to put in how thankful we are to have such nice people.”

Ally Hall is a Hillsdale College student and the writer and editor of Rocka Magazine.