POND - TERRESTRIALS TOUR - NORTH AMERICA 2026

Pond offer a skerrick of hope in a hostile world with a new record—their 11th—Terrestrials. A cyclone of urgent, scorched-earth rock’n’roll, Terrestrials tips its hat to the sounds of the past while squarely facing the here and now.

Conceived from a place of reverence for a particularly potent epoch in Australian rock, Terrestrials mines the sound of open-sky melancholia, heat haze sizzling on the plains, and jangly pub backrooms—striking an eternally poignant nerve for anyone familiar with the sound, time, and place. From there, the album evolved, and the idea of “Goths at the pub” became its stylistic north star: iconic ’80s Australiana acid-washed with eyeliner-stained post-punk in the vein of Sisters of Mercy, Magazine, and the like.

Reverb-heavy drum machines, Roland JC-50 amps, flanger effects, and 12-string acoustics pushed through icy amps—along with plenty of chorus—define the sonic palette. Sinuous and propulsive, hard and fast, edgy and expansive, the record moves between taut, trimmed verses and sprawling, soaring choruses. Throughout the process, a simple test applied: “Would Goths like it?” “Could you have a beer to this?” If the answer was yes, it made the cut.

For the first time in Pond’s history, the recording process followed a strict set of rules that concentrated the sessions and shaped the album’s airtight palette and consistently buzzing energy. Namely: no fuzz pedals, no ballads, and no “Pink Floyd shit.” Embracing these limitations rather than overdubbing endlessly, the band found the process refreshingly direct—resulting in what is reportedly the breeziest Pond record to make, and arguably their most focused.

Terrestrials originated in 2025 at Pond’s Fremantle studio, Dream Dust 2. With access to a space large enough to set up and leave untouched, various combinations of band members dropped in to write and record live to tape at their leisure. With the bones of the record established, the band decamped for ten days to a rented plasterboard shack next to a limestone-block pub in the remote town of Seabird—“the most West Australian place you could ever imagine”—to refine the material between bouts of daytime TV and meetings at the pub next door.

Additional sessions saw three tracks recorded during tour downtime at Nowave Studios in Mullumbimby, NSW, with two more completed back at Tuna Fish in Fremantle.

Like much of the Pond catalog, Terrestrials is a record shaped by people and place—exploring identity, and where and how the two intersect. Extractive capitalism, power dynamics, inequality, Indigenous incarceration, eccentric outcasts, fire and water, diesel and dust, unity and division, blood and bauxite, unborn tomorrows and dead yesterdays—it’s all here. The album twitches with the desperation of people and planet on the brink, but ultimately places its faith in the beauty of both to endure.

Pond is Nick Allbrook, Jay Watson, Joe Ryan, Jamie Terry, and James Ireland.
Terrestrials was produced by Pond and mixed by Jay Watson and James Ireland.