Planet Hunter – Soothsayer (Sharkhound) (13th Floor Album Review)
Aotearoa’s cosmic misfits (how come every rock band is using space or cosmic to describe their music these days?) Planet Hunter are back with their second album, Soothsayer. The album is marketed as a distillation of life in the nation’s capital.
Planet Hunter have been making music in Wellington since 2017. I feel as though I witnessed their formation through advertisements on local Facebook musician classifieds, but perhaps that’s my overactive imagination. Anyway, with a name like Planet Hunter, I feel like you can easily predict what sort of music they’re going to produce. Did you guess riff-heavy rock with stoner and/or metal overtones? Right in one, dear reader.
Riffage is the defining point of this album. The guitar(s) are tuned down and produce an incredibly extensive range of dark rock phrases that make up each of the tunes on Soothsayer. I’m going to take a stab in the dark and suggest that guitarist William Saunders is the mastermind from which each of the songs have been constructed. There are parts of chugga-wugga (the back end of Cataract), and more contemporary sections support the vocal melody, such as Kaikōura Lights.
Singer Cormac Ferris gives us a suitable MJK inspired vocal performance across each of the seven tracks. And, of course, the rhythm section provides great intensity to match the mood you’d expect to find on an album of this nature. While it’s not a genre I’m overtly familiar with, I found moments within the overall experience that I would associate to the likes of Tool and Queens of the Stone Age. In fact, I even had a friend who would wear both of the bands’ t-shirts, (one over the other, depending on what mood he was in!). I’ll be sure to point out Planet Hunter when I next see him.
If you just listened to the music, you wouldn’t be called out for suggesting that Planet Hunter is comprised of four dark individuals who take themselves far too seriously. There’s one point in the song Unholy Union where the lyric is ‘So, get in the oven’. Yet a quick watch through the music video for their lead single One thousand years from now paints a different picture indeed. The band comedically rock out with a confetti cannon, cold beers, a break for the humble snag, and (of course) shots with the quintessential part of The Warehouse’s Boom Box; sparklers. Now, all of this is happening while Ferris is announcing (through song, of course) that ‘the end, is coming!’. I think the group genuinely sees the irony and are, at heart, four lads enjoying themselves in their journey.
Lazarus was a song that I particularly enjoyed. Lyrically, ‘I’ll come back from the dead!’ is nothing awe-inspiring. Yep, the name itself gives enough of an indication as to where the track is going. However, the shift between the moods within the song – culminating in a loud and heavy ending, was rather satisfying.
You’ll probably know what you’re going into if you pick up Soothsayer in some shape or form. It’s a heavy kick to the senses, but you can tell that the four members of Planet Hunter have worked hard to lay down some seriously chaotic material that is worth listening to.
Daniel Edmonds
Soothsayer is released 30th January 2026 via Sharkhound | Pre-order here
