Object Unto Earth is a dreamy, deeply emotive prog-rock band from Portland, Oregon, born from the creative mind of songwriter/producer Jonathan Zajdman. The outfit’s latest release, a four-song EP entitled Memory Tyrant (released on March 20, 2026) highlights their refreshingly accessible take on heavy, progressive music with headbangable yet hooky riffs, earworm melodies, and Zajdman’s heartfelt, relatable storytelling – which is intricately (and amusingly) woven into fantasy tales of frogs journeying through various heroic trials and tribulations.

Memory Tyrant is a thematic and sonic follow-up to the 2025 debut album The Grim Village. Featuring members of the band’s 2025 live lineup, and co-produced by Zajdman and Seanan McCullough of Helvete Sound, Portland’s studio of record for the city’s hardest-hitting bands. The EP deepens the downright infectious quality of the expressive, emo-tinged harmonies of its predecessor without sacrificing any of its cerebral prog and math-rock facets, and has been praised by outlets across the genre spectrum including Decibel Magazine, The Prog Subway, Fecking Bahamas, and Heavy Blog Is Heavy (who also helped fund the mixing and mastering of the EP through a grant via their Patreon subscribers).

Under the layers of fantasy and metaphor, Zajdman has (and perhaps we all have) undergone a few trials and tribulations of his own. He and his wife moved to Portland in the fall of 2020, when the majority of live music was still at a halt due to the pandemic and lockdown/social distancing made it difficult to connect with other musicians and build a community. Despite being an extrovert, he found himself experiencing a great deal of re-entry anxiety when shows picked up again, both in his identity as a musician and breaking into a new social scene in general.  

In the summer of 2022, an extraordinarily profound experience occurred: While driving home from a particularly moving show and an unexpectedly healing, life-affirming conversation with an old friend, he was struck by a drunk driver who was going over 100 mph. His car was utterly destroyed, and by all laws of physics he should have been killed or seriously injured. But by some twist of fate, he walked away from the accident relatively unscathed. He had already written a few songs at that point, but the overall experience (and newly forged, urgent sense of motivation to make use of the time we’re given) was the catalyst he needed to put his uncertainties aside and fully dive into the process of writing and producing his own record.

By mid-2023, Zajdman put together a live lineup and played the first show under the name Object Unto Earth shortly before going into the studio to track the debut album, The Grim Village. The band name also appears in the lyrics on the song “Onward With Blinding Speed” which came to him by accident and have served as an overarching theme ever since:

But you weren’t cursed, you are an object unto earthA cosmic burst, known, elemental in its worth.