Bongsilisk - Pater, Filius et Cannabis Sanctus

 

 

Bongsilisk - Pater, Filius et Cannabis Sanctus
Self-released - 2025
Doom, Stoner
Rated: ****

When you name your band Bongsilisk, call your album 'The Father, The Son and The Holy Cannabis' and start your haze-inducing stoner doom with a spoken sample that says, 'The only serious side-effect of marihuana, is that you might get arrested', you probably more or less know what to expect. Right away they settle into a repetitive, but extremely catchy groove that hangs somewhere in between stoner and doom and gets your body shivering, shaking and quaking in all the right places. Damn catchy it is. And just when you think 'damn, they might have to change it up a bit', that's exactly what happens. Over and over again. Yes, timing is key to keep the three tracks with an average playing time of over ten minutes called 'Pater', 'Filius' and 'Cannabis Sanctus' interesting. And Bongsilisk have got that inner clock working to perfection, giving the Swiss a run for their money in that department.

But shifting textures and creating variations to the stoner and doom themes isn't all Bongsilisk is capable of. During the passages in 'Pater' where the double kick drum gets to shine in all its penetrating glory, the sound gets pretty damn close to fierce and powerful metal, while the atmospheric and much slower 'Filius' even incorporates some post rock elements. At first subtle, but somewhere between the seven and eight minute mark - when the pace picks up a bit - it comes to full fruition. A second spoken sample acts as a tipping point, after which things get all heavy and doomy again before 'Cannabis Sanctus' (the album's highlight) gets to round things off. The intro puts you on the wrong foot with some haunting keys and a final spoken sample but soon gets blown to smithereens by an epic doom groove and hypnotizing riffs, while the rumbling bass is steady as always and gives it that thriving undercurrent. It's the most versatile, most captivating and most original track of the bunch and the ideal closer of an album that isn’t really groundbreaking, but definitely one of the better instrumental doom/stoner releases I've heard in quite a while.

(Written by Ronny Dijksterhuis)

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Stoner HiVe’s Top 10 Most Listened Artists Last Week…

 

 

Stoner HiVe’s
Top 10 Most Listened Artists Last Week…

AAWKS
10 Slip
Dead Wall
Kaiser
Brown Spirits
Ikitan
Sivert Hoyem
Hirax
Sleeping Mountain
A Monkey Shine

Morning! Hope everyone had a great week and hopefully an even better upcoming one! I’m cheating with the above list. Cause I’ve had a powerful lust for David Bowie and been going through quite a few of his records again. So, he actually was topping that list. But you all know Bowie and this post is meant to pay homage to all those albums listened last week as well as listed, that perhaps aren't household names. And we also glance back at the posts we managed to put up. A few words on the new Clouds Taste Satanic, Ikitan and Sonic Deaf Squad. New singles by The Elven and Kadavar. And it was the first week of the new month, which meant the February Doom Charts went live. What a list! And to mention another Top 10, one of the Top 10 albums of 2025 came out: Kaiser. We wrote a few lines about that one and realized the same day also saw light to another Top 10 album of 2025: Kryptograf. An album reviewed by Jon a few weeks earlier. All that great music! And we still need to grab back to great music from earlier times. Simply because we can and there is so much. Check’m out. Check’m all out!

The Spotify Playlist for...

Stoner HiVe's Weekly Top 10 Most Listened

Week 11

Clouds Taste Satanic – Birmingham 2024

 

 

Clouds Taste Satanic – Birmingham 2024
Self-released – 2025
Rock, Metal, Doom, Prog, Instrumental
Rated: ****

The new digital four tack, vinyl three track, release Birmingham 2024 is a ‘no overdub document of the bands set list while on tour in Europe that year.’ The band is Clouds Taste Satanic and the album therefor grabs parts from their latest album 79 A.E., their 2019 album Evil Eye and their sophomore album from 2015 called Your Doom Has Come. That last part is the song Out Of The Abyss and is included in the download once the three track vinyl is purchased. It’s the first of a ‘Live In The Studio’ series and serves indeed as a document to the state of the band at that moment in time. The live feel and chosen quarter part of the Collision part followed by three quarters of Reclamation turn it into an entirely different animal, often pushing a more doom approach towards the surface. An extra hazy atmosphere, perhaps courtesy of Hellfire Studios in Birmingham, or because of a different pedal or two, make all the tracks more vaporous and trance inducing. Pagan Worship, pehaps becoming less ominious and more psychedelic. Deepening the chords struck within you and chiming that legendary bell, so as to give reference to the legends that came before. If the Live In The Studio series continues on throughout different studios across the globe, constantly bringing to live, and bearing the state current state of Clouds Taste Satanic, this might just turn out to be the series that every instrumental doom enthusiast needs to follow. This first chapter is worth it and shows a lot of promise for renewal..

(Written by JK)

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 These Bandcamp Codes might just still work:

Redeem HERE

Codes:

tj6k-hbxs
zelj-c6hv

 

Check out the reviews of the other albums...

All I Want For Christmas Is Your Soul EP

Tales Of Demonic Possession

Evil Eye 

Evil Eye came in 10th on The Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2019

The Glitter of Infinite Hell

Dawn of The Satanic Age

Your Doom Has Come

To Sleep Beyond The Earth

 

79 A.E.

Ikitan – Shaping The Chaos

 

 

Ikitan – Shaping The Chaos
Taxi Driver Records – 2025
Rock, Metal, Post, Prog, Stoner, Instrumental
Rated: ****

What a grandiose drop of awesome albums yesterday! March 7th 2025, will go down in history as a majestic day for the heavy underground. The new Kaiser and Kryptograf were two of those amazing albums that were released yesterday, but there were many more, like for instance Shaping The Chaos by Italian trio Ikitan. We mentioned their Twenty-Twenty EP from 2020 and have been listening to their TOOL informed instrumental stoner, prog and post rock ever since their new promo landed in our email. An album inspired by inexplicable phenomena or weird places around planet earth, which will definitely strike a chord among many of the heavy rock fans. For most of them have a wild imagination and are always keen to experience visions of the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs, volcanic streams, the Gates of Hell crater in Turkey, the rocks that move around Death Valley, ghost lights, mumification and much more. Ending their tale with the sound of the loneliest, sole of the species, of a certain whale. Which I had not known about. (Although back in 2010 and 2022 researchers found out there might be one or two more.) There are definite jazzy and jam-like sections like on fifth and longest track Natron, which also hears violin weave itself across the composition, but most of the album shapes itself like meticulously crafted post and prog. And in doing so molds that one ten and a half minute long track as the ‘chaotic’ centerpiece. Following Bung Fai Phaya Nak, with its drooping, falling opening, its powerful end section, slowly dissipating once again, but then instead sleepily ascending, wonderfully done. And that guitar work on Brinicle, stunning. A bit of funk in the drum style and bass groove from time to time give Shaping The Chaos that extra bit of bop and bounce. And the way they make all of it come together in various centers, like a centrifuge, feels like it all is acting on some holy bond to create something special. Ikitan is its name…  

(Written by JK)

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Kadavar – Hysteria

Kadavar – Hysteria

Back in January we got treated to the brand new single and sound for Berlin quartet Kadavar! It was called I Just Want To Be A Sound and moved more toward psychedelic pop, an MGMT take and something a kin of an overture. And now they complement that sound with Hysteria, which offers some Muse nods, Queen gestures and an eighties throbbing pulse. The rest of the album will be out on May 16th through Cloud Hill Records. For now, we’ve got Hysteria!

PR Wire:

KADAVAR
RELEASE SECOND SINGLE + MUSIC VIDEO FOR “HYSTERIA”

UPCOMING NEW ALBUM
“I JUST WANT TO BE A SOUND”
TO BE RELEASED MAY 16, VIA CLOUDS HILL

Berlin, Germany – Berlin based rock band Kadavar have shared the second single from their upcoming new album ‘I Just Want To Be A Sound’ out May 16 via Clouds Hill.
 
“Hysteria” – with its pulsing, dark rhythm brings the listener into a hypnotic state of mind. Its lyrics explore themes of mental and physical disarray, portraying a sense of confusion, overstimulation, and self-destruction. The repeated refrain of “Hysteria” adds to the overwhelming, frantic atmosphere, spiraling under pressure.

“We wrote this song down from the feeling of words losing their meaning, when even a stream of consciousness can’t keep up to make sense of the inner chaos” says the band “As a state mixed with constant overstimulation and terrifying news, it might just fit this time we’re living in”.
 
“We teamed up with our friend James Barry and award-winning DOP Lucas Fiederling, developing the idea of a dystopian fever theme” adds the band on the new music video “It serves as an extended trailer for a fictional film about a virus that drains the life from humanity through “smart” technologies. His main inspiration was Tetsuo: The Iron Man. We shot the video on the coldest days of the year - but it was worth it!”.

“Hysteria” follows the single “I Just Want To Be A Sound” – the title track of Kadavar’s new album – released last month upon the album’s announcement. The song was added to top playlists with Spotify, Apple, Deezer and TIDAL, gaining traction on lists like Metal Injection’s Top Tracks of the Week, Fresh Noise, New In Rock, Hot New Rock and more.
 
Fans can stream the track on digital platforms here and watch the official music video for the song here. The video was directed by Maximilian Wiedenhofer and features Caelian del Mare, a highly acclaimed young German/Turkish actor and model from Berlin.
 
‘I Just Want To Be A Sound’ is a manifesto for freedom, transformation and radical presence. An album that repeatedly abandons itself in order to reincarnate in new forms. Rock anthem, ballad, pop song, epic and earthly alternate seamlessly and virtuously. Free and full of momentum.

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The Elven – Closer To Freedom

 

 

The Elven – Closer To Freedom

It does give off that atmosphere, a spring sun and a form of freedom many of us long for. It’s the new, second single, by that brand new outfit The Elven. The project made up out of members from Saturna and Earthless and who will be releasing their debut album through Spinda Records (ES), in a new collaboration with Clostridium Records (DE) and Echodelick Records (US) on April 3rd. A beautiful song called Closer To Freedom will stop you in your tracks, will make you face the sun and breathe…

PR Wire: 

The Elven drop "Closer to freedom" as their second single...

It's been already a month since The Elven presented themselves to the world with their first-ever single "Shine". But now it's time for "Closer to freedom", the second and last track that they will reveal before April 3, 2025, the date when their debut album 'Solstice' will be released through Spinda Records.

What began at the end of 2020 as an irrational need to compose music by Rod Tirado and James Vieco from Saturna soon took on a different identity when they brought in their friends Isaiah Mitchell (Earthless) on lead guitar, Tabatha Puig on keyboards, and Javi Gómez on drums. In just one month, they wrote the 8 songs that make up this debut album, titled 'Solstice', which they recorded with all the freshness and spontaneity of the moment at the Analog Drive-in Studios, alongside Christian A. Korn at the controls and Dani Pernas as co-producer. Pernas would later handle the mixing before passing the project on to Estanis Elorza for mastering.

Solstice

1. Shine
2. Far beyond
3. Closer to freedom
4. New pair of wings
5. Stand right next to me
6. Out the door
7. Wherever I go
8. All of a sudden

For the graphic design, they once again enlisted an illustration by Jondix (Tool, Black Sabbath, High on Fire, Electric Wizard) and the design by Jalón de Aquiles for a vinyl edition that will be released by Spinda Records (ES), in a new collaboration with Clostridium Records (DE) and Echodelick Records (US), who previously worked together on the debut album by Loma Baja.

'Solstice' will be available on April 3, 2025, and will be released exclusively in digital format and on vinyl; in a limited edition of 300 copies in marbled yellow, which can already be pre-ordered at spindarecords.com.

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The Doom Charts For February 2025

 

DOOM CHARTS

FEBRUARY 2025

 

“Hey Siri, what is the Doom Patrol?”

~ Crazy Jane

The ride continues! The Doom Patrol is loose again! Running fast and loud through a great selection of heavy music. Ten Years on, and the Contributors are all still incredibly stoked to send in their lists of favorite albums of the month. To tell you each month about their discoveries. The best in their opinion. We are honored to have so many cool Contributors with us. And this month, they voted for 201 different albums! We’re in this together and we cannot wait, each month, to see the monthly list, to visit all those albums once again. Or for the very first time. The Contributors, the Doom Patrol, they are the Genghis Khan of heavy rock… And they want you to join the horde… 

There she is! In all its glory... The new, February Doom Charts... Sporting 39 amazing new albums straight out of the Heavy Underground... 39?! Yes, it does not happen that often anymore. But one carried over from January! 

Of the ones featured on the charts, personal votes went out to:

Acid Magus, Möuth, Fulanno, Ironrat, Prima Materia, Gin Lady, SweetBeast, Warlung, Red Eye, Year of the Cobra, Icarus Burns, Yawning Balch, Atomic Peat, Lightning Swells Forever, Requiem Blues, Motorpsycho, Shrew & Naxatras !

But as usual, could have, and probably should have voted for all the others! Completely enamored with that new Pothamus album right now for instance! And would have loved to have seen Ditch make it on! Go check it out! Check'm all out...

Stoner HiVe's review for Acid Magus - Scatterling Empire

Stoner HiVe's review for Ironrat - Beneath It All

Stoner HiVe's review for Ditch - The Traveler 

Welcome to Doom Charts, representing some of the finest bloggers, journalists, radio, podcasters and reviewers from the heavy underground around the globe.  Each month, our critics submit their picks for the best new doom, sludge, metal, stoner, psychedelic and heavy rock albums.  The results are compiled and tabulated into the chart below.  This is a one-stop shop for the best new albums in the world…

The Doom Charts for February 2025

 

Sonic Deaf Squad - The Basement Tapes, Recordings From The Vault

 

Sonic Deaf Squad - The Basement Tapes, Recordings From The Vault
Self-released – 2025
Rock, Alternative, Noise, Punk
Rated: ***

Out since the first of February, a brand new collaboration between four artists that you might know from bands like Geishas of Doom, Kintsugi Empire, Atlanta, Ten East, Hilltop Howlers, Tricklebolt, Automatic Sam, Shaking Godspeed, Love Supreme, Giant Tiger Hooch, Eins Zwei Orchestra and probably a whole hell more! Cause this is a band with four highly intuitive artists that always flow according to the energies of the great magnet. They let the wind carry them and do their magic on whatever canvas presented. Case in point, drummer Stephan Konings is also a visual artist and painter. Free flowing, tumbling and gritty, the punk is presented like slow moving experiments, with noisy outburst and with different grooves for the listener to latch on to. The eight tracks, seven of them only with a maximum length of two and half minutes, are only seemingly chaotic, for even though there are these various channels to swim through, you are always able to head out with the current. In all, these Recordings From The Vault, exhibit a lot of drive, and a lot of sixties, seventies psychedelics turned into punk and noise fare from later decades. “The music reflects the unrest of an unstable social climate with raw, experimental sounds capturing the chaos of the modern world.” A statement that you can hear Sonic Deaf Squad deliver with sinewy momentum and sparks flying everywhere…

(Written by JK)

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Geishas of Doom – The First Four Tapes

Kintsugi Empire – Shun

Automatic Sam – Arcs

Tricklebolt – Honey From The Sky

Kaiser – 2nd Sound

 

 

Kaiser – 2nd Sound
Majestic Mountain Records – 2025
Rock, Stoner, Metal
Rated: *****

Helsinki, Finland is home to the trio known as Kaiser. And that city will surely have the pleasure of seeing them perform their new album 2nd Sound soon enough! For the album will be out tomorrow on Majestic Mountain Records and it is one hell of a wild adventure! A truly addictive ride that starts with opening track Brotha and ends with eight and final song Aftershock. There are moments when the boys go full Kyuss. That beautiful atavistic stoner rocking. And it’s celebrating a lot of the more metal side of the heavy underground. But all of those avenues are transversed with power and sheer force. And as you wallow comfortably in that knowledge and accept there is no escape from Kaiser’s 2nd Sound they manage to up the dynamics, freak out with guitars or have the bass do something even wilder.  You’ve heard Brotha, you’ve been having it on repeat. If not, go listen immediately. But that’s just the magnificent opener. 1,5 Dozen follows and ups the ante with fierce energy and a furious noisy assault. Soon opening up, exchanging the screams for more melodic vocal work, harmonizing even and thundering ever forward as the guitar gets to lift off and soar. The way they then make Meteorhead sound so effortless and riddled with boogie, how it revolves around itself, spinning towards something inevitable. Feral vocals dragging you along towards the shouted ‘Meteorhead’ middle part, anxious for participation from the crowd. And that drum work on this third track, stunning is an understatement! Beautiful guitar, with the solo stretching exactly far enough to give you even more awareness of the magnificent bass you’ve been hearing. The musicianship of the entire album only becomes apparent after you’ve been shocked and awed into listening to the record on repeat. For at first it might seem hidden among all that gritty and grimy fuzz work, that deliberate steamrolling aspect of this album. But as your head wraps itself around it, you will realize you are listening to one hell of a luxuriously crafted tonal beauty. It’s simple, we’re just entering March, but Kaiser’s 2nd Sound is one of the best albums to be released this year…

(Written by JK)

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Stoner HiVe on Otu – Fuzzy Tunes

Stoner HiVe’s Top 10 Most Listened Artists Last Week…

 

 

Stoner HiVe’s
Top 10 Most Listened Artists Last Week…

Lo-Pan
Torche
Chiefs
Black Pussy
Cherry Choke
Rifflord
Spidergawd
Acid King
Masters Of Reality
Shepherd

Morning! Welcome to another new start of the week and a Stoner HiVe glance back to the  week passed. It’s gonna be a hectic week and a very annoying day over here. But luckily we have that amazing music to help us get through it all! We’ve been listening to the albums that made the First ever Doom Charts list from March 2015, and that is reflected in the list above of course. Congrats once again to the DC and all its Contributors. We did a Quick Fire Friday, posted videos by An Evening With Knives, Komatsu and Point Mort. Love For Loud published her list of gigs for March and yes, we also promoted that interview with did for Aftershocks TV / Seismic Sounds. We talked a lot about Stoner HiVe and Doom Charts and it was a weird honor to do so. The honorable poet Ronny Dijksterhuis delivered two amazing reviews for the split album by TTTDC and Sons Of The Ionian Sea and Hempire. And yesterday we posted reviews for Ironrat and An Evening With Knives. Not too shabby listed like this. But of course, we always want to do more… Don’t think that can happen this week. But we’ll try! Go check out the write-ups and check out the playlist for the list above, mostly filled with amazing albums from March 2015! Thank you Doom Charts and your big ears!

The Spotify Playlist for...

Stoner HiVe's Weekly Top 10 Most Listened

Week 10

An Evening With Knives – End of Time

 

 

An Evening With Knives – End of Time
Argonauta Records / Electric Spark Records – 2025
Metal, Post, Sludge, Prog
Rated: ****

Two weeks from now the world will quake and tremble just a little bit more from all those stereos around the globe set to volume eleven! It will signal the coming of the End Of Time. And by that we do not mean the biblical end of times, but the new album by Eindhoven, the Netherlands metal trio An Evening With Knives. The first studio release with new drummer Jarno van Osch, who was already introduced to the world by that wonderful FNR Sessions from 2023. Which made clear the sound would be turning a more aggressive and even more turbulent corner. End Of Time is definitely that! Furious, fiery and ferocious. There are a few moments here and there where the vocals of Marco Gelissen sound a little less convincing than on earlier albums. As if he was searching for the right direction or sound to aim for. But those moments are quickly dispersed by the righteous roars that usually follow. Like a lion about to devour his competitors! Those are perhaps two of the obvious differences in comparison to the earlier quality releases. Another one is that not just the drums are more direct, so are the compositions. Not a note too much seems to have been the adagio and this gives the songs, paradoxically enough, more room to come into their own. Eight tracks with the perfect vinyl running time of almost 39 minutes. Singles Pride Of Lions, The Mistake and Voices have been out for a bit now and turned heads. But those heads will be needing neck braces after hearing the short deviously whirling Death and the final and longest track on the album S21. S21 with seven and a half minutes takes the listener to Cambodia and speaks of all the atrocities that went on during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Slowly picking up the pace, grabbing back the most perhaps to the sound of earlier albums, they start out very atmospheric and with the malicious utterings of Gelissen, you can feel the disgust seeping into your veins. Beautiful guitar work later on, thanks to riveting bass that pushes those guitar lines towards the heavens. It’s one of the many highlights on the album. And all of it is sure to set off a seismic event…

(Written by JK)

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Stoner HiVe on FNR Sessions

Stoner HiVe on Serrated

Stoner HiVe on An Evening With Knives

Much more about An Evening With Knives

Ironrat – Beneath It All

 

 

Ironrat – Beneath It All
Argonauta Records – 2025
Metal, Stoner, Doom
Rated: ****

Bradford, UK born Ironrat has been around in some shape or form for many a year. Releasing that gritty Monument album back in 2014. A quintet back then, they are now a four-piece. Still featuring a core three of Wayne Hustler on guitar, Stuart Hillman on bass and Martin Wiseman (a name you might know from Psychlona) on guitar and vocal duties. Cause vocalist Chris Flear left as well as drummer Lee Durham, now replaced by Gordon Wilkinson. The four forged Beneath It All out of fiery metal, often grunge or sludge toned, doom infused and stoner touched. The groove is ever-present and in headbanging fashion. They have that chugging and trucking element mastered but also change that up with some moments of dynamic energy. And that bass work, flourishes underneath that concrete riffage, just check out the excellent Tip Of My Tongue track for instance. An excellent atmospheric break setting you up for that final stretch of steam rolling ruckus, with a bass that is allowed to wander and scurry. Like a rat! Third track and single Lost is stoner metal by default. Sports great vocals by Wiseman, but also calming and soaring harmonies later on in the track. Showing promise of even more possibilities for the future. Beneath It All has everything to give the Ironrat four a podium to build on. And a stage to conquer us all!

(Written by JK)

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Grand Sounds PR

Point Mort - Skinned Teeth

 

 

Point Mort - Skinned Teeth

Almost Famous, a damn good movie. It's also a label to keep your eye on. And ear. For they will be releasing the new album called Le Point De Non-Retour by French Postcore, Hardcore, Metal quintet Point Mort. And Skinned Teeth is the first single and video! A riotous, punk, kitty loving and intense track! And those vocals, wowzah!

 

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Shake Promotion