dinsdag 19 januari 2016

Tony Maim's Personal Top 20


Tony Maim's Personal Top 20

Madman Tony Maim has been steady delivering his maddening truth over at the HiVe. But before that he had his own outlet called The Black Insect Laughter. And back in October he re-found the right amount of time to get back at it again! Since then a steady stream of marvelous posts has graced our eyes. Just read his amazing memories about Lemmy, the Glorious Bastard. And we are honored he dedicated his Soundtrack To My Year 2015 post to the HiVe and myself… Here it is… Madman Tony Maim’s Personal Top 20 of 2015!

1. Moon Curse - Spirit Remains
Throbbing, majestic slabs of psychedelic doom.

2. Abrams - Lust, Love, Loss
A heady mix of stoner and hardcore.

3. High On Fire - Luminiferous
Leaving all comparisons of Sleep behind, Matt Pike and Co
gave us an album for of searing solos, alien mind control
and riffs that shook my fucking soul.

4. Black Rainbows - Hawkdope
Heavy, groovy, unstoppable with hints of space rock expansiveness
combine with driving Stoner song structures to make each track
sound like a classic cut on first hearing. Hints of fuzz electric blues
are scattered throughout with searing effect and yes, it does
make me want to drive faster with my arm hanging out of the window,
music blaring from the speakers on the way to some humdrum place of
work, having my soul lifted by this potential masterpiece.

5. Miles Davis - Live In Tokyo 1975
Unreleased broadcast recorded 10 days before the Agharta and
Pangaea concerts, this has a rawer sound and has Miles and the two
guitarists trying to outdo each other in a war of wah-wah pedals.

6. Acid King - Middle Of Nowhere, Center Of Everywhere
This is Stoner, Fuzz-laden Doom Blues with a palpable feeling
of tripped out vibes that is rarely heard these days.

7. With The Dead - S/T
Expectations were high with this doom "supergroup".  Guess
what? It lived up to the hype - dense, raw and infused with a
feeling of suffocation. Nice.

8. KEN mode - Success
Thick, dense and brutal  - hardcore/noise rock that cut
through the fog in my mind.

9. Windhand - Grief's Internal Flower
Misery and doom has never sounded so beautiful or haunting.

10. Bersaerk - Mulm
Bersærk take the stoner template and stomp all over it with
a hardcore attitude giving you 9 tracks that start off fast and
furious and that do not stop until the end. Hailing from Denmark, this
has had the same effect on me when I first heard Kvelertak -
jumping up and down with a stupid grin on
my face.

11. Goya - Obelisk
Big hypnotic grooves give you a trip into the more psychedelic
realms of doom by riffing to an almost mantra like refrain that lodges
deep into your cortex fluids on a primal level to make your body slowly
jerk and move to the primitive and shamanistic tunes that have clearly been
spawned by unclean thoughts and in-pure impulses to damage people
with slow, fuzzed guitars and low-end tuning.

12. James Brown - Sho' Is Funky Down Here 1971
All instrumental and full of heavy fuzzed-out guitars in a jazzy
psychedelic rock style, resembling the first records by Funkadelic.

13. Dopethrone - Hochelaga
Sludge stoner doom with riffage stolen from Hell. Swamp
blues weighed down with menace and power.

14. Gorgantherron - Second Sun
Heavy, heavy metal stoner that rocks like a bastard from
start to finish with swagger and beer.

15. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Night Creeper
I have had this album on repeat and find myself drifting into the
coldness of a foggy London night as twilight descends upon you and
the dark, dank shadow shrouded streets beckon with hints of strange
pleasures or the kiss of a razor blade only to be jolted out my fevered dream
state with a fuzz filled solo and find my head is slowly nodding to the
majestic songs that are starting to feel like the best thing I have played for ages.

16. Coliseum - Anxiety's Kiss
Hardcore that takes the AmRep template and runs with it -
heavy without being brutal ...beautiful pain.

17. Witchskull - The Vast Electric Dark
These Aussie rockers have come up with a compelling and
addictive slice of heavy sounds that just gets better the more
you play it. NWOBHM rubs shoulders with Motorhead and Trouble
giving them a template from which they launch blistering salvos of
hook laden riffs and fist pumping tunes. This is rumbling Stoner/Doom
with it’s own identity – not just another band ripping off some shit from
the past and thinking that is enough.

18. Mammoth Salmon - Last Vestige Of Humanity
This is Doom that has enough venom and raspy vocals to veer
into Sludge with vicious intent. The fuzzed bass is up front in the
mix and powers the songs along as an anchor to the drums that sound
like they are being attacked with hatred.

19. The Black Wizards - Lake Of Fire
Huge sounding and massive, The Black Wizards play Classic
Rock and Stoner with authority and power. Add some Proto-
Doom and all is well. The riffs are as Sabbathy as you like without being
too obvious which of course means they fucking rock
like a mountain avalanche. Mid paced songs morph into
slow hymns of despair but the melodic and fuzzed solos stop
any signs of wrist slashing  - instead you have the uncontrollable
urge to start nodding and foot stomping.

20. The Shrine - Rare Breed
Lip smacking, fuzz stomping, amp humping,
solo shredding, MC5 riffing, crowd surfing,
bass throbbing, beer drinking, drum pounding,
drug snorting, sweat flying, fist punching,
head banging, chorus shouting, throat straining,
foot stomping, Flying V playing, ear bleeding,
rabble rousing fucking rock'n'roll.

Much love for the Madman and his crazy laughter!

vrijdag 15 januari 2016

JK’s Personal Top 20 - 2015


JK’s Personal Top 20

It’s been hard. These past weeks. A rollercoaster of bad times, worse emotions, laughter and happiness. Without looking too much forward or spending too much time thinking about the future, let’s take a last glance back. Back to that horribly faithful year of 2015. A year filled with a multitude of wreckage and yet so much great music, that it’s hard to not smile when thinking about those sounds we all love so dearly. So many albums were released in 2015 that it is impossible to make up a Top 20. You could easily end up with a cool 100. And perhaps even more… But we’ll stick to the Top 20 for now… Just to end this year righteously… And keep up my end of the bargain…

As for the list. For me, there’s a definite top 5. Those first five records in the list below keep topping the rest when I put them on. And everything below those first five are equal whenever they spin. And then there are those albums that are just below the Top 20. Mentioned anyway, because I just couldn’t exclude them, or because they were released in the middle of December… Let’s run’em down!

1.    Elder – Lore
17.    Carousel – 2113

Mojo Waves – All The Right Parts Fit The Wrong Way
Molior Superum – Electric Escapism
Doctor Doom – The Seed We Have Sown
Magister Templi – Into Duat
Golden Void – Berkana
Sacri Monti – Sacri Monti
Prophets of Saturn – Retronauts
Snowy Dunes – Snowy Dunes
The Devil And The Almighty Blues – The Devil And The Almighty Blues
Öken – Öken
Ape Machine – Coalition of The Unwilling
Yeti – Ritual
Jess And The Ancient Ones - Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes
Baroness – Purple

dinsdag 5 januari 2016

Onwards and Upwards in 2016 !


Onwards and Upwards in 2016 !

As promised a little more data and stuff about the Stoner HiVe top 20 countdown of 2015. In the end 72 of the 78 lists that you lovely freaks sent in were counted. Six of the lists came in a bit or way too late to be used. The amount of albums voted for was lower than usual and reached a total of 268 albums. Below are the numbers 21 to 100. With Ponamero Sundown missing one point to equal Witchskull on Number 20. And Desert Storm on the 100th position missing exactly 140 points to make it to the Top 20…


Yuri Gagarin – At The Center Of All Infinity
Faith No More – Sol Invictus
Sahara Surfers – High Lands
Snail – Feral
Magic Circle – Journey Blind
Disenchanter – Strange Creations
Shepherd – Stereolithic Riffalocalypse
Spelljammer – Ancient Of Days
Sacri Monti – Sacri Monti
Roundtable – Dread Marches Under Bloodied Regalia
Wildlights – Wildlights
Mondo Drag – Mondo Drag
Brothers of the Sonic Cloth – Brothers of the Sonic Cloth
Tarot – The Warrior's Spell
Space Probe Taurus – Mondo Satan
Ecstatic Vision – Sonic Praise
Holy Serpent – Holy Serpent
Death Alley – Black Magick Boogieland
All Them Witches – Dying Surfer Meets His Maker
Stoned Jesus – The Harvest
Golden Void – Berkana
Radar Men On The Moon – Subversive I
Giobia – The Magnifier
The Devil And The Almighty Blues – The Devil And The Almighty Blues
Sunder – Sunder
Battling giants – Birth, Death, Reckoning
Zolle – Porkestra
Mammoth Mammoth - Vol. 4 – Hammered Again
Magister Templi – Into Duat
Electric Moon – Theory of Mind  
Band of Spice – Economic Dancers
Transport League – Napalm Bats and Suicide Dogs
The Midnight Ghost Train – Cold Was The Ground
Øresund Space Collective – Different Creatures
Sun Blood Stories – Twilight Midnight Morning
Tombstones – Vargariis
Mustasch – Testosterone
KIND – Rocket Science
Brothers of the Head – Light the Night,Feed the Flame
Disenchanter – Strange Creations
Balam – Days of Old

vrijdag 1 januari 2016

Number 1


Number 1

“My rider is a few biscuits, a few cakes, a meat plate, a cheese plate, some cigs, some JDs. I must say, I'm not completely fixated on Jack Daniel's – it's just that it's the one with the best distribution system worldwide. At one point I mainly drank Southern Comfort mixed with Special Brew. What was I thinking?” ~ Lemmy

The jump from Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats as runner-up in the Stoner HiVe top 20 countdown of 2015 is no less that thirty-seven points. The absolute Gold medal this year goes to a trio that was already predicted to steal the prize back in February. And who already took first place back in 2011 with their Dead Roots Stirring album. They managed to turn the musical year upside down and uprooting the expected slow start of the year. They ran away with the Doom Charts those first months and came in second place in the overall Doom Charts. Where yours truly wrote: “Stupefying all of us. Or at least most of us. They came out swinging with an album at the very beginning of this year that perhaps even bested that awe-inspiring performance on Roadburn 2013. The Boston trio released their album unto the world in February and all of us kept spinning that record until the needle ran through the groove. Their mixture of psychedelic rock, heavy stoner and epic metal will have you climbing to incredible heights in the dreams they evoke. There is no escaping and once you’re in, there is really no way out until those final mythical fading moments... For the album is one gigantic tension arc. It will make you forget all about time and place and experience something that only the true wise men know. It won’t teach, but simply show…”  The stuff of legends, a contribution that will live on forever in the pantheon of rock. A perfect record, a pure ballistically delivered album, a blow against the empire, a rigging singular beautiful strike, a hammer of the gods that will sound on for eternity…

Elder – Lore