vrijdag 31 augustus 2018

Trail – Spaces



Trail – Spaces

We’ve been raving about the record, it’s art and the band since Spaces was released in February of this year. Shit man, already half a year has passed since the first time we heard Trail’s official full-sized debut. And now, with this righteous vinyl treatment we can continue to spin it until the end of time. A gorgeous ‘die hard edition’ package is available through their webshop. Featuring a poster with incredible art by Michaela Malcomess, a shirt and vinyl bag featuring the same art, some stickers, the album on cd and on vinyl. White splattered in league with the artwork, the entire package is a work of art and shows the love these guys have for their music and the stuff they do! This five-track debut record has all the dynamics and tension arcs one desires from a mostly instrumental psychedelic rock adventure. It is grounded in stoner and flies high in all its heaviness. The German fourpiece has a knack for making something highly natural out of progressive and trippy music. This adventure takes you places. And while most of these records seem to take you to outer space or into a realm beyond imagination. This one burrows deep into your fantasy and describes a fictional reality that feels so real you extend your arms as if to touch it. Sure, this is just a fancy way or describing something awesome that we love. But that is what we do at the HiVe. We profess our undying love to the music we adore and do not pretend any form of objectivity. And, so do the guys themselves, as you can see by the way they look into every little detail of the presentation! Absolutely amazing! 

(Written by JK)






Stoner HiVe's Top 10 artists listened to last month...


Stoner HiVe's
Top 10 artists listened to last month...


donderdag 23 augustus 2018

Chief of Smoke – Rice Paddy Rodeo


Chief of Smoke – Rice Paddy Rodeo
Self released – 2018
Rock, Stoner, Desert, Doom
Rated: *****

Hailing from those barren northern wastelands of Groningen, Netherlands comes a heavy trio that listens to the name Chief of Smoke. You might have heard their first release A Fresh Round Of Smoke back in 2016. Well, they’ve outdone those four mighty groovy tracks as if they’ve belonged to those mythical desert bands of yore. Yes, these brothers in crime have produced a massive slab of heaviness called Rice Paddy Rodeo. Five slow, completely fuzzed out, stoner anthems that deal in shimmering hot bass air and whirling dusty riffs. It drags, it crawls, and it lumbers like a giant beast on its way to meet its doom. And that is where their atavistic stoner sound rubs up against everything we love from the doom genre. That sluggish perennial rhythmic approach and the way it is pounded home by the drummer. Guitar colors that hang around on the bluesy crossroads for the exact right amount of time to meet up with the horned one and then mosey on over to rock out around cacti and headbanging sand lizards. Yes, this is the good stuff! This is what will turn on, every one of the heads! Buy the ticket, take the ride, it's a Rice Paddy Rodeo!

(Written by JK)



woensdag 22 augustus 2018

Stoner HiVe’s Top 5 artists listened to last week…


Stoner HiVe’s
Top 5 artists listened to last week…


Hello there. And yes. And how has everybody been doing? We’ve been crushed by the weighty loads that have been dumped on us. Workloads that is. But we still foresee some form of HiVe time coming up. Yes, there is always a little green light on the edge of the horizon. This small Top 5 Most Listened to Last Week post should have gone up on Monday of course. But sudden other assignments took precedence. So here it is now. On Wednesday. Don’t flog us for it! On repeat for a while now has been the new Brant Bjork album Mankind Woman. The laidback desert guru has done it again. Out on Heavy Psych Sounds the record continues on with its radiant sound, windswept and shimmering hot. With more nods towards the sixties and seventies it’s Brant at his best, free spirited and wild at heart! Sit up, listen and take of your hat… Mudfinger’s self-released Psychonaut is a righteous stoner metal adventure that takes the exact right amount of cues of psychedelic influences, majestic grooves and a massive layer of fuzz. These German cats have delivered on hell of a debut! And so, has Hetouth! Well, the self-released Green House is a not a debut, but it is on hell of an amazing album! The fifth released by this Belgian duo is instrumental improvisation brought to its wild and wonderful conclusion! “One day, one jam, ten songs!” Ten amazing stoner and desert rock escapades that will get your head right in a world gone mad! “And in a world gone mad, we will not spank the monkey, but the monkey will spank us.” Right on Jay! Right on! (Recorded at Opack Records. And what's this Fuck Labels Fuck Mastering thing? Cara pils for the win!) And yes, we went back to check on Them Crooked Vultures again. It was 19-08-2009, when they played their second gig ever in the world right on over in Amsterdam. We were there, it was one hell of a glorious night. Sometimes you need to visit those memories again and over and again! Skooma! This sweet ass outfit releases one groovy and melodic stoner metal album called Seven Foot Death that dances around with doom and abuses sludge like an ancient slave master. A majestic intro opener leads to a track list filled with down to earth rockers and tasty loud riffs! Check’m out! Check’m all out!

vrijdag 10 augustus 2018

Wood Chickens – Must Die


Wood Chickens – Must Die
Crush Grove Records – 2018
Punk, Noise, Speed
Rated: ***

There are records where you prepare for. And some that all the preparation in the world could not prepare you for. And then there are a few where any form of preparation is completely useless. The four-track Must Die EP by Wood Chickens falls in the latter category, or perhaps has even devised it’s very own one. It comes on cassette. And once the plastic is removed and the green ooze looking carton is removed you put in the tape. Prepared for unholy ruckus and loud noises, cause that’s what tapes are usually used for nowadays. Opened up a beer, pressed play and then before you take your second sip… it’s over! What the fuck!? The four tracks on this EP only last three and a half minutes! I love punk. I love skate punk. I love noise. I love speedy noise. I love the aesthetics of something short and sweet and I love weirdness. And Wood Chickens has it all, but so little of it! So, the only true thing I can convey about Wood Chickens’s Must Die EP is that I wish there was more!

(Written by JK)





donderdag 9 augustus 2018

La Chinga - Beyond The Sky


La Chinga – Beyond The Sky
Small Stone – 2018
Rock, Hard, Seventies, Blues, Boogie
Rated: ****

We’ve been loving their Zeppelin sound since we first heard their self-titled debut record La Chinga back in 2013. And the Freewheelin’ album that followed three years later made our head explode and became a soundtrack to many a car ride towards the endless horizon. And now the Canadian trio is back with more and it is more of that sweet seventies lovin goodness! Beyond The Sky is what the new La Chinga album is called, and it continues down that majestic road they started on already quite a few years ago. This time however their seventies hardrock sound seems to slow down a notch. They make the groove go down, down and laidback and the underlying blues current flowing slower. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still rockin and knockin and straight up boogie. But the dances won’t be that wild, but more sensual and lovin. This one is meant for those sweaty and steamy summer nights, the ones you never want to end. Just like this mad hot summer we’ve been having and this crackin new album called Beyond The Sky

(Written by JK)



dinsdag 7 augustus 2018

Zeal & Ardor – Stranger Fruit


Zeal & Ardor – Stranger Fruit
Radicalis / MVKA – 2018
Metal, Rock, Roots, Avant-Garde, Black
Rated: ****

In the end we never wrote about those first two releases of the Swiss avant-garde metal project Zeal & Ardor lead by Manuel Gagneux. Simply, because we couldn’t completely grasp it. It jumped a bit too much around to really get hooked by it. There was something there, something between that ADHD hop, skip and a jump movement through blues, roots, soul and black metal. But it also overwhelmed you with something that felt like too much, much too much. But then came Graspop Festival. And they played to a completely and chuck full Metal Dome (to their own surprise) and the show was so incredibly good, it overwhelmed you (this time the good way) and left you in awe and full of love for the band. So, Stranger Fruit had to be bought. And on it, we still hear that somewhat weird combination of genres… that now work magnificently. With more of a thread through the songs, we can now enjoy a much stronger set of material and be awed by the melancholy and the pain or be chilled by the haunting voice and atmosphere. This is how the first two records were meant to be. And this comes close to Zeal & Ardor live. For that was and is, a true shock and awe experience…

(Written by JK)



maandag 6 augustus 2018

Stoner HiVe’s Top 5 artists listened to last week…


Stoner HiVe’s
Top 5 artists listened to last week…


There will be a few mentions posted soon. You know, us raving about an album we love. Going overboard with the accolades and trying to convey the feeling we get from listening to that record. We still don’t do the technical reviews and we do not try and dissect something we love. We just boast about that feeling and the images it conjures! And when we do this little thingy, telling you about the Five Artists we listened to the most last week. We just quickly want to get out there what music we have been enjoying the most. Sometimes it’s a new record and sometimes we grab back to older ones we adore! Like Sir Bowie for instance, we can listen to the Thin White Duke all day every day. And sometimes the lust for his music grows so big, we cannot shove it aside any longer. We already mentioned the second album Volume II: The Divide by Hyperwülff last week. An amazing follow-up to Volume I: Erion Speaks and everyone should check this duo out. It will grab you somewhere and rattle your bones! La Chinga’s new album Beyond The Sky will come out shortly, just like the mention we are posting tomorrow or soon. Out on Small Stone it’s another damn fine hard rocking, seventies loving, scoot boogying record; and everyone will dig it! When it ranks on the Number 1 spot of the newest Doom Chart you’d better get yer hands on that record and put it on repeat. Brimstone Coven’s latest is called What Was And What Shall Be. Put out by Brimstone Coven themselves, it has all the power and groove one can wish for. And last but certainly not least, we have been doing our crazy dancing to the Ape Machine’s This House Is Condemned after moving on to War To Head and then on to Mangled By The Machine cause there is a new Ape Machine on the horizon and we cannot wait to hear! We love these cats! And you know the deal, you need to check’m out! Check’m all out!

donderdag 2 augustus 2018

Hyperwülff – Volume II: The Divide


Hyperwülff – Volume II: The Divide
Shove/Deathcrush/Dischi Bervisti/Teschio Dischi/Roughness Noise – 2018
Metal, Core, Black, Sludge, Doom
Rated: ***

Volume I: Erion Speaks was released in 2015 and felt like a blackened metal and sludge core translation of the Divine Comedy. And now, Hyperwülff is back with Volume II: The Divide to show us all there are even more layers beyond those seven that Dante told us about. That’s how it feels. But in truth there is a different backstory to this charcoal release. The Italians begin their story on the battlefield where the last fight against Robogoat takes place. It ends in the demise of the great Wulf and the Goat both. After which Hyperwülff is forced to roam the universe devoid of physical form in search of way to regain a body before being swept away through the dark layers of the Universe. Yes. Much weirder indeed. But in truth, the backstory isn’t all that necessary, one can imagine even darker adventures when listening to the album. The growls, the howls, it all sounds intensely twisted and evil. And the musical tones, ominous throughout! At least, that’s how it starts. And then with the Last Ride track (which also has an official video) the veil is lifted and instead of standing their ground, they’re on the move in a very big way! And even though the thunder does return, the sky clears and green light does appear. Big time. And that’s exactly what this Italian duo has produced with the new album, something big. Something big, bold and beautiful, in all its dark and twisted glory!

(Written by JK)



Yob – Our Raw Heart


Yob – Our Raw Heart
Relapse Records – 2018
Doom, Rock, Metal, Sludge
Rated: ****

The record that came before, Clearing The Path To Ascend, was so freakin beautiful it became an instant doom metal classic. It reached the Number 2 position of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of that year and everyone longed for more of Mike Scheidt and his Yob buddies. But life happens… A severe intestinal illness had Sir Scheidt dancing on a tightrope, which could have ended on the wrong end of the wire. But luckily a hugely fat grey cat came to him as spirit animal and helped him survive. All that angst, feat and worry is now translated into what became Our Raw Heart. It is perhaps not another instant classic, but with Beauty In Falling Leaves, they do have another majestic track on their hands. It will be choking you with emotion and harrowing visions. It will be pummeling you raw with pounding riffs and grate your soul with a bone chilling voice. And that is how Our Raw Heart grabs you and sits you down, it will speak to you and philosophize about it all. And that resounds in their music. Oppressive and suffocating on one hand and expansive and progressive on the other end. And with that Yob continues along a their very own Path

(Written by JK)




woensdag 1 augustus 2018

The Doom Chart For July 2018


Doom Chart

 “I’m going off the rails on a crazy train...” – Ozzy Osbourne

The sun has vaporized the water and set fire to the forests. This summer has been one of the hottest for 250 years in Scandinavia and in many others parts around this world, a world that has gone mad in so many ways. But the echoes of the riffs from the heavy underground remains, despite the heatwaves, and can be heard all over the globe. The Doom Charts stands right there in the intense ray of light that we call rock’n’roll. They say the summer is a slow season for new music. It might be so but it’s also a time to discover the stuff that has been out there for awhile. And suddenly you discover something brand new you never heard before that shines brighter than a thousand suns and you feel that euphoria that only great music can give you again. The heavy underground is sometimes a crazy world in itself but it is st least our own madness.


Welcome to Doom Charts, representing some of the finest bloggers, journalists, radio, podcasters and album reviewers from the doom-stoner-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…

Stoner HiVe's Top 10 artists listened to last month...


Stoner HiVe's
Top 10 artists listened to last month...