Number 1

 

 

Number 1

And now, on January 1st, 2026, with almost a hundred points more than Kal-El at Number 2 we arrive at the Number 1 album of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2025. Happy New Year to one and all! And we thank you all for voting and following along. As we stated before, it is the reason we started Stoner HiVe back in 2009, so it is amazing and humbling to see how it has blossomed into what it is today. And so did the band which is featured here on the Number 1 spot. We followed them from the first self-titled EP in 2015, through ten years of heavy progressive riffing and into the landmark album they released two years ago and then again topping that one this year. We wrote about the record right before the album came out at the end of October on Magnetic Eye Records. And without ruining that entire review, the crux of it was something along the lines of this: “At the very edge of existence, the band ignite a universe. The album feels like a myth forged in molten riffs, soaring harmonies and cosmic ambition. The quartet’s boldest work to date, transforms progressive stoner into a living creation story, where fragile worlds rise, gods clash and fate is written in fury and fire! From the opening detonation, the record plunges the listener into a realm of tectonic guitars and celestial melodies, both beautiful and volatile. Crushing anthems, thunder with divine aggression, while moments of shimmering calm, add depth and wonderment. The epic finale binds it all in apocalyptic splendor. With expanded textures, lush synth work, and razor sharp songwriting, the album captures the sound of a band bursting with inspiration and at full creative power. Delivering a sound, heavy enough to shake the heavens, and visionary enough to leave a mark... On eternity… 

According to all of your votes, on Number 1, we find: 

 

HOWLING GIANT - CRUCIBLE & RUIN

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Magnetic Eye Records

 

Howling Giant – Howling Giant EP Review 

 

Howling Giant – The Space Between Worlds Review

 

Number 13 on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2019

 

Number 5 on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2023 

Number 1

 

 

Number 1

This is it! We’re here. January 1st. Happy New Year! And we thank you all again for voting for the Countdown and then following along. We love doing it! And as we stated before, it is why the little old Stoner HiVe blog started back in 2009. We jump 296 points from Slomosa on Number 2 to get to the album that received the most love from all the albums that were showered with love by you all this year. It arrived early this year and its by the band that made the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown back in 2020 as well, with that years’ amazing album. Number 9 back then and they receive the Gold Medal this year. We are once again so happy we got to see them whirlwind around the globe and catch them many times live in one year. That 2020 album was amazing, but this one is different. This is much wilder, rougher and more disturbing. With almost white-out droning noise moments, contrasting those prog rock turning into kraut instances and vocals that might haunt your dreams. Grandiose in scale and execution, the main goal for this album seems to have been to keep the listener strapped into a chair, floored on a boat braving a storm or a rocket ship blasting through space, never knowing what comes next, but always keen to find out. A story about an expedition in the distant past, bringing people together in a community, through a language they share. This odyssey seems to define a distinct shared world from which heroes have sailed and to which they attempt with varrying succes to return. The West was shaped by many an odyssey that was first chronicled in the East. This album, Herculean in proportions, as rich and as powerful as it is, is an odyssey that might shape the music of a future to come…

According to all of your votes, on Number 1 we find: 

Slift – Ilion

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Sub Pop Records

Number 1

 

 

Number 1

The jump in points is staggering. No less than 1332 points above Green Lung on Number 2 we find the Number 1 album according to all the votes that came in. Indeed, it was at the very top of many a list and actually on some spot somewhere on almost every list that came in. Crazy! Which results in this majestic lead. Which does fit a majestic band and their majestic comeback album. On many levels a landmark album and on many levels a dangerous release. Cause what does this mean for the other band half of the members are in? Cause the past years we could enjoy that signature circling, stomping and grooving guitar sound that the main axe slinger produces while he rocked out with a different quartet. And after eight records with that band, you could easily have forgotten that the band once started as a side-project. Because the guitarist wanted to explore more seventies rock touches and because the other band did not want to tour as much anymore. Some of them wanted to finish their education or something weird like that. So, after that final 2008 album, this went quiet around the band. A gig here or there, a few more a few years later. And then, back in April, it was there, suddenly, coming in out of the void. Filled with more of that sultry and sliding stoner rock, that you might have gotten accustomed to from that other band, but now, a bit rougher, edgier and wrapped in barbed wire. Biggest difference of course is the vocalist, who is able to touch that raw and intense nerve in a different way. Although, he does manage to do a bit of that drawling sound you know so well from the other vocalist on a few moments as well. Which makes the new album a complementary and vortex like whirlpool of influences and memories… One that can drown you just as easily as set you adrift…

The Number 1 album of 2023 according to all you who voted for the Stoner HiVe top 20 Countdown is…

Dozer – Drifting In The Endless Void

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Blues Funeral Recordings

Number 1

 

 

Number 1

 

Here we are. The clock has struck twelve.. It's a new year. January first. Happy New Year everyone!! And we're here, with the Number 1 album of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2022 according to all you lovely voters out there. It’s been a wild ride once again and to all the followers that voted for Top 20 Countdown and all the followers that just followed the Top 20 Countdown, thank you! Thank you from every fiber of my being. To all the bands that were featured, thank you for releasing such incredibly music, thank you providing us with a moment of solace, release, or the perfect soundtrack to a certain moment in time. We all adore the stuff you do! Please keep doing it! And trust me, there’s a huge list of albums that only barely missed the Top 20, proving once again that there is so much great music released, it boggles the mind! And we are blessed, that we have been privy to discovering the Heavy Underground, and all that good and heavy rock that resides there… BUT… Before we get too sappy, too teary eyed, let’s say a few words about Number 1! The band has been around now for some seventeen years, but they still seem to be able to do the impossible. They seem to be able to release an even more incredible album after the incredible album that came before. This, sixth studio album, is an even more progressive piece of art than what came before. And where some might raise an eyebrow concerning the vocals, for others the vocals on this album raises the amount of love for the album. And thanks to the guest appearance of Samavayo-vocalist, Behrang Alavi on two songs, it becomes on of the best vocal performances the band ever produced. And that idea is something that permeates every little detail of the album. Their best. Take the beautiful guitarwork on Endless Return for instance, the keyword on third track Coalescence or that amazing fourth track Merged In Dreams – Ne Plus Ultra with its intense tension arc, diamond hard riffs and whirling interplay between guitar and keys. It simply does not get any better than this… Well… At one point in the future, the band will surely release another album… The Gold Medal.. The Number 1 album of 2022 according to all you who voted.. is…

 

Elder – Innate Passage

 

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Stickman Records

Number 1

 

 

 

Number 1

There can be only one… We jump a whopping seven hundred points from King Buffalo on Number 2 to reach the Number 1 spot of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2021… An album that quickly took the lead when the votes started coming in and never really relinquished it. The Swedish outfit did the same back in April when it made the Doom Charts and has been turning ever more into the all out favorite. Or as The Doom Oracle wrote on the Doom Charts: “The album provides in a mercilessly challenging way that seems to beat the ever-living breath out of you with tracks like Perpetuator, Into Orbit and Dawn of Man only to be lured into a false sense of safety from an instrumental Krank Blekhet, then chewed apart and spat back out again by Audiodome, at its conclusion, left bereft and speechless and in a painfully deafening silence longing for more. Without a doubt, we’re going to be hearing about this release all year and into end-of-year lists if not at the top of them.” Exactly, it is a pummeling affair, without much moments of clarity or moments of light; it is something that grows beneath the surface and actually promises something for a new future that will be here soon. Or might in fact be here now. Organic. Electric. Hypnotic. Loud. We wish all the bands, all the people that voted for the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2022, and everybody else on this rock that soars to space, all the best for 2022! The HiVe freaks have spoken, the Gold Medal goes to, the Number 1 album of 2021 is, according to you all out there that voted:

Domkraft – Seeds

 

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Number 1

 

 

Number 1

 

There can be only one… We climb almost two hundred points from the amazing Venus Skytrip album by Psychlona on the Number 2 position of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2020 to reach the Gold Medal. The Number 1 of 2020! According to all the lists sent our way, all the votes cast, this is the best album of 2020. So we thank all of you once again for voting, for helping the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown become more valid with every passing year and we thank all the bands for delivering all those amazing albums! Twenty years ago this Swedish quartet delivered a landmark album and now the boys are back with a follow-up and yet another masterpiece! Atavistic stoner rock with a majestic groove; an ode to all that pure heavy rock goodness and that spacey delivery. It is not the work of a band trying  to recapture the magic of that first album but just a band of brothers that are finally taking the next step of their journey. We can go on and on about all the albums that we heard during this insane year; we can profess our love for many of them; but this one delivered all of that condensed and turned their sound into quicksilver and made it move through all manner of energy and particles that simply became unbreakable adoration for all that we worship about this thing called stoner rock. It is a dream come true, an ode once again and even bigger that before! We bow before the four and beg them to keep taking a next step in their majestic journey; we give you the Number One album of 2020… The Gold Medal goes to:

Lowrider – Refractions

 

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Blues Funeral

Number 1

Number 1

There can be only one. And to reach the Gold Medal, the Number One album according to all you heavy music fiends that decided to send their list to the Stoner HiVe for this Top 20 Countdown of 2019, we jump almost 85 points from Hippie Death Cult on Number 2. Yes, we arrive at an album that is without any doubt considered the absolute favorite for all you lovely freaks out there. Sure, there were a few others that were high on the list when the first bunch of votes were tallied, but then when the amount of lists got bigger, it quickly rose to the top and never let go of its position. So, we can safely state that this album moved all of you out there to the core. We thank all of those voters once again, without you this would not be possible and it would not be this much fun to do. We also thank all those bands that made the Top 20 with all of those amazing albums! But we also thank the bands that did not make it; cause there is beauty on all of them! And like every year, we will list the 21 to 100 in the next few days somewhere. So, at least a few of those albums will get a little more attention; even though they probably deserve even more. But even though it was obvious from the picture above, we still need to say a few words about the Number 1 album of 2019. Released through Kozmik Artifactz around March of last year; the album quickly rose to the top of the Doom Charts. To which Bucky immediately stated what would become reality: “The album has claimed its right as one of 2019s top contenders in the realm of the heavy underground. The grandiose harmony between the sweeping guitar leads, occultish vocals, sophisticated use of the organ and bluesy squeal of the solos keep you on edge throughout. The groove is melodic, atmosphere crisp and the songwriting landing somewhere between Elder and Uncle Acid.” Inded, something highly intoxicating about this all, the ritual performed takes you away from this maddening world into another place and time all together. The London quintet have delivered with this record something that will surely stand the test of time, for it is indeed timeless. So we shall conclude with the poetic words by Reek of STOOM: “Dryads danced, Satyrs squirmed… Maids made merry as the Wicker burned… All the while the … breathed as the Woodlands writhed and the mountains heaved…” The Gold Medal Goes to:

Green Lung - Woodland Rites

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Number 1

Number 1

We jump almost forty points to reach the Gold Medalist of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2018 according to the 79 of you lovely freaks that sent in their lists of favorite albums this year. We thank all of those voters once again, without you this would not be possible and it would not be this much fun to do. We also thank all those bands that made the Top 20 with all of those amazing albums! But we also thank the bands that did not make it; cause there is beauty on all of them! And like every year, we will list the 21 to 100 in the next few days somewhere. So, at least a few of those albums will get a little more attention; even though they probably deserve even more. But even though it was obvious from the picture above, we still need to say a few words about the Number 1 album of 2018. Cause it came with a bang! Like a gunshot on an empty street! Like a hammer strike against the Gods… We are referring to the album released by a legendary trio. A gang of three who had not produced a full album for twenty years. The doom is vibrant, alive and more ingenious than ever. This is not doom that will drag you towards the abyss, but one that takes you up high and on an adventure. We’re going on a journey packed with riff-axes and bass-machetes. Raw, slow, delaying and discoloring sludge-riffs, carrying monotonous vocals that waft you to sleep. Thick, dirty, bass-tones deliver the perfect heartbeat for your slumber and dreams of the ideal marriage between stoner metal and doom… The Gold Medal goes to…  

Sleep - The Sciences