The Doom Charts for September 2023

 

 

DOOM CHARTS

SEPTEMBER 2023

“The music junkies see the Doom Charts as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about – or as a ritual, like filling up a car – but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or dancing, or a good nap in the afternoon.”

~ Anthony Bourdain (probably misheard quote)

And that ends September… We’ve been blessed with so many amazing albums already throughout the year. But September was something else. There was so much, so many albums released that the Contributors were starting to revolt. They demanded longer lists. They wanted to extend the published list. They wanted extra lists. They wanted more. Because they received so much more! Well… After much deliberation within the group, we decided we wouldn’t budge and we would not waver. We only wanted to state that we understand their grief, their toil and sweat. We feel their pain. It was hard selecting the best ones in our opinion. And it was even more difficult to stick to that rigid amount of a mere twenty-five. Below, is the result. Forty brand new albums representing September 2023, a month so full of great releases that the ones featured on this list are really something else… 

As usual we highlight the ones on the list we voted for ourselves... But we can't stress enough that we could have voted for them all... Cause it's been one hell of a September! I had hoped a few would have ended up higher or assumed even. And a bit sad that a few of my choices did not even make the Top 40, but this was inevitable... September was one hell of ride! But of the ones that made it, we voted for: Domkraft, Fire Down Below, Dead Feathers, Humulus, Lord Velvet, I Am Low, Omega Sun, Formation Ritual, Stone of Duna, Demons My Friends, Superlynx, Stepmother, Hey Colossus, Rrrags, Fulanno, Nova Doll, Earth Altar / Sun Below and Sonic Speculum.

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 September 2023

 

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

 

 

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

Fulanno
Cannabus
Woven Hand
Graveyard
Rrrags
Solar Sons
I Am Low
Fire Down Below
Sun Dial
Thedus

I Am Low – Úma

 

 

I Am Low – Úma
Majestic Mountain Records – 2023
Rock, Stoner, Grunge, Alternative
Rated: ****

I love that opening Gunman track on the new I Am Low album! But the Swedish three deliver more than just that wild opening track on their new album called Úma. Released tomorrow, it sports nine tracks that all have their dynamic energy throughout the tracks themselves but delivers even more in that respect when it comes to the album itself. Where Gunman already glides through many different sections, it still an alternative nineties reminiscent, grunge and early stoner rocking, err, rocker. Gunman has glints of Filter, Alice In Chains, Nirvana but also Queens of The Stone Age. It bursts out of the gate and will immediately take hold and won’t let go. The perfect opener, and we thank them once again for not making it a single. (As you know, we love it when an opening track is still a mystery upon actual release.) And that end section, how it seems to whirl around you like a grungy hurricane, amazing! Offering up proof for those high dynamics on the album, is the second song (and single) Dead Space. A slow grooving rocker, that has you cloud surfing in no time. Psychedelically enticing, highly atmospheric, yet also very grounded whenever the ‘space’ vocals seem to swerve around you. Following Ruins, short of two minutes, rams your like a rock’n roll, grunge, punk cyclone, battering you from all sides. Bass heavy Wake is allowed to meander before turning into a rapid filled thundering river full of waterfalls and that almost yammering touch in the vocals seems to drag you along towards a misty shore where some kind of dream seems to lie in wait. Title track Úma follows, which show cases their talent for letting loose, letting things hang, sounds slowly morph into something else, as if you are still drifting along that river from Wake, but suddenly, and for a long time it has turned into a much calmer section. The repeated vocals will not hypnotize you or put you under, there is once again that drawl, but it means something for the vocalist, and you can feel its earnest. After this halfway mark, Pigs follows and moves back towards the more direct nineties alternative and grunge touched rocking. But this time around their drums become even more choppy, the riffs edgier and the bass muddier. And those final three songs go through even more slow-moving dynamics, with Time using the guitar even more as a story telling device, Void a trance inducing cosmic stare and Release the combination of both and offering indeed, some sort of release. If only because that final guitar line and slide says so…

(Written by JK)

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

 

 

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

Ruff Majik
Omega Sun
Queen Marsa
Acid Magus
Solar Sons
I Am Low
Garden of Ash
Malterra
Mother Tongues
Thunder Horse