Tier – Backwood Blues

 

 

Tier – Backwood Blues
Pink Tank Records – 2025
Rock, Blues, Stoner, Southern
Rated: ****

German trio Tier has a lot of cool friends. One of them stopped me at Freak Valley 2023, talked about their Dawner album and pushed the CD into my hands. And now, another buddy of them emailed me about their upcoming Backwood Blues album. Still some time before the release becomes official, but it has been playing quite incessantly over here. And when you also have the magnificent Mel Lie in your corner spreading the word, you can safely state there is no shortage of love for Tier. And I’m about to try and spread that love some more… I love the blues, especially that stonerized version known all over the world as Diesel Blues. Coined by the legendary Ventilators band from the Netherlands, it’s a term that should sweep the globe and produce many offspring. Well, or at least it’s known in my little mind as Diesel Blues and even though Tier probably never head of that term, they often produce great anthems for the genre on the eight track Backwood Blues album. There’s even a moment on the Keep Sweet single that reminds a little bit of Fuckin Pain by Ventilators. But to be honest, Backwood Blues is on a different level, and we should forget the comparison. Take the more psychedelic Aether Ride and its blissful guitar intro, and lovely percussion, the way it meanders and carries itself like a magical energy current. Hang Em Up, Keep Sweet and Execution Song have that Southern touch and that glorious working on a chain gang kind of vibe. Entropy, the more atavistic, high energy stonerrock track, with a riveting guitar solo that turns into a heatseeking missile before returning to the riff fold and taking the track to its conclusion. You get my drift right? There’s so much to love about this album, so it’s only logical that they have many lovers. And after you’ve heard this album, you will surely be one of them… Keep Sweet!

(Written by JK)

Listen to the Hang 'Em Up single right now and get ready for the Backwood Blues album, dropping May 16th through Pink Tank Records! Tier!

Tier - Dawner Review

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Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree – Grandmother

Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree – Grandmother

Pink Tank Records – 2019

Doom, Dark Psychedelia

Rated: ****

Stuttgart Doomers Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree make a welcome return to the scene with their latest opus, Grandmother. Four strychnine-drenched blotters of loathing which immerse you in pustulent dissonance, atonal atmospheres and crawling cacophonies of gloom. 'Cinitus' moves with the slow, brooding tomes of tectonic shifts... 'Craving' swirls with psychedelic guitars and mesmerizing harmonies; 'Grandmother' cackles with Matriarchal Oppression, yoking you to the crippling weight of ancient expectation... 'Dionysus' is the soundtrack to the dark alley, the creepy, echoing subway... The sonorous wail of the grey thing festering in the corner. BMHITVT have drawn the dark psyche of the subconscious to the surface, the horrible fascination and rancid beauty of rot - the distilled essence of Doom. They invite you to look inside.....

(Written by Reek of STOOM)

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Pfund – Pfund

Pfund – Pfund

Pink Tank Records – 2018

Rock, Psych, Stoner, Sludge, Prog

Rated: *****

Released at the end of 2018 this fourpiece from the Kiel, Germany sure knows how to keep your attention with their jazzy progressive take on stoner, sludge and psychedelic rock. Well, at least that’s how their self-titled release starts off. Pfund is the name and heavy rock of all sorts is their masterful game! A game that started back around 2009 as a straight up blues rock band; but quickly morphed into more. So much more. There’s so much choppiness going on that it might remind you of Tool or Therapy? for a moment. But it’s the almost laconically sounding bass work and inhumane good drum work that takes the cake here, they propel the songs to amazing heights. And there, on the very tip of those waves the guitar just surfs and wails and riffs and will have you out there on those waves with them. You know what; there is no decent formula that can help you out with Pfund. There is so much different here and so much the same, these cats certainly know there are no rules when it comes to freaking great music. Their degree of contrariness goes hand in hand with the guts and courage the band displays whenever they decide to take a certain route. Exciting, crazy, inaccessible and easy on every heavy rock loving ear! Simply glorious!

(Written by JK)

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

Stoner HiVe’s

Top 5 artists listened to last week…

Dandy Brown

Birth of Joy

Black Rainbows

The Good Hand

Marijannah

Swamped with work and appointments. So, here’s  me trying to do a very vast and quick update on what we listened to last week. Which will surely get out of hand again, as all of the five records are amazing! Most of our time went out to Dandy Brown and his majestic new album Scattered Days. Out soon on Taxi Driver Records the maestro we know from Hermano and the awesome Orquesta Del Desierto, (the last, of which Dos was remastered and re-released last year via Spin On Black), gives us nine tracks that meander through many heavy scenes and all have a marvelous lingering aftertaste. It will put you in a righteous mood! Birth Of Joy, our Dutch psychedelic pride, give us Hyper Focus; a fast paced psychedelic rock album that is more, errr, focused than the albums that came before. Out on Glitterhouse the album moves definitely into a classic direction with some jazzy moments, stoner outbursts and even a little punk. Yes, all new Birth of Joy with Hyper Focus on the sixties and seventies era! Hawkdope, Stellar Prophecy and all that came before; incredible records by Italian psychedelic fuzz crazies Black Rainbows. The new album Pandaemonium, out on Heavy Psych Sounds, will rank among the best of them! What a ride once again! Out in a week or two it will surely rank high among all the HiVe freaks! We still spin Atman from The Good Hand regularly and their band shirt is one of the most worn black band shirts in my possession. Their superdeluxe limited diehard fan release via Minstrel Music is majestic and definitely one of my favorite vinyl treasures. Let’s hope they do something similar with the new record Blissful Yearning. Cause the album is once again impressive and bordering on perfection. A pure ballistically delivered record which immediately feels like a true blow against the empire, a hammer of the gods, that will live on in rock, forever. Yes. We know. We love The Good Hand… And perhaps a bit too much. And how about that Till Marijannah album by Marijannah? Their four-track debut is whirling around the world, entering the Doom Charts on Number 21 and enchanting listeners everywhere. The vinyl is out on Pink Tank Records and gives us incredibly tasty and fuzzy heavy psychedelic rock and stoner. Going into metal territories here and there and always, yes always, captivating you with musical vistas wild and wonderful! And on Outlaws of The Sun you can read more about it, go check it out. And check out those amazing albums! All of ‘em! (See... That got out of hand pretty quickly...)

Stoner HiVe’s Quick Fire Friday

Stoner HiVe’s Quick Fire Friday

As we are slowly recovering from yet another wild festival which ended in a trip to the hospital all bloody and bashed, but still living it up in the limo ride there. We noticed the amount of updates on the HiVe have dwindled to a small trickle. This in comparison to the staggering amount of new entries in the inbox have lead to sense of dread and weariness. It is without any doubt too much. Too much. And so, in a futile attempt to gain a little ground among the gigantic heap of new singles, ep’s and albums that have been lying in wait, we bring forth a slightly larger Quick Fire Friday round. We know, we know, the albums and bands deserve more. But we just simple cannot ever do it all justice. But hey, it’s the Stoner HiVe Quick Fire Friday. And its burns hot like molten lava!

JenHodges and Spurge – Four More Songs

We start off with some experimental and aggressive rock that fuses elements of postrock, metal, progressive, punk and all kind of worldly influences into some free form jazz and art compositions. We are referring to JenHodges And Spurge from Atlanta, Georgia and their new Four More Songs EP. Which features, yes, four songs.  This is definitely a different kind of animal, weird on some moments, crazy at others and absolutely beautiful most of the time. Usually during the calmer pieces. Perhaps we should qualify this as the new age classical music. Loving the David Bowie piece.

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The Brunswick – Cathartes Aura

The Brunswick is a three-piece hailing from Nashville, Tennessee. The first song of the eight tracks on their debut album Cathartes Aura takes their fuzzy, desert and stoner rock towards a definite hardrock past. A sort of nod towards where it all came from and probably towards a love the three of them all share. Afterwards the rest take a more lazy day approach to everything we all love from those warm and sandy tones. Heavy on the side of pop sensibilities and damn catchy! Damn good songs, all of ‘em!

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Menin – Lord of Pain

In a few weeks time Menin will unleash their new effort called Lord of Pain upon the world. And boy, are we all in line for a world of hurt! Unrelenting, stampeding heaviness powered by two drummers and a seriously insane bassist. This is combination with the low strung guitar, the screams, growls and howls from the vocalist leaves the listener in awe of everything that Menin is. They are lords themselves and we should all worship them!

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Doom Stew Records

Bees Made Honey In The Vein Tree – Medicine

Medicine is the first full length release by German psychedelic doom band Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree. Released through Pink Tank Records the album is available on standard black vinyl and luscious lemonade on ice splatter wax. Get them while they’re still available! Cause the five compositions on this release shows you a hallucinogenic world filled with wonderful vistas. Displaying a true knack for bringing doom out of the dark and into something colorful and sweet. The perfect soundtrack for a setting sun and bottle of something… Somewhere… With some woman… Somewhere…

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Cegvera – Creations

The five track Creations release by British/Mexican outfit Cegvera is simply amazing.  Powered by Gerardo Arias, the Vinnum Sabbathi drummer, Cegvera is more about painting vistas and blending heaviness with more laidback soundscapes. Which are often distorted by hefty dystopian outbursts. It is an amazing amalgam of doom, fuzz, postrock and ambient adventures. And we love it! 

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Sautrus – Anthony Hill

Sautrus – Anthony Hill

Pink Tank Records – 2017

Rock, Prog, Stoner, Fuzz

Rated: *****

We’ve had the pleasure of listening to Anthony Hill, the new Sautrus record for the past few months. The Polish quartet amazed us and turned us into massive fans with their first release Reed: Chapter One from 2014. A record that dared to aim for bigger and gigantic things, which is quite something for a full-sized debut. And when you set the bar that high, can you follow it up with something equally stunning? On the new record, they drift more to a sound we know from the Croatian band Cojones; albeit still retaining their own signature. That huge sound of crashing, wave after wave. Riff after riff, drum after drum. Turning their love for progressive rock up and turning the darker more dangerous stuff down. But they still go fuzz ape and stoner trucking when needed and they still take their chances, this time, taking their progressiveness to something more melodic, easy on the ears yet all the while more complex. It is definitely the Sautrus sound one recognizes yet there is no repetition or a vague sense of dread that this is simply a Reed: Chapter Two. No, no, this is an entirely different tale. One that quickly turns into a page-turner. And one you could read over and over again. For it is one of those stories that enchants and pulls you into a different dimension, with little gems hidden here and there; and it will take time to discover them all!

(Written by JK)

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