Lo-Pan – Subtle

Lo-Pan – Subtle

Aqualamb Records – 2019

Rock, Hard, Stoner, Desert

Rated: *****

Lo-Pan has always been a definite fixture on the HiVe. They’ve made it to the Top 20 Countdown at the end of the year with almost every release the past ten years. Sasquanaut back in 2009. Salvador two years later and Colossus in 2014. They just have that unique sound that worms itself into your blood, bones and heart immediately! And guess what, they’ve done it again! Produced by James Brown (Not the Godfather of Soul obviously!) (NIN, Foo Fighters, Ghost) and mastered by Ted Jensen (Mastodon, Deftones, Alice in Chains, GNR), Subtle, Lo-Pan’s newest releases has even more catchiness and melody to it than their earlier albums. If that was even possible? It retains all of its heaviness, it has a high degree of dynamics and pushes for a mighty groove every time again. And all that with so much dirty nuance and gritty chugging, simply colossal! It’s hard rock, it’s desert rock, it’s stoner and it’s soulful! And only logical that they are on Seventh position on the Doom Charts this month… But how high on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown at the end of they year will be up to you freaks… How high indeed?!

(Written by JK)

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Tempel – Tempel

Tempel – Tempel

Jansen Recrods / PIAS – 2019

Metal, Hardcore, Hardrock, Punk

Rated: ****

The Norwegian Tempel is the new Kvelertak-drummer vehicle and seems to continue on where the other band signs off. The melody that suddenly appears when you get used to the hardcore sound is beautiful. There are other bands once again using this name, so be aware and be ready. For the tracks are definitely along the lines one would assume a Kvelertak drummer could continue. Joined by two brothers and long time buddies they’ve produced nine tracks that use metal, hardrock, hardcore and punk to their breaking point. And once it does, the sudden beauty of the melody that appears and the wild gorgeousness that hides below all that guitar violence is simply amazing. And of course we can state that the hardcore screaming vocals fit the music, but it does mean, that some of the track fuse into one and a good record did not become great. For on those few songs they do not screech and grate, like Confusion, one can hear that Tempel has a lot to offer… So let’s bring an offer at Tempel and pray they go down that route on their next record…

(Written by JK)

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King of None – Weightless Waters

King of None – Weightless Waters

Self released – 2019

Rock, Metal, Stoner

Rated: ****

It is the third release for Finnish five-piece outfit King Of None and it’s definitely the best one to date! After hanging out on the damn fine and freaky hot Fortarock festival last weekend, which caters to all sides of metal, but only a bit to hardrock and stoner, the King Of None sound comes across as the perfect transition. The new release is called Weightless Waters and features six highly metallic stoner tracks. Wild guitar work, filled with excellent riffs and damn fine solos. A bass sound that will make everything bounce and drums which seem to pound animalistic on half of the tracks and almost machinal on the other half. Which in turn almost gives it a sludgy vibe here or there. Gritty absolutely fitting vocals complete the tracks and turns Weightless Waters into an half hour of pure unadulterated stoner metal bliss! Digging the shit out of it!

(Written by JK)

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The Doom Chart for May 2019

Doom Chart

    “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~Thomas Merton

It’s amazing what is happening in the heavy underground scene right now. The artistic endeavor involved in all aspects of music is what makes it so immersive as a total experience both physical and mental. Yes, most of us our mental. Take a look at these album covers, most of them available in physical format on vinyl, CD, cassette, poster, patch, etc…. One of the defining elements of a complete package is the artwork to go along with the musical aspect. It’s downright amazing. This month the charts see more diversity across the planet with new albums from Poland, USA, France, Finland, Romania, and of course Sweden just to name a few. You can always count on Sweden. 18 new entries and 7 repeats keeping the trend going with over 300 different albums voted upon within our teams members’ top 25 individual lists.

As Bucky already stated: over 300 albums got voted for this month! Bands like Stone From The Sky, Beaten By Hippies and The Lucid Furs only barely missed the 25 that got featured. But there are so many more and I thank all the fellow contributors once again for all their work and all their votes. Otherwise I might have missed hearing Electric Paradox by Crow Ballard or Darkness Emotion by The Polvos CCP... Just two that were somewhere in the middle of those 300 albums... Thanks everyone, let's keep this heavy train rollinh!
 

Welcome to Doom Charts, representing some of the finest bloggers, journalists, radio, podcasters and album 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 Chart for May 2019

Stoner HiVe's Top 10 Most Listened To Last Month...

 Stoner HiVe's

Top 10 Most Listened To Last Month...

3 Chord Propaganda

Alice Tambourine Lover

Lucid Furs

Per Wiberg

Winter Moon

Hunt The Witch

Saint Vitus

The Sex Geckos

Maggot Heart

Seven Hundredth Unicorn

A few days late of course… Right before we get to go wild with a new Doom Chart, which has been out for a few days, here’s the May rundown of the Top 10 most listened to artists on the HiVe…

Stoner HiVe’s Quick Fire Friday

Stoner HiVe’s Quick Fire Friday

The last Friday of the month and it is the final day of the month. What better time to fire off another Quick Fire Friday round! Soon a new Doom Charts will appear, featuring those 25 albums that got us all fired up the past month. But there are so many more great releases. If you follow any of the Doom Chart Contributors personal pages you will definitely be digging through more piles of heavy gold! And over here on the HiVe we always know there is more and we should do more but you know how it is… Too much great stuff, too little time… And that’s where the Quick Fire Friday round jumps in and helps out! Like Reek of STOOM, who once again gracefully delivered a few lines for the bands featured today… And yes, we know, we know, the albums and bands deserve more. More attention and more of our time! But there is so much out there and we just simply cannot ever do it all justice. So here it is. The Stoner HiVe Quick Fire Friday. And its burns hot like molten lava!

Nothing Is Real – Give Me Your Energy

LA Progressive Doomsters Nothing Is Real offer up a tour-de-force of Prog, Metal, Doom and Sludge which is inventive and uses samples to superb effect... Give Me Your Energy! Definitely worth a punt. NYP on Bandcamp!

(Written by Reek of STOOM)

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WhetheR – 2019 EP

More crushing Doom from the City of Angels, this time presented by WhetheR, from Shreveport. '2019 EP' is brash, nasty, heavy and uncompromising... And also NYP!

(Written by Reek of STOOM)

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Black Solstice – First Rays of Loneliness

Former Ponamero Sundown guitarist makes a welcome comeback with Black Solstice from Stockholm, Sweden. They have released "First Rays of Loneliness", a 2-track EP of serious, groovy Stoner Rock with swagger and an authentic seventies inspired sound... Another NYP!

(Written by Reek of STOOM)

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Malsten – Torsion

More Swedes! Listen to these ‘four grumpy old men’, as they state themselves in an email to the HiVe. That’s Malsten from Malmö!. After playing together for six months they’ve delivered a first heavy single called Torsion! Doom! Heavy and fully engaging doom! A slow march that keeps you on the edge of the seat! Yikes, this is promising something for the future!

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Egonaut – Omens

We’ve been neglecting to mention Egonaut’s fine releases. Only Mount Egonaut from 2013 made it’s way onto the HiVe. We should be flogged naked in the streets for that neglect! But now the new single Omens is out! Out on Bastard Sounds Records and Omens is some righteous stuff! And is one hell of an omen for the new album out at the end of the year called: The Omega! All hail Egonaut!

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Forrest – Final Frontier

I’m a sucker for everything that comes out of Kentucky… Especially the Lexington area. So, when Forrest contacted the HiVe about their EP Kickball With Russians and the soon to be released Final Frontier EP we got naked quick and dived in head first without looking how deep the water might be! Focusing on Kickball With Russians first, we get highly diverse yet always progressive instrumental doom, sludge with spacey elements. A wild ride! And Final Frontier is better on all fronts! Yikes! Get ready! Everyone, get ready!

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Irata – Tower

Irata – Tower

Small Stone Records – 2019

Stoner, Doom, Metal, Heavy Psych

Rated: ****

Greensboro, NC veteran outfit Irata pull out all the stops on their latest release, Tower. A thundering, twisted mass of quirk, invention and power which shows the maturity of the song-crafting and musicianship on display. Opener 'Tower' fizzles with heavy bass boom and tribal percussion, guitar screaming acerbic tonal fury before the proggy, time-stuttered riff of 'Waking Eye' flows in on endless waves of frenetic energy. 'Weightless' has that Baroness-style heavy groove and chug... 'Leviathan' squirms with tempo-changing fuzz cannons whilst 'Crawl to Corners' is heralded by mournful trumpet and quiet picking, evolving into a doom-slavered riff onslaught. Irata capture genres with mercurial skill then blend, morph and transform them to create an album of intense and intelligent delight that lingers long in the memory.

(Written by Reek of STOOM)

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Small Stone

Philiac – Oil Wars

Philiac – Oil Wars

Can Abyss Records – 2019

Rock, Prog, Psych, Stoner

Rated: ****

Remember that weird band we mentioned back in 2015? Well, that might be a bit too generic to state here, since the HiVe mentions a lot of weird, crazy, insane and off-kilter bands. We’re talking about Philiac, that collection of artists from an island in the Mediterranean that went of an recorded their first release This Appalling Ocean in the fabled Rancho De La Luna. Well, they went back and re-imagined that release into a new piece of art called Oil Wars. Released through Can Abyss Records on cassette it is meant as a one way, almost forty minute long trip, with no returning point and no point of reference. This is immersive. ‘A headphone ride into a dream’ the accompanying letter stated. Which is very true, a dream, a reverie, hallucinations and sometimes a nightmare. For it isn’t all light and air here, there is darkness. Sticky oily darkness lurking and it definitely turns the ocean into a muddy pool of something twisted here and there. But there is also always that green light that does shine and gives us a bit of hope. Can we state that Oil Wars is a better version of what we know Philiac is about? I am not sure. I think it’s just different. A different trip and a different experience… And just before finishing this piece about Oil Wars the band’s representative sent another email stating: ‘Philiac made a name for the sub-genre: ‘peyote rock’. I can definitely live with that!

(Written by JK)

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Sunn 0))) – Life Metal

Sunn 0))) – Life Metal

Southern Lord – 2019

Metal, Drone

Rated: ***

Sunn 0))) has been relentlessly droning on ever since their inception around 1998. Life Metal is there eight full-sized album and a ninth is set to be released later this year. And even since their first release the drone has been the same, intense entrail shaking chords that seem to reverberate on and on and on. Loose teeth and churning stomach contents, the savage translation of how pre-earth might have sound, how tectonic plates roared and crashed into each other. That backdrop has never really changed. Dark and ominous, twisted and creepy. But we are talking about Sunn 0))) here and the devastating waves of sound we are referring to you might only truly experience live. On record there is, among the instrumental mass of deep, low and powerful guitar violence, a bit of room for shading and gradation. Guest spots by Hildur Guðnadóttir, Tos Nieuwenhuizen, Tim Midgett and Anthony Pateras are responsible for most of that small amount of color. Intense once again and devastatingly heavy!

(Written by JK)

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Southern Lord

Black Seal – Sati

Black Seal – Sati

Self released – 2019

Rock, Punk, Garage, Psych, Fuzz, Stoner

Rated: ***

It’s been out for a week or two. The three-song EP Sati by Black Seal. A Florida outfit that puts out a feverous desert punk energy with their intense psychedelic garage rock. Indeed, it combines four worlds into one. Durango Night Ride is like being shot out of a cannon, a DMT explosion into a garage and punk scene full of twisted stoner and desert crust. Fernwood Pacific is this atmospheric vista full of desert feelings and wide gestures. Mutiny is wild and wicked, intense and a bit scary; as if there truly is a mob around the corner ready to start the evolution… This is the kind of music that keeps the spirit of rock ‘n roll alive for me. Combining all sorts of avenues into one wonderful piece or music. Taking risks and daring to take the road less travelled. This might mean that one could fall below the low limit of quality, but not Black Seal and not on Sati. A wild and yet also cozy mess that puts a smile on my face…

(Written by JK)

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7 Miles To Pittsburgh – Revolution On Hold

7 Miles To Pittsburgh – Revolution On Hold

Suburban/Bertus/ A67 Records – 2019

Rock, Hard, Seventies, Prog, Metal

Rated: ***

Greta Von Fleet. If there ever was a band that has gotten a lot of flak over their Led Zeppelin sound, Greta Von Fleet are a sure competitor for the top spot. I wonder if 7 Miles To Pittsburg from The Netherlands might suffer the same fate. It would be highly unfair, even if the vocalist, is a part of a Led Zeppelin cover band. On their sophomore release Revolution On Hold we definitely hear riffs that could have belonged to Jimmy Page, but that’s about where it ends. Cause there is so much prog here, one could wonder what their true starting point was? Joris Lindner, responsible for damn fine guitarwork, played drums for Komatsu for a year or two, which means we know where his heaviness stems from. But besides the two cats we mentioned, the rest is largely unknown to us. We would imagine there is some eighties-LA love there and an adoration for stuff like Rush or Flower Kings. Which it turns out to be correct, since Martin Helmantel and Dirk Bruinenberg, both played in prog-rock effort Elegy. Hardrock, metal, seventies and prog, a combination that can lead to something absolutely beautiful. And in this case it has! It’s all done with a lot of style and highly soulful. Let the Revolution begin!

(Written by JK)

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Back from my travels…

Back from my travels…

We’ve been away for a bit… Travelling… Visiting weird little rivers and battling crazy animals that suddenly lunged for my throat. Drinking loads of ale’s and getting kicked out of even more pubs. Not sure why actually? The beasts tried to eat my food; only natural we get into a fight about territory… Ooh well… We’ll deal with them soon enough… For now, it’s enough to know that we made it back in one piece and can’t wait to get on with the HiVe show! It’s good to be back!

The Astral Void – Mandragora

The Astral Void – Mandragora

Self-released – 2019

Doom, Stoner, Ambient, Psych

Rated: ****

The ever-expanding list of quality Artists from Virginia has just been joined by Richmond 5-piece The Astral Void. Mandragora takes us through a cornucopia of Doom, Stoner, Electronica and general Far-Outness that will leave you in utter despair... But craving it! Side A wields 3 spine-melting pools of  festering, nefarious Doom delivered with vigour and intent, whilst vocalist Gabrielle's laments sprinkle liberal doses of mandrake over the flesh. However, these are separate entities and effectively prepare you for the B Side: A cold, crippled capsule nine clicks from the nearest jump-gate.....alone in the ink of the life - sparse void. Engines dead, bulkheads creaking, LifeSup runs out in an hour...you contemplate the utter hopeless Truth: There is NO rescue… And the Darkness yaws with the ultimate Horror of knowing you'll never return... An impeccable EP that puts The Astral Void firmly in the firmament of New-Born Stars.

(Written by Reek of STOOM)

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