The Absurd – The Enemy_
Will we ever know for sure if that underscore at the end of the title of this song was just a typo? Or intentional? Whatever the case, it’s not that big of a deal, unlike the new video! Yes, The Absurd has a new video online for the new single of their The Sun Still Rises album, and that new single is The Enemy_ Go check it out HERE! Or just below this...
Atomic Vulture – Moving Through Silence
Polderrecords – 2021
Stoner, Instrumental, Space, Psych
Rated: *****
I’ve just ordered the Atomic Vulture album Moving Through Silence on vinyl through the Polderrecords shop. We’re unfortunately too late for the Die Hard version, but we still managed to get our grubby little hands on that Intergalactic Orange edition. It had to be done, we could not miss out. For the three amigo’s from Brugge, Belgium have produced an amazing instrumental stoner rock album. And yes, here it comes, it will be one of the very best of the instrumental stoner rock albums you will hear in 2021. With overtones of space rock and psych, the eight tracks meander through all of the stoner related universes. Eclips serves as a proper lift-off track, destined for the outer reaches of space. Follow-up Mashika Deathride will put set you down on a distant planet and ground it all into submission; with a spooky, eerie middle part that slowly picks up speed again and then pounds it all to dirt. Amazing track! And then Coaxium starts its motif, and you cannot help but immediately fall in love with it. Three tracks in and you are shocked and awed by the three that is Atomic Vulture. Another five tracks to go on Moving Through Silence and each and every one of them is a righteous instrumental stoner rock adventure of majestic proportions. And we’re not even gonna mention that cathedral track, the closing, twelve minutes long, Astral Dream, we will just let that one transport you into whatever dimension you are needed…
(Written by JK)
Monster Magnet – A Better Dystopia
Napalm Records – 2021
Rock, Metal, Stoner, Space
Rated: ****
There’ve been two cover albums released recently that have been spinning ever since at the HiVe HQ. One is the Cloud Covered album by the awesome Clouds Taste Satanic, an album we will definitely mention in the very near future. O’ and we noticed Hugo just posted a write-up on his awesome Orange Maze blog, so head on over and grab an earful over there! The other one, is of course the new album A Better Dystopia by the legendary Monster Magnet. Even though we already assumed it would probably be a good one; there was a moment there that we felt a small pang of disappointment. We just really would have loved new Monster Magnet material. As we do every day. Every day. But that momentary feeling was incinerated by the thirteen amazing versions brought to you by Dave Wyndorf and his cronies. It’s loud, its filthy and it’s awesome. The thirteen tracks are all pulled out of the oubliette cesspit of psych, acid and proto-metal and indeed, not all of them are that well known. Most famous might be the Born To Go track from Hawkwind, and that one turns into one of the most fantastic tracks every to grace you ears. With a release to intense it will definitely bring you every sort of satisfaction! And after that intense closer Welcome To The Void leaves you all alone out there, at the bottom of the rabbit hole, where you will be waiting for the next Monster Magnet rocket ship to blast through the infinite space, the fourth dimension or the twilight zone with. You will realize that this is the kind of cover album the world needs right now, rough, raw and nuclear!
(Written by JK)
Stoner HiVe’s
Top 10 Most Listened Albums Last Week…
Red Fang
King Buffalo
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The Lance Vance Vengeance
Black Mirrors
Robots Of The Ancient World
Hot Breath
Fugentpecker
Per Wiberg
GlöD - GlöD
Self released - April 2021
Stoner, desert, psych
Rated: ****
New Stockholm trio GlöD (Swedish for "glow") hail from both Sweden and New York, bringing a bevy of experience from different genres to create a rocking stoner outfit. Heaving with a filthy bass tone and ripping guitarwork, their debut self-titled EP is gathering well-earned acclaim. Opener "Cyanide Nights" chugs forth with a groovy desert riff and growling bass, bringing to mind Kyuss and Dozer with a savage edge added by rough vocals. Some tasty psychedelia is heard as well with blaring wahs and a classy, soaring solo. The audio comedown of the track's end is gently ushered along by the bright, creeping intro of "Reign of Fear", though followed soon enough by the return of crushing low end and massive crashing drums. The nod is irresistible as GlöD stomps through thick and gravelly riffs between cleaner, keening desert licks, a contrast that works like a charm through the album. Third cut "Vintern 1867" brings a more laid-back vibe, gently bouncing along with warm guitar before roaring vocals take the track into a thunderous, crunching nosedive. Light, mystical guitar eventually returns with keys in tow to ease the tune into a colorful psychedelic finish. Closing and highlight cut "Creatures of Doom" brings the EP to an epic close with gothic synths leading into one of the grooviest slabs of fuzz yet. A swirling, ringing collection of strings and keys takes the tune for a brief dip into dreamier waters, before surfacing for a final push of weighted noise. With such a strong and inventive debut out of the gates, GlöD are fast-rising heavy hitters in the stoner psych arena, and are already working on new material that's hotly anticipated here at the HiVe.
(Written by Shasta Beast)
Stoner HiVe got the chance recently to sit down with singer/guitarist Olivier and drummer Quentin, two of the three members of The Lance Vance Vengeance from Paris, France. A Zoom chat was fired up from across the pond to dig into their fantastic new LP “Broglie”, a mix of grunge, stoner, doom, and more, and we ended up going far beyond Zoom’s measly initial 40 minutes. We’ll spare you our collective and lengthy fanboying over King Gizzard’s double drumming and Rage Against The Machine, but after comparing notes on the COVID crisis in the US and France, we got to the meat of it. Dig in!
Stoner HiVe: How did The Lance Vance Vengeance start?
Olivier: Quentin was coming back from his studies abroad, and we moved to a home studio, located in a warehouse and played there 24/7.
Quentin: We got loads of amps and thought: we’re gonna crank this shit to fucking 10! Drinking twenty beers, and just play blues and punk. But at some point we were blocked, we needed someone else to bring more sound and melody.
Olivier: I sing and play the guitar live, so I was fucked up in my brain. I find it pretty hard doing all of that. You know, the pedals, the music, the singing, I’m not gonna make it. But the trio was later. We recorded our first EP DIY, in the home studio, over a year, just the two of us.
SH: So, what was the biggest difference recording Broglie?
O: We didn’t record it live like the EP, but with our friend Antoine, a sound engineer, at studio Vimondière.
Q: We had a schedule for the first time, 7 days to record 8 tracks.
O: We called the LP “Broglie”, the name of the city where it was recorded, because it’s really about that time in that studio. We recorded a lot of different instruments. For the song “Fog”, we have hand drums, Quentin plays a solo. It’s more of us being a studio band, not live. But for this summer, we have new songs for something more live, more punchy and more us.
SH: The record sounds super clean, and when you need to crank out the fuzz, that really hits, too. What drink and food were you living off?
Q: Haha, rum! Lots of rum. In France we have Rum Arrangè, it’s like pure rum with fruits. We actually have photographs of all the booze we drank for a week! A lot of wine too, c’mon we’re French, red wine. I’m gonna let Olivier tell about the food, cause it was complicated, haha.
O: Yeah it was funny, I had just turned vegetarian! We were stewing soups, doing heavy rock music and drinking rum!
SH: So, what was the most euphoric or exciting moment for you about the new album?
O: For me, it’s when Andre brought the cello into the studio for the song “Hooked”. Most of the songs were written for the bass guitar with six strings. For “Hooked” I wrote the guitar parts and Quentin wrote the lyrics. Andre’s cello adds a dark Alice In Chains feeling, I think it sounds marvelous.
Q: To me, it was when Olivier started to sing… Olivier was never really at ease with his own voice and singing *Olivier shakes head*. We had a difficult time with vocals, from the start. I always told Olivier “you gotta sing, I can’t sing”. It took two and a half years, and in the studio was the first time that I saw Olivier like almost at ease with the singing thing. We went to a café to not disturb him, and we came back with some berries and shit like that, and I remember vividly I came in and was like... “Shit! What is he doing right now?” I mean, the voice, really! I’m not fucking around with Olivier; it was like another person singing. I never, never, never heard Olivier sing like this before. That fucking guy! Just sang and sang and sang at home on his own, I don’t know, in the car. He didn’t tell me that he was working on his voice, he just did it! It was really something to hear him singing like this.
O: Yeah I think I’m not a natural born singer, I don’t have a really good voice. I just have the ear, so I know if I’m wrong or right, but I don’t really like my voice that much. Recording our first EP really helped me, because it was the first time I could focus on singing. It was the same in the studio. I think when you came back I just recorded “J.L.S”, which is a really heavy song, and I just spit my guts out on it. And it’s cool.
Q: The second take, I remember Andre told you “Just go with it, dude! Do your shit and we’ll see you after”, and it worked. I have tapes from the first rehearsal three years ago. Hearing those three years and the way he now sings, it’s really nice.
SH: I love how you transition on Océan and a few songs, from the clean, almost delicate guitar, and then the punch comes in. An awesome dynamic.
O: To Antoine, the sound engineer, I was like, “Turn it down”. He was like “No, no, no”. “Turn the clean guitar down, turn it down!” We get that punch in your face when it hits you.
SH: Boom! And “Fog” was a little more subdued, and then you brought the heavy in.
O: Yeah, “Fog” is where we wanted a new wave sound. There’s not really a bass because I’m playing through a guitar amp, like The Cure. We want to focus on the vocal harmonies more, me and Andre.
Q: And the funny thing with “Fog”, it was the intro of our live shows. But the first time we played it, we realized that the people were really in the zone and the “Fog” atmosphere. We said to ourselves, “Nah, that’s not an intro, that’s a song!”
O: We conceived “Broglie” as a two-sided vinyl. There’s a progression from mellow to heavy, and the opening tracks of each side had to be “Hooked” and “Océan”. “Once More” is kind of a power ballad. And we wanted to finish with “Doom”, heavy Black Sabbath. If a metalhead listens to the album, he would listen to the first two tracks and say, “Fuck this, these guys do pop music”. But if you play the whole album, it’s like ok, they’re heavy…
SH: Speaking of playing live, what are you looking forward to most when you finally get to play live again?
O: We decided in January: we’re going to playing two guitars and no bass. Andre and I are both guitarists, and we’re just sticking to one setup. If you play a song and stop, it’s different than if you can hold the stage for 25 minutes.
Q: When we go see King Gizzard, Idles, Fu Manchu, they never stop playing! And I want the live energy again. When you go out to concerts in Paris, you always meet new people and get drunk with them, that’s what I’m looking forward to. And to live my life! I miss my life. Getting back to playing gigs, that’s our life.
SH: Well, hey, before we wrap it up, is there anything you guys want to put out there for folks to know?
Q: We feel grateful to have our music out there. It’s the first time our music traveled. I mean, you’re from the US. To us, that’s, like, fucking crazy. We’ve listened to US music since we were kids! We just sent 5 vinyl records to the US last week, and to Germany, and to us that’s mind-blowing. And we are talking with you right now. We feel grateful that our music is speaking to people all over the world, that people are listening to our music. That’s all we want.
(Written by Shasta Beast)
Hot Breath – Rubbery Lips
The Sign Records – 2021
Rock
Rated: ****
It was one of the three releases featured on the April Doom Charts that we had not yet heard. And when we read Eric ‘The General’ Varasifsky ‘s blurb about the new Hot Breath album, we knew we had to quickly remedy that! And after that initial track Right Time we knew that Rubbery Lips, as the album is called, would be the perfect cure for our sickness that is us missing Juliette And The Licks so incredibly hard. Cause Rubbery Lips have produced this amazing smash ‘n grab rock ‘n roller that takes you back to the seventies just as easily as to that ballsy hardrock from the eighties. It’s got proto metal vibes, fast paced garage sensations and every possible hard rocking element that you might need to get your groove on and send you all-nite jukin’! The music stands so incredibly tall, so huge, so enormous, that it will undoubtedly make you go crazy, but it’s the hellcat vocals that will make you go wild! It has a certain vibrating presence. And it will touch you with the kind of madness that drives a shark insane in a blood-stained sea…
(Written by JK)
Hippie Death Cult – Circle Of Days
Heavy Psych Sounds – 2021
Rock, Garage, Psych, Stoner
Rated: *****
We’re been on a gigantic Portland trip that we did not even realize until Anthony Gaglia from LáGoon and The Crooked Whispers mentioned that both Robots Of The Ancient World and Hippie Death Cult were also from his town. And even though we were a bit late to join the cult back when those Hippies started, once 111 dropped, back in 2019, we immediately joined up and dreamed about getting their band name tattooed on one of our extremities. You guess which one. The freaks delivered that amazing album through Cursed Tongue Records and their new one Circle Of Days will soon be out on Heavy Psych Sounds. Delivering almost forty minutes of heavy goodness the five tracks move distinctly more towards the psychedelic garage, fuzzed out rock and stoner atmospheres than that world shocking earlier album, which had more doom and a more monolithic approach. This opts to weave more intricate tapestries and they transition to that form by way of opener Red Meat Tricks, which is the doomiest of the five. It’s also the track that immediately shows how the new album operates, making all the different instruments and vocals take their separate spotlight before coming all together in a dazzling spectacle of colors. Circle Of Days is the perfect follow-up to 111…
(Written by JK)
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Dunerider – Ruins
Self released - 2021
Doom, Sludge, Stoner
Rated: *****
It was one of the first releases we jotted down when the time came to send our list for the April edition of the Doom Charts. We had been grooving so freaking hard the past weeks to this rough and brutal little diamond! And we jumped at the opportunity to write that little blurb for this months edition; but did wonder what to write… Should we talk about the entire seven-track album that is Ruins by French outfit Dunerider? And in the process perhaps ruin some of the mammoth surprise that it might be? Or should we just mention that massive opening track Warlords? And promise that the rest of the album is just as good… For Warlords will not just shatter and crush your immediate surroundings, it aims to destroy your very being, the universe and the fabric of time. Indeed. It is that heavy! Pure doom sludge and ominous stoner… A sound that crept out of the bog to wreak havoc, rampage and lay waste to all that might stand in its way…
(Written by JK)
Robots Of The Ancient World – Mystic Goddess
SmallStone Records – 2021
Rock, Hard, Stoner
Rated: *****
The intro starts with a rock noir sound that reminds of The Gun Club and Madrugada before shifting gear and turning into some blissful seventies inspired rock, heavenly fuzzed, bass heavy and with those twin guitars weaving, dancing and riffing. It’s the new Mystic Goddess record by Portland quintet Robots Of The Ancient World. Recorded in the notorious Seattle Soundhouse Studios with the aid of the grunge godfather Jack Endino himself, as well as his longtime protégé Mikel Perkins, the eight tracks all have their very own identity. As we mentioned, that opening title-track has those two faces that blend wonderfully into each other. Follow-up Wasteland keeps its cards close to its chest; slow burning its soul into your heart with those passionate vocals and intensely pronounced guitars. The album turns atavistic stoner, in the very Kyuss sense of the word with that third chugging track Agua Caliente. Powerful riffs, devastating the landscape, pulverizing the dunes. Sure, there’s that widened middle part to contend with, which can be seen as the moments you stand there on top of those dunes, enjoying the view of the desert landscape. Out Of The Gallows contains in that vein and will have you howling along with the refrain without any doubt or hesitation. Colossal in every sense of the word! Which you can state about the entire record in fact, a record that shows off the many faces of Robots Of The Ancient World. And we haven’t even mentioned that cathedral, almost eleven minutes long, track called Lucifyre; which ends with quotes from a David Icke interview, if we’re not mistaken… There is no possible universe in which you will not dig this record. There is simply no way. Who do you think you are?
(Written by JK)
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Birmani – Birmani
Cuchabata Records – 2021
Stoner, Fuzz, Sludge, Psych
Rated: *****
These three Canadian crazies made the Doom Charts of April, and we were so glad they did. Cause we had already listened to the album and enjoyed the hell out of it. But seeing it appear on the final list and knowing that many of the Doom Charts Contributors voted for it, made me dive deeper into it. Making me fall head over heals with this album! It definitely left a mark! From Montréal, Quebec comes three-piece Birmani. On their self-titled, full-sized debut they show off their French tongue and their love for massive fuzz with loads of psychedelic influences and sludge overtones. They manage to make it all feel like old faves and new raves, from atavistic grunge to intense stoner; just as the godfathers intended. And it’s that masterful psych edge they add to most of the composition that will definitely turn you on. It’s that psych edge that also made us all fall in love with All Them Witches. And that will happen with Birmani as well. Birmani is good, Birmani is great, Birmani is the latin name for a sort of snail. And just like that slimy sucker, this three piece will definitely leave a mark…
(Written by JK)
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Doom Charts
“As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our golden ways,
Who e’er can crush Thy light?”
~ The First Walpurgis-Night, Goethe
We end the month of April with a folklorically traditionally time, an ancient holiday of sorts. That which is known as The Witches Sabbath or Beltane, where Midsommer and Walpurghis Nacht is celebrated in some parts of the world and has been for millennia. In ancient times these celebrations heralded the season of light and bonfire celebrations and displayed hope for renewal and rebirth as we head into May with longer days and summer approaching. And how fitting, as no summer in recent memory holds greater anticipation or need for that light or hope and renewal for us music fans, artists, and industry folk as the one ahead, while we await with bated breath a possible return to normalcy for live music and events, creative livelihoods and entire cultural sectors.
Will summer bear live musical fruit for us? What day is it anymore? Does time even matter? It remains to be seen, but the hope that comes with longer days and more vitamin D is a damn good start as well as April having brought with it a bounty of stunning releases for us all to enjoy. And without futher ado, as your faithful contributors of the Doom Charts are wont once again as every month dear reader, we coalesce to provide you with a listing of the finest new releases the world over from within our stylistic proclivities for Doom, stoner, sludge, heavy psych and fuzz centric musical offerings. Be safe and keep the faith, the light of our underground community shines bright.
That lovely intro was provided by the newest member of the Doom Charts Contributors group, long time Doomed & Stoned contributor: Doom Oracle. And let us indeed hope that this summer will bring forth the air we all desperately need to breathe and to be that air filled with lovely heavy musical notes that float along the warm breeze. Making the ember inside glow once more and make us not just remember, but experience and enjoy… Thousandfold! This positive, do good and we will surely make it happen! For now, we have the April edition of the Doom Charts which once again brings us so much great and heavy music to listen to! Personal votes went out to: LáGoon, Motorpsycho, Greenleaf, 1968, Yawning Sons, The Vintage Caravan, Draken, Dunerider & Dust Mice ! And today, we will listen to those, the ones we could just as easily have voted for and those few we hadn’t even heard… Like Iron Rider, Hot Breath & The Watcher… And knowing the fellow contributors, we will dig the hell out of ‘m and probably vote for them next month! Check ‘m out! Check ‘m all out!
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…
