Welcome back my friends to the scene that never ends! With roots dating back to before Black Sabbath in 1970, this is the latest crop of Heavy Rock, Hard Rock and Heavy Metal madness affectionately labeled as Stoner Doom!
These are the exact albums in the precise order that I submitted to the Doom Charts this month. As always, PLEASE take the ranking with a grain of salt. I’m not saying that Stone Nomads are better than Saltpig. And I don’t hide behind a point system or scale to hide the fact that these are 100% subjective and my best guess as to what I’m most likely to listen to again in the coming months and years.
But just like Nista back in February, I do think and feel that my #1 is one of the best albums I’ve heard in nearly 50 years of digging this kind of music.
Great band name, great cover and really great album. Once again, a “Progressive” band releases a truly progressive album that isn’t all about “arpeggio salad” and the dazzling displays of technical superiority that comes from playing the same pattern 1000 times. What makes this progressive is that it actually goes somewhere. A definite recommendation for fans of everything from Motorpsycho to MWWB and Sergeant Thunderhoof.
For the sane and logical among you, I do hope you will take my advice and listen through Vexing Hex’s Solve Et Coagula a few times. It really is a great time. It’s an aural amusement park, essentially a scary Disneyland distilled down into forty minutes of incredibly effective pop-rock. If that doesn’t sound like a selling point to you, if that doesn’t sound like something that can only serve the capacity to add joy, cheer, and warmth to your life then by all means skip it. The rest of us are gonna be having fun though. – Reverend Fuzzcut
Sautras’ Lazarus Dilemma came in too late for me to even listen to last month. Released on May 24th, this burner of an album tells the story of a Vampire resurrected and not being too happy about it. The music is bouncy but intense, the lyrics sung with a dramatic flair, and the whole album is a fun and trippy ride. Definitely for fans of Wizard Tattoo and people who like their Metal to tell a story.
I am capable of startling episodes of pure stupidity and carelessness, and leaving High Desert Queen off of my May 2024 list is one of them. The best album, from one of the best bands in scene…that one hurts. Thankfully it’s still available and probably going to be a Top 20 for the year. Solar Rain is the ultimate High Desert Queen song: 9 minutes of psyched out riffing that ends far too early. Just like the rest of Palm Reader.
The crazy thing about Sons of Arrakis is they know exactly who they are, what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. I think the metal community at large has a hard time with that, or at least the reviewers and critics. Take away the concept of Dune itself, and this is stellar Progressive Heavy Psych with a Stoner edge. REZN and Howling Giant are a great paring, for example. Put the Dune references in, and we have some first-rate fan fiction exploring that universe without referencing specific scenes from the novels with every note or lyric line. I guess some people have a hard time with “artistic license” and subtle nods. That or they didn’t read past the first book. This is some seriously engaging stuff, and I totally LOVE the synth solo in Metamorphosis. The God Emperor himself would love this!!!
Desert Twelve answers a question I’ve had a lot lately: what happens as Stoner/Doom continues to develop, evolve, and start incorporating elements of Symphonic Metal and more emotive forms of heavy music? Now I know: this is what you get. The Last Darkwood is a grand, sweeping and elegant slice of Heavy. Desert Twelve is accessible from so many angles I can’t count them all. Evanescence meets Messa? Queens of the Stone Age meets Haelstrom? Take your pick, but give this one more than a cursory shot. There’s something here, and I like it. A lot.
I feel like a skipping record, but this here Heavy Underground thing is evolving. Bad Guru presents Love and Fear Me, a modern, contemporary recording influenced by King Buffalo, Slomosa, and Truckfighters. If you don’t listen carefully and completely, it’s going to sound like false advertising. But man, when Bad Guru pulls out the riffs, you end up with songs like the haunting slow burn of Hearts in Twine that absolutely RIPS at the 4:08 mark. Don’t let the clean, articulated and well recorded vocals fool you: this is heavy, heady stuff, both lyrically and musically. I need more time to process this one: it’s spectacular. I’m not done with this one yet…
Finally! Saltpig! I feel like it’s been forever since Doom Cakes uncovered this band for us last November. If you don’t know them, you truly need to give this a spin. All the retro vibes you need are here, with the moments of pure heaviness that can only happen 2024. Album closer 1950 is nearly 20 minutes of psyched out sonic mayhem and amplifier worship worthy of the biggest Boris fan on the planet. It’s like Ufomammut without the restraint.
This is the album y’all need to have on the next time you take your motorcycle out for some wind therapy, y’all go backpacking, or y’all snowboard down puffy, powdery mountain peaks. This is an album that ultimately demands the listener to stand up, take note, and live life to it’s absolute fullest. Anyone who has already sacrificed their lives to the devil that is addiction once already knows just how high a price that sacrifice cost. There’s not a damn one among us who’s going to forget to make the most out of this second chance, and that’s precisely what RIFFLORD is imploring us to do with 39 Serpent Power. – Reverend Fuzzcut
REZN isn’t happy just being one of the Heavy Underground’s most popular and progressive bands. Now they have to be the most prolific. Burden picks up right where Solace left off. It reminds of the days when the. best bands released an album every year, to the point it burned them out. Thankfully, that’s not what REZN is doing. They have ideas, a vision, and they’re executing it flawlessly. I’ve heard more than one person mention that REZN is quickly catching up to bands like Baroness and King Buffalo. Fans of those bands will find much to love about Burden, and I totally agree.
I always get a bit dizzy when it comes to the Top 10 Stoner/Doom albums every month. I try to write 20 each month because my Top 10 isn’t going to be your Top 10, and every album is going to be someone’s favorite. If I had time I’d do Top 50…
Doom, Glorious DOOM!
I don’t universally love all Doom, and if I listed all the stuff I don’t care for it would probably irk some people. But when DOOM hits me in the gut like Stone Nomads do, it becomes my favorite genre again. Beyond the Gates is that kind of album, with enough traditional heavy metal to gladden my Boomer soul and enough 2020’s attitude to keep me guessing. Beyond the Gates is why I think Doom is the perfect music for our trying times.
In true scientific form, I have played these songs for my friends and family of varying ages to gather responses across different generations of listeners. What I have surmised is that this album, while it has its heavy, even doomy moments, carries enough elements of progressive rock and blues sensibilities to be appealing to the older listeners (boomers) and incorporates plenty of drum fills and tempo changes to hold the interest of the younger generation (Gen Z). Wall-to-wall, this album rocks. I plan to get the vinyl and blast it through my JVC speakers at all hours of the night. -Jipsy (Full Review)
Art affects all of us differently. I’m under no delusions about that. The vast majority of our readership will not resonate with This Dry Land quite to the degree that I have, but I don’t expect you guys to. Finding albums that affect us on a personal level like this is a rare occurrence of course, and it’s exactly that – personal. This Dry Land is incredibly important to me because this album is personal to me in that it brings forth emotions I keep hidden and locked away under any other circumstance, but with music there is no lock strong enough to resist picking or breakage. Music owns the key to the lock of my soul, and right now Huntsmen is in possession of it. – Reverend Fuzzcut (in Monster Riff)
Italy’s Still Wave literally breaks my heart. A Broken Heart Makes an Inner Constellation may be the most impractical title of the year, but after listening to this lush offering of blast beats, shoegazy goodness and intense heaviness, what else could you call it? What breaks my heart is how few people are likely to hear this. Opener Spaceman with a Gun has everything you need to know in the first 3 minutes, and then it just takes off from there. This is an adventurous, daring and mesmerizing album that needs to be experienced. It’s kinda like REM meets Insomnium, but that’s a shortcut. Still Wave requires the long path.
In my heart, I just know that Moon Womb is album-of-the-year material. But rating them above the next five feels crazy. No one will be believe it. But this two-piece of guitar/drums/vocals has created a Doom Folk masterpiece that is, well, fucking crazy. The duo of Brandy and Richard Flickinger have elevated the whole idea of Doom Folk to new heights. Fans of Dorthia Cotrell and Aerial Ruin will freak over this. This is THAT album that you search through garage sales and used record stores to find, except you don’t have to. It’s here, it’s on Firelight Records, and it doesn’t need to be obscure. Just buy it, and revel in the fact that no one else you know has so much as a hint that it exists. But share Moon Womb with that cousin who worships Alison Krauss…
I think The Return to Tomorrow is one of the best Fu Manchu Albums ever released. Old fans will find enough to scratch that old-school itch while hearing new things from the band. New fans will dig the heavy riffs and relentless groove that lead them down quite the rabbit hole. Especially for fans of new bands like CLEEN, Juke Cove and Grey Giant…Whether this new generation of Stoner bands are directly referencing Fu Manchu I can’t say. But the references are there, and I think that’s a point worth bringing up. In the meantime, Fu Manchu reinvented itself on The Return to Tomorrow.
In the end, more Horseburner is always a good thing especially with how long the drought for new material was. It’s almost crazy to think The Thief was released almost five years ago, but that is an album and band that lies in the past. True, for a lot of us there are a lot of things that changed after 2019. In fact I would say that’s true for most of us. But Horseburner has plowed the way forward and has released what in my estimation will been a lot of AOTY lists with an album bursting with momentum.-Reverend Fuzzcut (full review).
When I first started this list, WyndRider’s Revival was comfortably in the #15 spot. But when I put it on and started writing, my inner critic screamed, “Awww, hell noooo!” And damn, for once that inner critic stuff was right. Even now I can’t get the bombasric opener, Forked Tongue Revival outta my head. Hear for yourself…
Revival goes way, way beyond the trendy Occult Doom of the 2020’s (which I love, btw.) This is fiercely biting cultural commentary, through metaphor. Without overthinking it, this is strong effing stuff that doesn’t pull any punches. Read into it what you will, but Chloe Gould (vocals) has some choice words for some people, and she is not to be fucked with.
King Bastard…dayum! AOTY contender before it was even released. A massive leap forward, not only for King Bastard but for Progressive Doom/Sludge as a whole. Our own Reverend opined: “This is the sound of planets colliding, grinding, and smashing together by the pestle of an ancient, etherial force lost to time and memory. This is primal, instinctual rage made manifest. The threat is palpable and relentless.”
Indeed. And from the opening percussion that took me back to King Crimson’s Larks Tongues in Aspic to the indescribable brilliance of Dawn of Man, I am in awe of this album. You can see me react, in real time, here:
Birdstone.
I’ve had moments over the past few years, unforgettable experiences that seem to “change everything” or put things into perspective. Those moments generally involve music: a key album by a band that makes in indelible mark on my psyche. They tend to be immediate and clear: Black Sabbath Vol 4, In the Court of the Crimson King, Lore and The Great Cessation are a handful.
I always knew that Birdstone had greatness in them. The Great Anticipation is that greatness brought to life. This is a heady slab of blues-based madness that gets right up to the edge of the cliff, teeters for a second, then pulls back a split second before catastrophe. Birdstone thrives on the edge, they don’t just live on it.
Elder. King Buffalo. YOB. With The Great Anticipation, Birdstone joins those three as the one of the best bands I’ve heard this century.
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I enjoy reading the album reviews , I do, but what I really enjoy is the album art! Really,really love the fact that album art is making a comeback!!