Stoner Rock/Metal

If Come My Fanatics is any indication, they can make a pure spacy psychedelic trip out on occasion.

Keep hearing about how Dopethrone is so damn amazing, but I'll have to hear for myself.

Wow, that Sasquatch was great!

if you have yet to listen to Dopethrone, please do. Brilliant stuff, and even more crushingly heavy than Come My Fanatics (and it's trippy, too).

And they did have a somewhat surprising facility for trippiness, too...

The Sword are a pretty solid band, absolutely no criticism from yours truly...

Come My Fanatics is my favorite so far, but I'm still working my way through their discography so that could very well change.

Despite being more or less the face of the Stoner scene, the band doesn't seem to care all that much and come off really friendly in interviews. When I first started listening to them after a ton of pressure to do so, I was worried it'd just be heavy without much psychedelic trippyness. Thankfully that's not the case.

They manage to be heavy as hell while still keeping things in balance just enough. And those riffs are fucking MONOLITHIC. Can't emphasize that enough...

I've seen some interviews with them, they seem like pretty down-to-earth kinda dudes. Also, they're not afraid to change course artistically, as evidenced by the records immediately after Dopethrone and the fact that they emphasize trippiness over heaviness, but they always stay true to who they are. Kudos to that.

Gave Dopethrone a listen. My opinion's a bit mixed.

The even heavier sound is great. Hell, they're the only stoner band I've heard that could very well climb to a soft 10 on the scale.

But, it does seem to take a while to get into a solid groove. The first track's pretty much filler. Funeralopolis is much better, but it's a bit unwieldy, taking about 5 minutes to get to the best riffing. Still, it's a good listen, and an average song by these guys would be a solid track in most other stoner bands.

Weird Tales is better, having a more consistent atmosphere, even if the length's longer, it feels more hypnotically drawn out than overstaying it's welcome. In short the reason why the genre of doom is supposed to have such long songs.

Everything else largely falls into place. The Barbarian's excellent. Simpler, but even more even, with a pretty catchy main riff. And man, this band produces amazing noise when their heavy as hell sound is given some psychedelic distortion, the two just create this darkly catchy, thrumming wall of base I've never heard before.

Dopethrone's a standout, putting it's long lenth to good use and dissecting it's riff in every angle it can, feeling like an exploration.

It's very good as a whole. It takes a little while to get going, but just gets better the deeper I go. Very, very close second to Come My Fanatics, the latter just feels to me of having a bit better balance of walls of sound with the usual splashes of reverb.

The album's reminded me I think why doom's so appealing, at least for me. The slow pace and long lengths allow the listener to be swept up in the sound, drowning in it's slow tempo and riffs. The long songs do a lot to discourage track-by-track listening, and approaching albums as a single work.

True, the submerging in the noise prevents close analysis and the eexperience is vague from moment to moment, but the experience taken as a whole feels like you've awoken from a trance.

edited 19th Oct '14 7:11:02 PM by darkabomination

Perhaps one of the better reviews / analyses of the album in question I've ever seen. It's a great record, on par with Fanatics in my books. And one of the heaviest Doom / Stoner records ever, to boot... Listen to the ones right after it and tell us what ya think, though- they kinda started to emphasize the trippy over the heavy, perhaps thinking they couldn't top Dopethrone for sheer crushing heaviness...

Aww, thanks for reading one of my pretentious ramblings.

Will do so.

Any time, any time...

Having grown up on the standard '60s/'70s blues-rock canon, I'm slowly trying to discover more recent material. It surprises me how much of the heavier rock fare of this millennium is associated with the "stoner rock" tag.

From what I've heard so far, the common elements seem to be fat distorted guitar chords, and high-pitched vocals that sound like the singer is in agony. I'd expected music for stoners to be really mellow and stuff

I'm loving Hello Master by Priestess. I tried Clutch, but I quickly grew very bored with them – most of their songs seem to have more or less the same groove, and their production suffers from a bad case of Loudness War.

Personally, I rather like Clutch, but even I'll admit the Loudness War thing can make things annoying. I like that groove though... Also, Priestess are great!

I tend to agree- the modern Stoner tag includes a lot of old-school Heavy Rock / Proto-Metal / early-70s Metal-influenced bands, and some who, had they come out in that era, would fit right in... It's only mellow by comparison to, say, Death Metal and such.

A lot of it is suitable for drug intake though, and it's generally fairly slow, so it does still fit the "stoner" description pretty well if ya think about it... Also, a lot of it has a prominent Psychedelic Rock element to it.

Speaking of psychedelic rock, stumbled across this band that's apparently been around for a little while but somehow flew under my radar.

Seems to be the interesting combo that got me. Hypnotic vocals, very crisp drumming, hard-edged fuzz, and some incredibly distorted psychedelic jamming to round it out.

Interesting variation on the sound, kinda reminds me of Nebula, somewhat, albeit with more... well, crisp drumming, like ya said...

Gonna resurrect this like Monster Magnet is resurrecting their Mastermind album with psychedelic voodoo.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2015/07/monster_magnet_8.html

Going through Electric Wizard more as a Doom fan but not with any nostalgia towards the band, I can't shake the feeling Dopethrone though really good, is given more praise than it earned.

Sure, technically it's their most abrasive, distorted, droning work with vocals reverberating and pushed deep into the mix, which is a blast to the senses, especially for the time. It's a testament if nothing else that it is still one of the heaviest albums ever made.

But all that aside, it feels indulgent rather than epic to me. Funeralopolis has good riffing, but man does that slab of metal go on a bit long, even for their standards. Vinum Sabbathi is shorter, but felt more consistent. My favorites were the Barbarian, Weird Tales, and I, the Witchfinder.

But generally as good as it is, the album feels less cohesive and more praised for the gimmick of heavy sound.

Apologies, I know it's practically hallowed ground in Doom circles.

I still find Come, My Fanatics to be better. It was shorter and has only a few tracks, but it felt like the longer material gave them time to expand and shift, as EW was getting heavier while still giving things a psychedelic splash. It had balance, in lack of a better word. Distorted, but still clear and atmospheric lyrics of misanthropic disgust, grinding riffs and also some good drum fills that all came together.

Going forward, Let Us Pray and We Live felt So Okay, It's Average, but for different reasons.

Let Us Pray was still very heavy, but after Dopethrone, it felt like they'd used a lot of their ideas, and understandably with the last album of their lineup, felt a little tired, not much stood out to me. But I'll go back and give it another listen, just to be certain.

We Live with the new lineup, feels like a new direction for the band. More atmospheric elements were creeping in, and some of the psych was getting used more. If Let Us Pray felt like it lacked cohesion with its original lineup, We Live felt like the band was finding a new approach but not quite sure where to go from there.

Wichcult Today which I just finished, was awesome. There's even more atmosphere, a return to a mix of distorted but semi-comprehensible moans and shouts, and a more polished, technical sound. With the new guitarist, the structures had more tightly-written grooves than ever before, the songs were even dare I say... catchy, even got some soloing and interplay going on, and had more evenly-distributed song lengths that didn't break their usual hypnotic appeal by overstaying their welcome.

If Come, My Fanatics felt consistent with a heavy focus and a psychedelic edge, Witchcult Today feels consistent with a heavy sense of atmosphere and polish, with enough of their gritty edge that it still felt like EW.

edited 13th Aug '15 9:32:38 PM by darkabomination

I am going to a special Christmas gig tomorrow in my new town of Bristol. Who is playing? Hometown heroes Turbowolf. Check them out!

A Rose For The Crows

Bag o' Bones

Elder is a personal favorite of mine. (Sorry for necro, unintentional lol)

edited 31st Aug '16 5:58:14 PM by Wreckage56