10 Slip - Tense Lip (2025)

Country: Canada
Style: Blues/Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 Feb 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

This came to me as blues rock and that's not entirely unfair, being built on blues guitar, but it's not the primary genre I heard. What is depends on which track I'm listening to, because it spans quite a range, not all of it sitting on a straight musical line.

When it starts out with Dead Ain't Gonna Cry, it's heavy blues rock with a fuzzy guitar right out of stoner rock. It's heavy and raucous and surprisingly patient. The vocals in the second half build the live feel that we notice immediately in how hard the drums are being hit. That goes double for the end of the song, which is almost bludgeoning stoner rock. This continues into Cult but with far less intensity. The musicians are playing just as hard and the song is just as patient but it's slower and sparser stoner rock that's stripped down to almost garage rock levels. This counts as the bluesiest rock song on that album but it never cuts loose to jam.

If that gives you a pretty good idea of what 10 Slip sound like, the next few will surely shake that up considerably. 10 Split starts out like Nick Cave singing for a doom pop outfit, but it grows into a Red Hot Chili Peppers direction with plenty of punk attitude in the combatitive vocals during the second half. It's a greased up and dirty song that doesn't want to be clean and, while 10 Slip are a Canadian band, hailing from Sydney, Nova Scotia, there's an Australian feel here that extends far beyond Cave. There's some of Angry Anderson's confrontational attitude here, though the style doesn't come close to Rose Tattoo.

The most fascinating songs on the album come next. The Wall, all nine minutes of it, is rooted in a prog metal feel but filtered firmly away from metal, as if 10 Slip are Tool moonlighting as a stoner rock band covering new wave songs in weird time signatures. There's King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard here too, to keep that Aussie feel alive. I've never felt that Canadian and Australian music had much in common until now, but 10 Slip seem happy to be the causeway between them.

Then there's Shallow Waters, which is a story song, a deep vocal accompanied by a batch of power beats, maybe explaining that's why there's more Nick Cave here and even alt country. This one is happy to flaunt an outlaw flavour, refusing to kowtow to any genre's expectations, even alt rock, a sprawling genre that ultimately fits this best, whatever rich resonance the vocals find. The second half ramps up in intensity so that voice can leap into street preacher mode, underlining that Cave influence even more. And given all of that, it still has a real garage rock simplicity to it. It's quite the song.

I despise talking through albums in order, but this one seems to naturally fall that way: the pair of openers to set a particular expectation, 10 Split to shatter it, then The Wall and Shallow Waters to showcase just how diverse 10 Slip are with arguably the best and most memorable couple of songs on the album.

The remaining three don't need to be talked about in order, because they're simply another three songs to deepen that versatility, but I guess I might as well finish how I started, after pointing out that the vocals and guitars come courtesy of Brandon Hoban, while the other couple of musicians are Cameron Walker and Gregor MacDougall, even if I can't tell you who plays the heavy bass and who hits those drums like his life depends on it. Just check out his playing on Spore.

The final three are less notable tracks but they're still enjoyable. Mirrors goes back to stoner rock, but ups the ante into some agreable fast doom. Hallowed Ground, which is the single, is somehow the one song I never seem to write a note about. It's too deep to be truly mellow, but it works that way anyway and plays out slower and more melodically than anything else here, though it doesn't stay mellow all the way, that commanding Cave-esque shout of Hoban returning to lead into a sort of stoner rock knees up to finish. And then Spore, somehow the longest track here, even with The Wall lasting nine minutes, closes out like a stoner rock jam.

I believe this is a debut album, though 10 Slip did put out a five track EP in 2023 called Blackbeer'd that looks like something Alestorm might knock out, all pirates and booze. It's a strong album and I look forward to the next one.

TFNRSH - Book of Circles (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

This album is so easy to just fall into that it's acutely hard to review it. The basics are that TFNRSH are an entirely instrumental German psychedelic rock band who hail from Tübingen. That name is a short version of "tiefenrausch", which means "deep noise", but they play highly accessible psych on this, their second album. Their first was self-titled and came out in 2023. Across both, they write long pieces of music, two of the four tracks here over eleven minutes and the shortest over seven and a half. I've listened to this maybe a dozen times now and it encompasses me every time until I realise I haven't written any notes and have to start over again, not that that's a hardship.

My favourite track is the opener, Zemestån, which features a simple but effective build. It finds its mood quickly with synths then adds a simple echoing riff. The drums join the fray a minute into the piece but the riff doesn't expand for another thirty seconds and it always catches me out with its patience because I'm waiting for it every time. It's a glorious build, going full crunch two minutes in and milking that groove. There is a drop back at the four minute mark but that's also when the drums start to roll and the guitar gets jaunty. The patience of TFNRSH is palpable because this is all about groove. The solo doesn't show up until seven minutes in and even then takes a while to truly shift.

WRZL is more experimental, with an opening that's hard stoner rock but with space noises in the background and leaping into the foreground too. Then it mellows out for a while with a delightful liquid guitar from Sasan Bahreini. He gets a fantastic solo in the second half. He's the only name I see credited on guitar, but the closer, Ammoglÿd, which is much more mellow throughout, plays in like the intertwining of two melodious guitars. They're initially backed by rain with an occasional contribution from Stefan Wettengl's bass. Drummer Julius Watzl gets a break for almost half the piece.

That leaves the third and longest track, Zorn, which is my least favourite of the four, in part because it's even more patient than everything else, taking a long while to get anywhere. Initially, it's a slow set of peaceful synth drones behind a long spoken word section. It's in German, so I have no idea what's being said for four or five minutes. At least Watzl is there to provide a quirky beat that's a single thread of interest. Maybe if I understood the narration it would be stronger, but it feels like the least substantial piece even without factoring that in.

Now, when it does kick in, almost at the five minute mark, it kicks in with emphasis. That's surely the most vicious guitar yet and it aches to cut through something. After a further ninety seconds, it drops into something more akin to Zemestån but with a more playful and less regimented vibe, so there's definitely plenty in the piece to enjoy but we have to wait for the narrator to finish his spiel before we can get to it. It's the only part of this album that I feel warrants a fast forwarding through, even though I haven't done that yet. The drums are enough to keep me, I guess.

By the way, while the band is based in Germany, song titles like Zemestån and Ammoglÿd appear to be Latgalian, which is a Latvian language. I don't know if any or all of the band members moved from Latvia to Germany or not, but those titles mean Earthquake and Environment respectively. It's ironic, I guess, that they be my favourite two tracks, given that there's no language anywhere in them except the titles. Maybe Zorn means something in Latgalian. Maybe it doesn't.

Any which way, this is a strong and immersive album. I don't know that it does anything unusual or particularly noteworthy. It's just thoroughly enjoyable and I could easily listen to it another dozen times. However, I need to move onto other albums, so I'll have to leave it for now but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for a third album from TFNRSH in a couple of years time.

Der Neue Planet - Schwerkraft für Anfänger (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Prog Archives | YouTube

This third album from Cologne's Der Neue Planet came to me as stoner rock, which is certainly one element of its sound, but it reaches a long way beyond it. The titles mostly suggest space rock, an obvious element from the opening synth drone. However, there's also plenty of post-rock in play, along with prog, psych, krautrock and other genres. At points, there are hints of surf music and a few soft backdrops that remind of lounge, for harder sounds in the foreground to contrast with.

I should explain those titles, because they're all in German, this being entirely instrumental music with no lyrics. The album title translates to Gravity for Beginners, which suggests that we're in the presence of those who might live without it but are coming to visit. That's not a bad way to look at the music within it.

The unwieldy Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive translates to Infinite Improbability Drive, a device in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which suggests that this track can and absolutely should go absolutely everywhere. It doesn't, perhaps inevitably, but it does go to a lot of different places. Instabile Weiße Zwerge meaning Unstable White Dwarfs, which is ironic as this piece has a section that's as close to traditional classic rock as anything else here. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. or Galactic. Practical. Good. is less obvious in its intent, but it's a positive piece.

Phobos and Deimos, of course, are the moons of Mars, but they're brief interludes here that serve no other purpose because they're almost empty. If you listen to them in isolation you'll wonder as to where they were. Alpha Ursae Minoris is the star usually known as Polaris, the Pole Star or the North Star, a particularly useful star in navigation, at least in the northern hemisphere. That may suggest that it's the guide to this album, a notion backed up by the fact that it's at the very heart of it, being track four of seven, and the fact that it's the longest piece here at almost ten minutes. Does everything here appear in this one in microcosm? No, I don't think so, but it does seem to try.

That just leaves Lirum Larum Lapidarium, which isn't entirely Latin. A lapidarium is a repository of stones, usually with historical meaning, but I have no idea what the rest of the title means. Maybe that's why it's the most experimental piece here, starting out with soft, resonant acoustic guitar but ending as pure krautrock. All in all, these tracks make for quite the journey, but it isn't merely one journey, as so many psychedelic rock albums are, with each track continuing in the same vein as the rest; these are each individual pieces of music with individual goals, tones and moods.

While Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive ought to be the most varied, it may need to battle Alpha Ursae Minoris for that crown and everything else except the interludes might want a word too. It has the benefit of coming first to nail its claim into our skulls, though, and it's the one that delves into surf pop and soft psychedelia before finding some heavier stoner rock. Even though it plays light at points, it's Instabile Weiße Zwerge that feels like light is a motif. Sure, it builds too, as all of these songs do to various degrees, moving from soft to heavy or at least heavier, but it's positive in nature, as if these white dwarfs are still delivering light, however inconsistently.

Alpha Ursae Minoris takes that and runs with it. This is the one with the lounge-like backdrop for the pulsing bass and jagged riffs to dance all over. It's a delightful contrast, as if liquid is meeting rock, perhaps for the first time. Of course, the rock abides, however playful it gets and it gets very playful over nine minutes and change. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. may well be my favourite piece of all, once again lighter early and heavier late, but even more so, reminding of west African highlife early and finding a sassy seventies hard rock groove in the second half.

There are many grooves on Lirum Larum Lapidarium, from the soft opening through arguably the most overt stoner rock, albeit with funky breaks, to the krautrock towards the end. It's maybe the least consistent in how it shifts between grooves, some of them layering tastily but others feeling more jagged and less effective. Sure, this stoner rock groove benefits from that keyboard groove being played over it, but that groove shifts to another without warning and we're taken aback.

I haven't heard Der Neue Planet before, but they have two prior albums out, Magrathea Erwacht, another Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy nod, and Area Fifty-Fun, from 2018 and 2022 respectively. It's abidingly clear that I should seek those out sharpish.

The Obsessed - Gilded Sorrow (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 Feb 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

This may be an odd confession to make, but I don't believe that I've ever heard the Obsessed. I've heard their lead singer and lead guitarist, Scott 'Wino' Weinrich, because he fronted Saint Vitus in the late eighties and he appeared on Dave Grohl's overlooked Probot album. However, while he formed this band as far back as 1979, it only released some demos and a single before he joined Saint Vitus. After his time in that band, he reformed the Obsessed but their albums showed up in the early nineties when life was taking over from music for me.

If I ever heard them, it would be the track that was on Metal Massacre VI, but I don't recall it, so I get to finally catch up through their fifth album. The first three came out between 1990 and 1994 and four arrived another split and reformation later in 2017, soon before I started up Apocalypse Later Music. Clearly I need to go back to those earlier albums because I like this, not that it shocks me at all. What surprises me is that it took this long for me to catch up.

Well, there's another surprise in store with the opening couple of tracks, Daughter of an Echo and It's Not OK, because they're perky doom, downtuned but up tempo and I'd somehow got it into my brain that the Obsessed played more traditional doom but with punk influences. Maybe they did. I wasn't there. I like these tracks, though, which do have a punk energy to them but are played with metal precision. That punk energy extends to Wino's vocals, because the perkier a song gets, the more conversational he becomes in his delivery. Not everything adopts that approach here but it returns as an approach in Jailine.

That all changes on Realize a Dream, which starts out aiming to set a mood and shifts into more of a hard rock sound. The tone is the same, but the influence is less Black Sabbath and more the Cult, just slower, as if it's a single played at 33rpm instead of 45. Accordingly, Wino sings this song more than converses with us. Jailine is even more obviously Cult-inspired, with some Danzig in there for good measure and even a hint of Sisters of Mercy in the chorus too. It's all downtuned though and back to perky doom. It's a heady mixture and I like it a lot.

The title track is much slower and more overtly doom, with vocals that start out spoken word and endowing it with an epic wasteland feel. Maybe it and the similarly slow but bouncier Stoned Back to the Bomb Age and Wellspring are what I was expecting from the Obsessed. The former is bleak but the latter slow bounces with Wino returning to conversational vocals, loose but always firmly on point, even throwing in dismissive laughter in Stoned Back to the Bomb Age when the lyrics ask for it. It's not a happy song, raging against politicians.

There's more variety late in the album, with Lucky Free Nice Machine closing out like a hard rock guitar solo. It's only a minute long and it's entirely instrumental, Wino's guitar taking a moment in the spotlight but the rhythm section of doom bolstering him wonderfully. None of them are old time members, though drummer Brian Constantino was on that previous album, Sacred, having joined in 2016. Jason Taylor on rhythm guitar and Chris Angleberger on bass both arrived in 2022. Before it, Yen Sleep goes back to traditional doom, plodding along with just enough bounce to be engaging rather than bleak. It features my favourite guitar solo of any of these songs.

Oddly, though, given how much I like traditional doom and dip happily into funeral doom, most of my favourite songs here are the perky ones, most obviously It's Not OK and Jailine. I'm also fond of Realize a Dream and Yen Sleep, two very different tracks indeed. That means that, while I have finally heard an Obsessed album, I'm not entirely sure which of these sounds is their core one and I really ought to go back and dip into the earlier ones to see where this came from.

Qilin - Parasomnia (2024)

Country: France
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Jan 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

This album is a few months old now, so counts as less recent than I tend to prefer to review here at Apocalypse Later, but I enjoyed Qilin's debut album, Petrichor, so much in 2020, that I didn't want to miss out on its follow-up when it crossed my path recently. I also didn't want to wait until next January when I do catch up on what I missed from 2024, because I'd probably forget and then feel bad when I stumble onto it again, having missed my window.

Qilin are French and they play heavy instrumental rock that straddles the border with metal. You could fairly describe what they do as psychedelic rock but it's just as often doom metal and all the best pieces move between the two. That's one way in which this album echoes the debut. Most of the tracks are long and the band, which I believe remains unchanged from last time, allow them to breathe, which leaves room for a couple of modes. There's the heavy mode, with the bass turned up high and the guitars switching between cavernous riffs and wailing solos. And then there's the mellow mode, which is much softer and drenched in atmosphere.

The result is as immersive as last time out but oddly still mostly fails to work as a travel agent for me. What I mean there is that instrumental psychedelic rock often takes me places. Sure, I listen to it as music but it also sends me on a journey too. I have aphantasia so can't frame images in my head, but I still get impressions in the form of feelings. These albums often make me feel like I'm on another planet or drifting between the stars, to cite just two common examples. This doesn't, though it hints at it in those mellow sections.

Instead, it remains stubbornly music, but it's music that I really enjoy. It's heavy but melodic and it's immersive, as if it's so big that it surrounds me. It starts out achingly slow with three minutes of funeral doom called Ouro, that's emphatically an intro to set up the sound palette and lead us into the best track, Lethean Dreams. This isn't three minutes long, needless to say—it runs eight and half—and it builds carefully.

It begins mellow in the closest section anywhere on the album to take me somewhere. It feels like I'm in a huge echoing cavern, perhaps like the cover art, but I'm not the character walking towards it. I'm inside waiting. There's a real sense of patience to it, as if there's no reason to move at all, a feeling of centering where I settle down and wait for everything to come to me. And it does, but I sit, safe and still, in the middle of that cavern while the music changes around me. Even when the song ramps up into heavy mode, playing out like a force of nature, I'm not part of it. I'm calm and unaffected, but not unappreciative, as it rages around me. I listen and enjoy.

And I remain there for forty calm minutes, listening and enjoying, while the remaining four pieces of music play out, along with an interlude in the middle of them. It's odd to see an interlude, as it's not uncommon for the shift between heavy and mellow to effectively incorporate interludes as an inherent songwriting component, but Innervision is very mellow and introduces the heaviest piece on offer, which is the bludgeoning Hundred-Handed Wards.

I like Qilin when they're being mellow, though Innervision may be the weakest such section on the album. However, I like them most when they're raging and the swirl of tasty feedback that wraps up Hundred-Handed Wards is raging indeed. It's probably beaten only by the finale to On Migoi's Trail and the core of Lethean Dreams. I love how they generate maelstroums of energy and whip them around like ancient wizards, destroying everything in their wake yet never losing control of their tools of destruction.

These two aspects constitute the majority of the album, but there's one further touch I should let you know about, because it surprises me every time those waves of feedback in Hundred-Handed Wards feedback subside and Qilin launch into the final track. This is Boros and it opens up entirely like AC/DC. Sure, the bass is drenched in fuzz, but that's an AC/DC build if I've ever heard one. It's happy to not continue down that path as the piece grows and no vocalist shows up, whether Brian Johnson or anyone else, but it does still stay perkier than anything else on the album, even as the longest track here. It doesn't really slow down until about halfway through its nine minutes and it doesn't calm until six and a half minutes in.

And so that's Parasomnia, which refers to sleep disorders that crop in when you're not asleep but not truly awake either. Your brain is still only partially awake and that does seem to be the perfect time to let an album like this wash over you. That would be a way to start the day!

Emergency Rule - The King of Ithaca (2024)

Country: Australia
Style: Stoner Rock/Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 9 Feb 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

Metal Archives lists Emergency Rule as a southern metal band and I guess we can't go much more southern than Adelaide, South Australia. However I found this, their debut album, listed as stoner rock and that rings truer to me. There's definitely a southern flavour on The Hook, which kicks off the album, and there's as much metal here as rock, the majestic Something to Say as close to the old school Black Sabbath sound instrumentally as I've heard recently. However, I'd see Clutch as a powerful comparison, both in tone and approach, so hard/stoner rock seems to fit best. Of course, the band's own description of "Sabbath with attitude, Skynyrd with power" is pretty accurate too.

The other reason I'd call out stoner rock here is because there's also a powerful psychedelic sound here, starting in Garden and reaching its peak on the intro to Ulysses. The guitars—plural, even if many stoner rock bands are trios—get all mellow during verses on the former, which allows singer Doug Clark to endow his voice with some notable attitude. That only grows further on Bartender, which is a performance for him more than it's merely a song. Everything on this one is nuance for him, which is admirable because he's also the band's bassist, so is always doing far more than sing.

I can see Bartender being a lot of listeners' favourite song, but mine is Something to Say, because it's so impeccably old school that even the opening silence sounds like it was recorded in a studio in 1972. It starts out stoner rock but finds quintessential Sabbath riffs. Clark growls this one, so is nowhere near any of the various vocalists Sabbath had over the years, but I love that guitar tone and there's a glorious instrumental section, as indeed there is on a number of these songs, which benefits from there being two guitarists, Chris G and Callum Wegener. It reminds me that, even if a band has an obvious and strong lead singer, they can still absolutely deliver instrumentally.

It's why I always think of how tight Clutch are instrumentally, even though Ned Fallon often leads songs with his vocal phrasing. The same holds here and Emergency Rule are imaginative on that front. The mellow Sabbath guitars in Garden are part of that and they return on From the Grave, though that song also features perhaps the most overt southern riffs, along with what may be a banjo at points. So is that glorious psychedelic opening to Ulysses. Another is the inclusion of an unlikely instrument for stoner rock on Abuse, namely a string section. That's a cello, I believe, to provide the intro and there's a frequent underpinning of violins throughout the song. The cello especially works with this sort of heavy material.

The album starts strongly with The Hook and continues to be strong through the eight tracks most of which run in the five or six minute range. Something to Say was my favourite from my very first listen and that hasn't changed maybe seven or eight times through. However, which I'd pick as my next choice has changed often, because this benefits from each song being subtly different but of a pretty consistent quality. For a while, I'd have gone with The Hook or Ulysses, but gradually the second track has enforced itself. It's called Garden and it's a real grower, that does all the things I love about The Hook and Something to Say in one four minute song, with a neat psychedelic edge.

Emergency Rule have been around for a while now, having formed way back in 2011 with their line-up still intact from that time, but this is their debut album. It's obviously not their oldest material because their first two singles, Flag and a Medal and The Zealot, aren't included, so I'd dearly like to know why it took them this long to get this far, only to suddenly nail everything right out of the gate. And I'd also dearly like to know that we'll see another album in a couple of years, instead of waiting another decade and change.

Schubmodul - Lost in Kelp Forest (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 23 Feb 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

I've been listening to this album, the second from German psychedelic rock trio Schubmodul, for a few days now and it's still as fresh as ever. They play entirely instrumental music, but there is voice here, just not in the form of a band member singing. There's a female voice on Voyage that seems to be a sample, but it must be a long sample, because she's back on Renegade One, Silent Echoes and Ascension. A male one joins in on Revelations, to provide a radio news broadcast update on a kinda sorta concept that the female voice built.

I have to confess that, after maybe twenty listens thus far, I still haven't paid enough attention to that voice to figure out exactly what's going on and whether this is a true concept album, but the gist is that we're underwater, as the title suggests. There's a vessel called Renegade One which is doing something down there in the depths but the narrator or whatever she is sounds corporate in her demeanour and I imagined her as an inspirational canned voice over the PA on this vessel who anyone who's used to it simply ignores, relegating her to a sort of background instrument within a broader ambience.

I certainly didn't get any particular mood from her, just from the music. Much of the album seems welcoming to me, from Voyage onward, as if we were born under the waves and are very happy to return there on this mysterious mission. Emerald Maze, easily my favourite track, is a much more dynamic piece that suggests exploration. It's a long track, only a whisper off ten minutes in length, but it does a lot in that time. Maybe it's doing all the exploration the album needs, so that we can get back to the mission on Renegade One.

Talking of Renegade One, this is the only track where an obvious influence leapt out. Schubmodul, which means Thrust Module, tend to play instrumental psychedelic rock but without any real focus on a particular style. There are points where this is soft and peaceful music that reminds of post-rock, but more where it's harder, driving music right out of stoner rock. However, the name that I couldn't ignore on Renegade One is Mountain, a hard rock band from the seventies I encountered first on a TV theme, of all things. It's that heavy part from Nantucket Sleighride that Schubmodul echo here, a little slower but with the same tone and heaviness.

Oddly, when we get to Revelations, the final track, that radio newscaster explains that this wasn't particularly welcoming at all. This vessel was off the books, doing dubious science that backfired on its captain and whoever else might have been on board during the mission. I don't believe that spoilers really mean anything on an ostensibly instrumental album, so I'll point out that it was on a mission to create an energy source out of manipulated kelp, only to find that it generated some sort of psychedelic substance that sent the captain insane. Even more oddly, it still feels like it's a welcoming piece of music, so maybe that was a good thing. The environmentalists clearly think so.

Concept aside, because it really doesn't matter, I liked this album a lot. There are only six tracks to comprise almost three quarters of an hour of music, so Schubmodul let their music breathe. There isn't a rushed track here, but nothing overstays its welcome either, even though much of it is built on rhythm, the drums often setting the stage for the riffs to join in. They also like their rhythms to be repetitive, but without reaching the sort of trancelike states that come with drone metal. The variations are constant but relatively straightforward and they feel utterly natural, as befits this setting in the entirely natural world we're exploring.

There's only one previous release that I can see, a 2022 debut album called Modul I that suggests an outer space motif in its cover art and track titles. Maybe that dips into space rock, something that this album doesn't even hint at. I'm intrigued to find out, especially because that particular release schedule suggests that we won't see a third album until 2026.

Dune Pilot - Magnetic (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard/Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Dec 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

I don't know a heck of a lot about Dune Pilot. They're a four piece hard/stoner rock band who hail from Munich, though you wouldn't guess the latter from listening to them. Not only is stoner rock a quintessentially American genre to begin with, they play it in a very American way, unaccented vocals delivered in English with an American turn of phrase. What's more, they often combine the stoner rock sound with a hard rock sound that reminds of Clutch, any British forebears mostly lost in abstraction. Maybe Black Sabbath are a little noticeable in Let You Down, but otherwise they're filtered through the expected American bands.

Which ones manifest pretty quickly. Magnetic is perky stoner rock with less fuzz on the guitar than I expected. The riffs are strong but the hooks are strong too. The vocals are clean but with a slight rasp for edge. There's plenty of Clutch here but some Kyuss too. Visions lightens up initially for an overtly psychedelic feel with vocals deliberately subdued for effect. Both build and a minute in we find ourselves back in that Clutch meets Kyuss territory, with some Monster Magnet thrown in for good measure as it gets heavier, that missing fuzz added right back in. This one bulks up generally, even if it drops back into a jaunty midsection, but it gets heavy at the end and then heavier again.

As the album runs on, the Kyuss influence starts to morph into a Queens of a Stone Age influence, a nuance I know but a telling one. Lumi goes there, but So Mad really goes there, especially late in the song. It has a swagger to it as it builds and eventually overlays a Queens of the Stone Age style melody over a fuzzy guitar and a glorious drum sound. The grit in the voice is getting progressively grittier but the hooks take over and we think about a single release. Dune Pilot like to be versatile, so Heap of Shards is more laid back, even with a relatively harsh clean voice, while Pied Piper is perky and Highest Bid comes right back to Queens of the Stone Age and Clutch.

I liked this a lot and I liked it quickly. The title track opens things up and, while it doesn't include all the aspects of Dune Pilot's sound, serves as a strong introduction to what they do. It has the hooks we expect from a stoner rock band like Queens of the Stone Age who have broken into mainstream awareness and whose catchiest songs hit the charts. It also has the emphasis of a more traditional hard rock band like Clutch, the power they can bring to bear always ready to go in the background even in a quieter song or section.

An obvious example is Take Your Lies, almost a ballad for this band, with one of a number of tasty bass intros—there's another one on Let You Down—backed by just a hint of atmosphere, before a liquid guitar joins in and softer, echoey vocals. It's definitely down a couple of gears from the norm for Dune Pilot but we never forget that there's gas in the tank and the band have their feet ready to hit the pedals. Eventually, of course, they do and it's like they never calmed down at all.

It's hard to pick out favourite tracks, not because there aren't standouts but because they're very different. I like Visions a lot because there's so much dynamic play in it and I like that sort of thing, especially when it's done as well as Dune Pilot do it. I like Let You Down because, even though it's under five minutes and not even the longest track on offer, it has an epic feel to it that's far from the norm here but very effective. Ultimately, I'd go for So Mad because it just flows so well. It has nothing that other songs here don't, but it does those things so well that it feels effortless.

I thought about a highly recommended 8/10 rating early here but the first half does shine brighter than the second. I ended up going with a merely recommended 7/10, but it's more like a seven and a half and, if this is your genre, round that right up to eight immediately. It's good stuff. I just wish I knew who was in the band so I could assign credit.

Saint Karloff - Paleolithic War Crimes (2023)

Country: Norway
Style: Stoner/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 2 Jun 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I haven't heard Saint Karloff before but how can I resist that name? They hail from Oslo and play a brand of stoner rock that starts out right from the Sabbath playbook but varies considerably as it goes until it surprised me. My first impressions are that they're excellent musically, with the main musician Mads Melvold, handling guitars, bass and keyboards, presumably not all at one time. It's redundant to suggest that the band seems to be very tight, when most of it is one man recording a set of overlays in the studio, effectively playing along with himself. The other musician involved is Adam Suleiman, who contributes the drums.

Just in case Melvold holding down triple duty wasn't enough, he also handles the lead vocals and I was less sold on those. Initially, on the opener, Psychedelic Man, he comes across as somewhat like Glenn Danzig with a sore throat, though he has a cleaner, less raucous vocal reserved for the more psychedelic sections, such as when the space rock keyboards show up. I was a little taken aback by how smooth the instrumentation was and how the vocals stood in contrast, but they were never a problem and I warmed up to the contrast in time. The vocals are certainly the weakest aspect but they work nonetheless.

I liked Psychedelic Man on a first listen but I like Blood Meridian still more after it, because it's an acutely playful piece that hearkens back to other seventies bands than just the inevitably Sabbath. While the song seems nineties, the bounce of Queens of the Stone Age with the fuzz of Kyuss, it's a song that looks backwards too. There's Budgie here in how the melody is inherently built into riffs and changes. There's seventies organ that reminds of Uriah Heep. I like this one a lot.

Talking of looking back, Saint Karloff look back further than that. After a mellow interlude, Among Stone Columns, and another frenetic stoner rock song with a punk urgency, Bone Cave Escape, they shift into epic mode and trawl in Led Zeppelin for Nothing to Come, which is a peach of a song. It's acoustic Zep initially, even including a flute, with very Jimmy Page guitarwork but vocals nothing at all like Robert Plant. It builds, of course, heavying up a couple of minutes in, but, even with the more frenetic sound of the midsection, it's tempered by a less frenetic lead guitar. And, just as we get used to that, it shifts back to acoustic but remains frenetic, like utterly in your face folk music.

There's another epic to wrap up the album, Nothing to Come running seven minutes but Supralux Voyager taking up eight and a half. It opens in a similarly epic vein, but it's less hard rock and more psychedelic rock, taking the band in another tasty direction. Both these songs are highlights and I only realised at this point that the songs are generally longer than I'd expect from a commercially minded vocal stoner rock band. The rest aren't epics, but only the interlude and Death Don't Have No Mercy clock in under the five minute mark.

And, frankly, there's the biggest surprise for me, because I know this song well but in versions very unlike this one. It's a slow song for this album, but it's heavy and the vocals suggest that Melvold is shouting through a megaphone like Rudy Vallée used to do in the thirties. The song isn't as old as that, but I first heard it on the debut album by Hot Tuna, Jorma and Jack's roots-focused side band from Jefferson Airplane. That came out in 1970 and it was one of many of their covers of Rev. Gary Davis tunes. He sang blues and gospel, being ably qualified as a blind black preacher man, but he's one of my favourite guitarists. Nobody plays guitar like a blind bluesman and precisely none of the inventive intricacy they have is present on this song, which makes it very weird indeed.

Kudos to Saint Karloff though for covering such a deep cut and transforming it into something new in the process. Now let's see what you can do with Sally, Where'd You Get Your Liquor From? Kudos also for such a varied stoner rock album, shifting from seventies to nineties and from hard rock to psychedelia and touches of space rock. On first impressions, this worked as a frenetic workout but, the more I listen to it, the more it's all about the subtleties that come elsewhere. This is the third album by Saint Karloff and I'm all the more interested in hearing the previous two now.

Black Rainbows - Superskull (2023)

Country: Italy
Style: Stoner/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Jun 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter

If I'm counting properly, this is the eighth studio album by Italian stoner rock band Black Rainbows, who formed in Rome in 2005, but it's the first time I've heard them. I like what I hear, because they play a very bouncy stoner rock that's very engaging. The two openers bounce like Clutch, surely an important influence, but they pale in front of the bounciness of the next track, Children of Fire and Sacrifices, which sounds older. I'm not sure there's a stoner rock band in existence that doesn't feel like Black Sabbath at some point and that's definitely here but they mix it with Clutch and, as we'll soon find, Hawkwind.

There's fuzz here on Edoardo Mancini's bass but it's relatively clean, so shifting into hard rock, and that's eventually where we find the final track, Fire in the Sky, which kicks off with a riff that could have been lifted from a Paul Di'Anno era Iron Maiden track but quickly shifts into full on Hawkwind territory, with that patented driving bass and clean vocals from Gabriele Fiori that are delivered in unaccented English. This track is so unmistakably Hawkwind that it's clearly an overt homage.

And it isn't the first one, though the others forgo the drive for the space rock acid trip. The Pilgrim Son and King Snake both shift notably into space rock, keyboard generated atmospheres building a swirling maelstrom around Mancini's bass. The former evolves back into the regular sound during the second half, albeit not quite so bouncy as the early tracks and with the keyboard swirls there in the background behind everything else, until it drops back into peaceful space rock noodling to go home. The latter is more subdued, a mellow trip throughout. Desert Sun kicks in emphatically as a deliberate contrast.

The question is which of these approaches work best and I'm not sure I have an answer. They do the bouncy stoner rock thing so well that I'm tempted to go for those songs. I'd surely call out Children of Fire and Sacrifice as my favourite track, but Lone Wolf won't leave me alone. It's extra playful so it's not only the bounce that sells it. I adore the riff on this one and I love how it evolves during the instrumental second half even more. I'd also highlight All the Chaos in Mine, not because it does anything fancy but because it has no interest in doing anything fancy and stands out anyway. It features such a simple riff, in contrast to Lone Wolf, but it's exquisitely effective, turning the song into some sort of unstoppable behemoth.

I like the space rock songs too, but not as much. The Pilgrim Sun runs eight and a half minutes and I don't think it has enough to warrant that sort of cosmic journey. King Snake feels more effective at only five minutes, a laid back Hawkwind vibe with everything drenched in acid echo. It certainly has a more effective approach to taking me somewhere, which space rock always ought to do. If it's not taking me way outside on a colourful journey through the cosmos, it should take me way inside and feel hypnotically insightful. The Pilgrim Sun aims for the former while King Snake does the latter.

And, just when I'm forgetting it's there, every time through I get captured all over again by Fire in the Sky. Sure, it's the most derivative song here but it simply pulsates with energy and ought to be an absolute blast live. In its way, it's a combination of the two approaches above. It has the bounce of the early highlights, like Apocalypse March and Children of Fire and Sacrifices, but it also has an obvious keyboard presence, those cosmic swirls surrounding everything like a dry ice machine that won't switch off. The echoes are fantastic too, especially when applied to the riffs so that they rise above us and float in the ether.

Whichever style works best, the album's pretty solid and there are seven earlier studio albums to track down, starting with 2007's Twilight in the Desert and proceeding irregularly from there. The covers are all glorious too, so I could totally see picking up vinyl copies and sliding them into clear covers on the wall. This may feature their best cover yet, courtesy of a Brazilian artist called Pedro Correa, who's done posters for Phish, Eddie Vedder and Coheed and Cambria. His portfolio is very cool indeed. It's the icing on top of this tasty psychedelic cake.

Warp - Bound by Gravity (2023)

Country: Israel
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

Here's a lively stoner rock album from Tel Aviv that's clearly driven by the guitar of Itai Alzaradel from the very outset, and even though all three members of the band lend voice to the fray, we're never left in any doubt that its natural state is instrumental jam with that guitar always the focus. The opener is The Present and it does different things, even finding a more furious mentality with some punk chord changes midway, but it's at its best when the bass of Sefi Akrish and the drums of Mor Harpazi are laying down a massive backdrop for Alzaradel to solo over.

My other immediate impression is that this is loud music and I mean really loud. I actually turned my volume way down, to the point where it might not disturb a theoretical someone sleeping in a corner of my office, just as an experiment, and it still felt loud. Back up to normal volume, it feels crazy loud. At crazy loud levels on stage, Warp must be quite the experience. Much of the credit is owed to that backdrop, which is cavernous in size, but the guitar easily fills that space.

The vocals don't, which helps the feel, because it seems like they're always struggling to be heard over that mighty guitar. They're never hidden and they're sung in English, but I quickly took them as a sonic texture rather than a set of delivered lyrics. I've listened through a few times and I have no idea what any of these songs are about because it never seems like it matters. What I got from the album is a feel and it's a gigantic combination of punk confrontation and, rather oddly, quite a lively stoner rock approach, because the only threatening done here is by volume. This is a good trip.

Maybe that's because, while of course there's some Black Sabbath here, it's very loose and bluesy rather than rigid and solemn. During the midsection of The Hunger, the bass is delightfully organic and the guitar is happy to follow suit. I feels like I'm in the ship in Fantastic Voyage being hurtled down the rapids of some giant's bloodstream, with a little break in the middle as we transition to a smoother current. Did we just go through the heart and straight out the other side? The intros often highlight different influences too. The guitar that introduces Bound by Gravity reminds of a less self-important Danzig but on Dirigibles it's more like a smoother Celtic Frost.

And, as good as Akrish and Harpazi are here, it always comes back to that guitar. One reason that I think it's so acceptable is that there's fuzz here, as you might expect for stoner rock, but it's a very palatable level of fuzz. Even when a song goes for a more bludgeoning approach, like Your Fascist Pigs are Back, it doesn't have any of the dirtier edges of sludge metal. It's always stoner rock, even if it's so loud that Warp ought to land a support slot on a Manowar tour, and threatens often to go into doom metal. However, it would be fairer to compare them to Iron Butterfly than Candlemass.

I enjoyed the whole album, though the looser it got the more I liked it. I can appreciate a song like Your Fascist Pigs are Back, but I much prefer The Present and Impeachment Abdication, where the guitar just runs loose and shines in its own special light. I also rather dig the closer, I Don't Want to Be Remembered, because it extends that looseness to the vocals, where three voices harmonise in neatly chaotic fashion. There's variety here, if we pay attention but, once we get past the first trio of tracks, the songs do start to blur together a little. This seven minute closer, on the other hand, is stubborn and refuses to blur into anything else. It goes all over the map and can be a little hard to see in entirety, but I love it for that.

I believe this is a second album for Warp, after a self-titled effort in 2019, so I should check that out at some point when I'm not behind on reviews. I'd also like to know what else is going on in Tel Aviv that doesn't remotely fit any expectations we might let bias our judgement. Their Facebook page highlights a whole bunch of others they're gigging with who I'm intrigued to throw an ear at.

Grandma's Ashes - This Too Shall Pass (2023)

Country: France
Style: Stoner/Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 17 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Here's something interesting from France that taught me a new acronym. The genre here is up for grabs but I've seen FFOBR applied to it and I had no idea what that meant. It appears that Female Fronted Occult Blues Rock is a thing now and has been since at least 2015, when Doomed & Stoned journalist "Papa" Paul Rote put together a triple compilation of doom-stoner bands led by female voices, The Enchanter's Ball. I guess Coven have finally become leaders as well as pioneers, with a crop of bands in Rote's summation of the genre ones who have blown me away more recently, like Jess and the Ancient Ones, Wucan and Avatarium.

I'm not going to add Grandma's Ashes to that hallowed list quite yet, but I enjoyed this greatly and I can see it growing on me even more. They're folkier than any of the other bands I just mentioned but they range a long way, from the intro, À mon Seul Désir, which is mediaeval vocal harmonies, to something close to doom metal. Mostly, they sit in a middle ground that's sometimes psychedelic rock and sometimes prog rock but more often stoner rock. The shifts from calm folky harmonies to a raw stoner punk sound in a song like Aside, or, in the other direction, from heavy doom chords to a calm and even sassy pop sound on Caffeine are fascinating.

Frankly, everything here is fascinating. This is a debut album, though they released an EP a couple of years ago, and it's a startlingly mature mixture of different approaches. The vocals are mostly somewhere between folk and alternative pop/rock, whether they're aiming for traditional, jaunty or introspective. The guitars are the heaviest angle, with riffs right out of stoner rock and heavier bands. Borderlands ends by slowing down until it's almost recognisably Black Sabbath. The drums and, to a lesser degree, the bass represent prog or math rock, sometimes all the way into jazz, like on the saxophone assisted Interlude - Melt.

Reading interviews with the band, mostly for that EP, The Fates, highlights their influences, which are not remotely surprising. Guitarist Myriam El Moumni grew up in Morocco and so was exposed to copious amounts of African music but also grew up on classic rock before stumbling upon desert rock in Paris. Bassist Eva Hagen came up from British punk through stoner rock into a wider range of genres, like metal and prog. Drummer Edith Seguier favours math rock and prog metal. Myriam and Edith both studied jazz. All three sing here, but Eva is the lead, so I'm assuming the folky bits of the band's sound come from the dreamier aspects of desert rock.

I can't say that everything here worked for me, but that's almost inevitable with a release that's as broad in its reach. After all, this ranges from almost glitch electronica in Cruel Nature and that jazz saxophone on Interlude - Melt all the way up to doom metal in Caffeine. That's a serious range for a band on their debut album, but somehow they're able to collect all of those sounds into a single defining sound. If you played me carefully selected sections of half a dozen songs here, I'd say that they were by half a dozen different bands, but if you played me the entire songs, I'd see them as a single coherent band. That's impressive.

The catch is that it makes it tough to call out anything for special mention. What are my favourite tracks here? My cop out answer would be that you should ask me again after another few listens. I would, however, be surprised if Borderlands and Cruel Nature weren't in the shortlist, maybe with the closer, Lost at Sea, ahead of them. This adds experimental sounds into the mix and Eva's vocal is particularly emotional. Even though she sings mostly in English, I found it hard to focus on lyrics because I was too caught up in the emotional weight of the vocals which, like everything else here, have a considerable range, from fluffy soft to heartrendingly personal.

I know I like this a lot but I don't know how much yet. I need to come back to it a few more times as I get ahead of myself and free up enough moments to let it soak back in. So it's an 8/10 for now but it's not outside possibility that I'll shift that upwards at a later date.

Spell Garden - Spell Garden (2023)

Country: Brazil/Argentina
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Jan 2023
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives

Well, this found me at just the right moment. Last week ended with albums that are clearly slick and capable and professional, attributes that bands strive towards, but they just left me dry. I'm talking especially about Ten and Xandria and I'm very happy to say that this second album by Spell Garden is the precise opposite and felt like a breath of fresh air. They're an international team up between one musician from Argentina and two from Brazil who play a form of doom metal that's not averse to dropping down into stoner rock and this is their second album.

Most crucially, even for a second album, it's not remotely slick. There are rough edges to be found all over this release, details that other bands would have polished smooth and gleaming, but they make this sound real. I felt this music and, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how technically brilliant you are, your job is to make people feel what you do. Spell Garden succeed magnificently at that. Ten and Xandria might impress stadiums with shows. I'd much prefer be at a club the size of my front room being deafened by Spell Garden with a stout in my hand.

Now, rough edges don't mean that Spell Garden are free of subtleties. While much of this appears to be a power trio plugging in and recording live in the studio, there are layers behind these three musicians. I don't just mean the swirling atmospheric keyboards on Mars Crimson Mountain which aren't surprising at all; I'm thinking of the violins on Lilith and the way that song drops into piano to finish up. The acoustic Spanish guitar during the intro, Daughter of the Storm, points the way to that sort of thing and it's over far too soon. It's important to note that the band don't overdo the textures. They're there when they're needed and then they get back to the crunch.

The biggest success here are the riffs, which come courtesy of Raphael Santos. These go way back to the early days of Black Sabbath in style but remind of latter days because they're so simple but effective. Back in the late eighties, I remember wondering how Tony Iommi could keep generating such effortlessly simple riffs over and over again. He'd already invented the genre and bands had been mining it for a couple of decades, but they'd all missed this simple riff and that one and the next one too. Somehow only Iommi and precious few others had access to more. Well, Santos can be added to that list. It's 2023, people. How has nobody conjured up riffs like those on Lilith, Spell Garden and Black Chapter before?

A less obvious success but a clear success nonetheless are the drums of Allan Caique. For much of the album, he's not doing anything flash, but I love the cymbal sound and he does delightful work with those cymbals on Dogma and Ritual of High Magic and especially during the breakdown late in Mars Crimson Mountain. I adore how the latter works its way to a logical conclusion, only for the cymbals to keep going until the band ramps back up and Santos launches into a brief guitar solo. It reminded me of some of what Michael Giles did on the first King Crimson album.

Less successful are the vocals, but I need to explain. Two musicians share vocal duties here and I'm not sure which is which, but there's a clean voice and a harsh voice. The clean voice shows up first, on Goddess Roots, the first track proper, and it's capable if hardly spectacular. It shows a lot more character on Spell Garden, because it's emphasised, rather like a heavily accented South American Iggy Pop recorded guerrilla style. The harsh voice is great when it's an accent, as on Spell Garden, but less effective when it's the lead, as on Black Chapter, because too much of it at any one time is a clear indicator of how limited it actually is.

And here's where rating systems prove frustrating. I gave Ten and Xandria 7/10s because both are highly capable releases that ought to please their respective fanbases. This is rougher around the edges with less clear mature songwriting and flaws that are easy to highlight, but I enjoyed it far more than either of those slicker albums. So, while I felt bad at giving those a high rating of 7/10, I feel bad at giving this a low rating of 7/10. So it goes. I guess this is where words come into play...

Black Sky Giant - Primigenian (2023)

Country: Argentina
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

When I saw that there was a new Black Sky Giant album out, I assumed that it was the follow-up to what I thought was their debut, Planet Terror, which I enjoyed back in 2021. Well, it turns out that these unknown Argentineans have been busy. Not only was there at least an album before Planet Terror, as Orbiter came out in 2020 and was remastered in 2021, but two more sprang up after it, in 2021's Falling Mothership and last year's End of Days Pilgrimage. I need to pay more attention! So this is at least a fifth for Black Sky Giant and it's just as good as Planet Terror.

For those who didn't take that trip with me almost two years ago, this is a band or project who are based in Argentina but play thoroughly accessible psychedelic rock that's warm and encompassing without the fuzzy distortion of stoner rock. The other genre I see mentioned a lot is space rock and that needs a caveat. Black Sky Giant don't sound at all like Hawkwind, but they do seem to elevate off our planet. Both At the Gates and Stardust feature wonderful bass runs that I picture as us on the surface of a planet exploring what's there, while the guitars are vibrant lights in the sky, way up above us to marvel at.

At the Gates is my favourite piece of music here—song seems like the wrong term to use with each song being entirely instrumental—but it's not by much, because everything is up to a pretty solid standard, starting with the opening title track. It only runs three and a half minutes, which isn't a long time to establish a new setting to transport us into. It manages it, not least in its last handful of seconds, which add a population to whatever strange planet we've found ourselves on. They feel like the beginning of At the Gates before that track starts proper, and so flavour our take on it.

And it's a wonderful piece. Everything about Black Sky Giant seems to involve motion for me, with other elements added depending on the track. This is excellent from the start, as we explore this strange new world, but it elevates halfway through when it drops back just a little to highlight the bass and so split this into two levels. It's not just us exploring any more, it's whoever was there on this planet before us watching us and attempting to communicate. The result is joyous.

Stardust is a continuation, but it's a little less emphatic. The Great Hall adds that emphasis back, but never in a dangerous way. Black Sky Giant take us on journeys, and they're rich and evocative journeys, but they never feel dangerous to me. Nothing out there in the great beyond is eager to eat me or threaten me or imprison me. I wouldn't call this happy music per se but it always leaves me in a better mood than I brought with me. I'm not quite sure what I've learned and experienced but it was clearly a net positive.

That holds even into The Foundational Found Tapes, the eight and a half minute epic that wraps up the album. While the guitars dance like fireflies, there's a low tone behind them that really ought to feel ominous, but somehow it doesn't. Maybe there's something out there in the darkness that moves in the shadows but I never felt that it was anything to worry about, especially with the click and shimmy of film equipment, as if we're hearing this track through a slides-driven presentation. Given the title, I wonder if it was built out of parts of songs, a Frankenstein's monster of a piece. It works a little less coherently than everything else, but it still works.

Now, I need to get hold of those albums that I've missed. Quite frankly, whoever's behind Black Sky Giant ought to be happy with a couple of albums of the quality of Planet Terror and Primigenian in only a couple of years. That that's only half their output just elevates them even higher. If you like your stoner rock low on fuzz and high on warmth and imagination, this is the psychedelic rock that you ought to track down. It rarely blows my mind, but it carries me effortlessly and it's as reliable as it gets.

Elephant Groove - Annihilation (2023)

Country: Italy
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Here's a second debut album showing up early in 2023 that's well worth your attention. Elephant Groove are a power trio from Milan who play a versatile form of stoner rock, alternating between Black Sabbath at their most Planet Caravan mellow and a variety of alternative rock styles. Their most natural musical home seems to be the former, because they start out that way on Sargassum and keep coming back to it, not only to wrap that opener up with a second bookend but all through One More Ride and for much of Walls. Bear in mind that there are only five songs here.

It's a delicious sound too, guitarist Davide D'Alfonso conjuring rivers of notes out of the air like he's manipulating liquid glass. It sounds even better when drums and bass join him in a minimalist way, because it grounds us while he's still floating around in the sky above us. Andrea Lucchese is their drummer and the bassist is Jody Purita. Frankly, I could let that default Elephant Groove sound flow through me for days, especially through a pair of headphones in the dark, but I'm fascinated by where else they go.

Sargassum grows into a couple of places. Early on, it's reminiscent of Tool, not only because of the Maynard James Keenan style vocals, also by D'Alfonso, but because of the unusual rhythms from Lucchese, which are emphasised by Purita's bass mirroring the drums so closely. Later it turns into an epic finalé of wailing guitar right out of the late sixties San Francisco heavy psychedelia scene. It's a different style from the go to sound for this band, but Davide once again seems to be sculpting music rather than playing it.

Kingdom takes a very different approach. The clean rhythmic opening reminds of Joy Division and the bass doesn't dissuade us of that feeling, even if it's a little funkier than Peter Hook would play for them. This one's instrumental for half its running time, before it turns into an alternative vibe that somehow sounds both American and Australian. This one's definitely a child of the nineties, if a little less reminiscent of the obvious bands and more the genre flouting influences that carved out the road that they followed into an unexpected mainstream.

Annihilation wraps up the album with another take. There's some funk going on in this one too but it's kept in the background, behind raw and heavy guitarwork that gets sludgy at points, with firm nods towards the Swans and the Melvins. There's another mellow section in the middle though. It doesn't seem to matter where Elephant Groove go musically; they'll always find their way back to that mellow vibe, as if they're floating through space peacefully and suddenly receive music from out of the blue that they jam with until the signal goes away and they're back to being mellow.

This approach leads me to think that the album is a little short at under thirty-five minutes. It's an enjoyable ride, even if you fuel up the bus and take the trip again and again, but I found a need to know what sound they'd tune into next to incorporate into tracks six and seven? I can float along in the Planet Caravan vibe for a while until that next sound comes along. What do you mean it's over and we're rolling right back into Sargassum? Then again, this approach also means that I could see an Elephant Groove album doing the Polygondwanaland thing and rolling the final track back into the opener so the album becomes an infinite loop.

Talking of Sargassum, it's the early highlight here but I think I like One More Ride more. D'Alfonso's vocals dive into the background on One More Ride, his guitar bubbling all around, until it starts to feel like Ian Anderson joining in on Planet Caravan from the next door studio. I get lost so much in this one, I keep coming out of it halfway through Walls and have to go back to listen to how one ends and the next begins. I could see my favourites not being yours though. There's a lot more here than is typically the case on an overtly stoner rock album.

Elder - Innate Passage (2022)

Country: USA/Germany
Style: Psychedelic/Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 25 Nov 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Elder have gone through a lot of changes over the years. Nowadays, they've moved steadily away from the heavy fuzzladen stoner metal of their early years to a much lighter, far more progressive version of the same thing. The fundamentals aren't wildly different but, if you compare the debut from 2006 with this album, sixteen years later, you might wonder if they're the same band. Also, at the time I reviewed Omens, their fifth album, two years ago, they were an American band based in Providence, Rhode Island, not too far from their origin in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. However, this time out, while they're still an American band, they've apparently moved to Berlin.

And why not? Moving to Berlin has historically sparked highpoints in discographies, not just David Bowie's famous Berlin trilogy, but others like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Nick Cave too. I wouldn't say that this is up to those levels, but it's a good album and it's one I've been happily playing for most of the day. Much of it is akin to a psychedelic take on Yes, including the vocal parts, which I do still enjoy, even though I prefer the instrumental sections. I feel that Elder are always at their best on songs where they find an instrumental groove and just roll with it.

Some of those instrumental grooves took me by surprise this time out. There's one late in Endless Return that feels dancy in a Stone Roses style. There's another late in Merged in Dreams - Ne Plus Ultra that's almost ambient krautrock. And yes, most of the best sections come late on in songs, a trend that comes from Elder patiently building those grooves over the substantial length of their tracks. There are five this time out, with The Purpose, which closes out the album, the shortest at over eight and a half minutes. Merged in Dreams is the epic at almost fifteen.

For all that variety, there's a lot of consistency here, both in style and quality. I would be very hard pressed to pick out a favourite track, partly because they all play well but also because they all play well together, meaning that I've come to think of this as a fifty some minute piece of music instead of a set of tracks that happen to add up to that much time. Maybe I could highlight Endless Return as perhaps the best of a good bunch, but it doesn't seem right. I couldn't honestly say my favourite tracks here are tracks at all but parts of them, individual grooves or sections, even down to certain changes.

What's perhaps more important is that every time I try to write anything further, I realise that I'm four tracks on and haven't added any more notes because I'm just lost in the music. This definitely felt a notch up on Omens anyway, as well as The Gold and Silver Sessions from a year earlier, which may have started this softer approach for Elder, as a deliberate experiment. However, this level of immersion kind of cements the thought. It isn't vanishing into the background. I'm vanishing into the album. What's odd is that, usually when that happens, I feel like I'm on a journey somewhere, but I don't feel that here. I'm not drifting between galaxies, I'm just floating in the music.

I wonder what old school Elder fans feel of this new mellower version of the band. Are they pissed off because the bass sounds like a rich syrupy liquid instead of a fuzzy wall of sound? Do they miss the crunch of the guitars and find the power up in sound here weak in comparison? Or are they all on board because Elder are still doing what they've always done, just in a more nuanced way, with more depth and progression? I hope it's the latter because they seem to be getting better to me, even if I might be coming to their new work as an old school psychedelic Pink Floyd fan rather than a stoner metal devotee.

Thammuz - Sons of the Occult (2022)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 Oct 2002
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Thammuz is an ancient shepherd god of the Mesopotamians, who's referenced in both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible. As the son of Enki and the primary consort of Ishtar, he shows up in a few ancient cults. That seems rather appropriate for this Dutch stoner rock band, as some of the songs here, starting with Guayota, feel like they could be a suitable musical backdrop for cult activity in a movie. You don't have to be in a pharmaceutically altered state of mind to visualise some of those scenes.

I haven't heard Thammuz before, but they hail from Gelderland in the central eastern part of the Netherlands on the German border and this is their second album after Into the Great Unknown. I liked it from the outset because the opening track, Electric Sheep, is an instrumental belter to kick things off and Sons of the Occult adds a commercial edge through the vocals of, well, someone. I'd give you a name but I can't find a line-up, merely photo suggestions that they're a four piece. That surprised me, because I had a feeling that they would be a power trio, given how much they enjoy instrumental tracks and sections.

As much as I liked those two tracks, though, the album grabbed me with Guayota, which is far more patient, much more ritualistic and a good deal more imaginative. It's instrumental but controlled cleverly. The rhythm section creates a dense backdrop and the guitar decorates it. For a while, the mindset it follows dominates the album. Each track starts out soft but resonant with an intro that catches the ears but builds into something more intense. Some have vocals, which tend to play in a supportive role, but I would listen to this band even without them. The nail their grooves early and milk them well.

Those grooves often play in the same ballpark. Guayota is mystical, as if we're listening in from an opium den and sharing a hallucinogenic dream with everyone else there. Had a Blast is darker but accepting, the subdued vocals fitting the feel. Dumizid's Descent is a cross between the two, once again instrumental. Peyote is softer and sparser, which adds more of a cosmic feel to proceedings, a feeling that we're floating somewhere, maybe way out there. It heavies up, of course, because a sense of urgency is never too far away on any song here. It's certainly there on Insomnia, which is a fascinating closer because the calm vocals contrast with the frenetic energy of the music.

I haven't mentioned Death Songs and People from the Sky, because they ditch the intro approach and nod back to the more traditional stoner rock of the opener. They're good but they're not at all as noteworthy as the rest of the album. What's most noteworthy is Self-Taught Man, which takes a very different approach indeed, one that I keep coming back to. I honestly couldn't tell you if I like Guayota and those other songs from my previous paragraph more than this one or vice versa. They certainly sit apart.

Self-Taught Man has a jaunty groove from the outset that's unlike anything else here, a groove I'd almost call rockabilly but set firmly within a stoner rock framework. The music takes a step back to let the vocals lead the way, for the only time on the album, kicking back in when the song warrants some emphasis. And those vocals are much more overt, which shifts them from a passive croon to a commanding lead, sounding like a cross between Nick Cave and Glenn Danzig, with a serious side of Jim Morrison. That means that they're dark but tantalising. It's a fascinating song.

I should track down the Thammuz debut because I like this band and I'm intrigued as to where they came from sonically. I'd like to know what's new this time out to see which direction they're taking going forward.

Naked Soldier - Naked Soldier (2022)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Stoner/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Aug 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

From Sixteentimes Music in Switzerland, who released Carson's The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance in April, come Naked Soldier, which is a phrase you'll want to google with caution. Clearly, this Naked Soldier have listened to a lot of Clutch in their time and they emulate their style well, delivering a solid nine slabs of hard rock with a massive streak of stoner rock. The catch is that I also reviewed the latest Clutch album, as recently as last week and, while this rocks as hard and as efficiently, if not more so with additional fuzz, it pales in comparison to the versatility dished out on Sunrise on Slaughter Beach.

Green Pool is a perfect opener because it explains what the band do. They're such a wall of sound sort of stoner rock that I expected them to be a power trio and, sure enough, they aren't. They're the five musicians this depth of sound truly warrants, with a twin guitar assault from Jonas Nann and Oliver Corrodi and an easy to track bass from Noé Burger. Janick Sidler plays his drums with a hard hitting patience and that leaves a raucous Patrik Caminada to handle mike duties without a further instrument to steal his attentions.

It's the guitars that hit us first, because one of them deepens the back end while the other points the way forward on any song, so pointing their haboob of sound our way with a heavy melody right there in front. Then it's Caminada who takes over because he has a commanding set of pipes. It's a clean vocal but also one that's as abrasive as sandpaper, appropriately if he's going to be the voice of a mile high approaching dust storm. We almost need to put on masks to listen to him. I'd love to hear him play a revival tent preacher in a movie.

And so they go. The upside to this album is that they've found an excellent sound. The downside is that they've mostly only found one at this point. These songs mostly do similar things in a similar way and so they combine well to form the album without much likelihood of standing out from the crowd.

There are exceptions, of course. Wicked Man slows the pace a little. The title track slows it down a lot and gets janglier to boot. This is the first real variance in the formula six songs into a nine song album and it's still not a wild leap. The only wild leap arrives with the closer, Love Tree, which is an epic, well, the epic of the album, and, with apologies to Caminada who does such a good job here, the best this release gets is the first two minutes and change of that track before he joins in.

Before I talk about that, I don't want to suggest that there's absolutely nothing here otherwise. It has to be mentioned that the riffing is excellent, albeit so consistently excellent that it becomes a little unremarkable. There's another one. And another. Oh, and another. Cool. There are plenty of solos to highlight too and I'd call out those in Walk Your Way and Satellite as my favourites. Talking of Walk Your Way, I absolutely love the second half of this one, when we can easily follow both the guitars and the bass in different directions at exactly the same time. It's my favourite song here.

But, yeah, there's Love Tree and that glorious intro. It starts teasingly as if one of the guitarists is trying to turn his instrument into a flute, the sound hovering in the air with firm intent. The other deepens the sound, as it tends to on this album, and periodic distant cymbals threaten to turn this into a song at some point. What's great about it is that they take their sweet time. Even when the whole band joins in, it's so they can not so much duel but solo separately, always at a distance. The spatial awareness of this song is glorious, because it feels like the band are so far apart when they begin that they can't even hear each other but they grow together until there's a coherent sense of unified purpose. And then, three and a half minutes in, we get the song.

It doesn't hurt that it's a good song too, though it can't quite match the promise of that intro. It's a great way to wrap up a self-titled debut album. This is what we can do, world. Like and follow us and all that jazz and especially come to see us live. I have a feeling this band are going to be quite the force to be reckoned with on stage, as indeed are Clutch. They're never the fastest or even the heaviest band on any bill but they own their stage anyway and the pit gets seriously moving. I can imagine these gentlemen from Zürich doing exactly the same thing.

Carson - The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance (2022)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Apr 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this band, but I expected something worthy of note, given a strange location shift; Kieran Jones, the singer and guitarist, is from New Zealand and this band's origins are there, but he moved himself and the band to Switzerland. There's nothing Swiss in this sound that I can discern, but they combine their very American sounding stoner rock, played with a commercial level of fuzz, with a Ian Astbury passion for melodies. Dirty Dream Maker, the opening track and initial single, is relatively easily described as Queens of the Stone Age meeting the Cult.

Carson, as so many stoner rock bands tend to be, are a power trio, with Elina Willener on bass and Jan Kurmann on drums, and that power is on display on the opening couple of tracks. There's real energy to it, which is recognisable to fans of any antipodean music, but it's tampered down a little bit to make it more patient and commercial and it's fair to suggest that both openers had plenty of chances at reaching a mainstream audience. Everything they need is there except luck and that lady is notoriously hard to find, apparently even in Lucerne.

Siren is where they shift gear, because it's almost two minutes longer than anything else here and so it has plenty of time to breathe. It starts mellow but perky and returns to that at points, with a not all the way back to the Cult's primary influence, the Doors. It ramps up, of course, with energy to spare, even when it finds a patient heavy and dirty riff halfway through, but that's not where a kind of inevitable Black Sabbath influence creeps in, at least not really. That shows up later, when they drop down to a trippy liquid instrumental section reminiscent of Planet Caravan.

So yeah, there are surprises here. They're technically a Swiss band nowadays but they don't sound remotely Swiss. They're playing an American style of music but with a recognisably British flavour to it. And, while every stoner rock band on the planet owes a debt to Black Sabbath, theirs isn't at all the usual one for much of the album; the most overt Sabbath influence shows up on Outbound Tide, which is the last of eight tracks, even if there are undercurrents of You're So Vain in there as well. Yeah, Sabbath are there throughout, through osmosis, because this is nineties stoner rock a lot more than its seventies roots except on Siren.

In fact, there are other more modern sounds to be found here too. Gimmie is a punk song, edgier and fuzzier than its obvious modern pop punk comparisons but not as edgy as their predecessors. There's a control in play here that Carson don't want to give up. They're absolutely crafting songs here, rather than just jamming for the pleasure of the moment. Even the songs that find the most effective grooves, like No Joy with its excellent bouncy riffs, never feel like they would ever go off the rails into a drawn out instrumental section. It's just not who this band are.

At least, it's not who they are on record, though I have to confess that I'm judging that from this, a follow-up album to 2017's Drown the Witness. It wouldn't surprise me to find that they're a looser, heavier and faster band on stage. I'd love to see what some of these songs become when played by an urgent live band.

Wo Fat - The Singularity (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Psychedelic Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 6 May 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter

I've seen Wo Fat's name bandied about often as I've dived into stoner rock and associated genres, as they're one of the more highly regarded American bands at the heavier end of the desert rock to sludge metal spectrum. They don't go all the way to sludge, mixing their stoner rock with doom metal, though I have a feeling that this album is a little less heavier than usual. I don't know that for sure, because I haven't had a chance to dive into their back catalogue yet, which encompasses another six albums going back to 2006; their most recent until now was 2016's Midnight Cometh.

I should point out here that they're a four piece now, Kent Stump still in place on vocals and guitar with Michael Walter on drums, but Patrick Smith replaced Zack Busby on bass this year and Matt Watkins, an early member of the band, has returned to add a second guitar to their sonic assault. That makes for a deep sound.

This one is a behemoth of an album, appropriately given the cover art, clocking in at over seventy-five minutes. However, the songs are long, as you can imagine when I point out that there are just seven of them on offer. The bookends are the epics, Orphans of the Singe kicking things off a blink shy of fourteen minutes and The Oracle wrapping them up at sixteen and a half. The shortest song here is The Unraveling, which is only a little under eight minutes, so shortest doesn't mean short. I found that I generally liked the longer songs but not for the reason I expected.

They're moods rather than journeys, which makes this a little different from the usual stoner rock I review. These songs don't transport me anywhere to experience the wonders of the universe. I'm not seeing them in the way I often do, because they're not triggering other senses. What they are doing is pulling me into a particular musical vibe and keeping me there for the duration. Perhaps that's the point of stoner rock, given that the genre is named for and so closely allied to chemical stimulation, but I've never explored it that way because music is my drug and I take it neat.

And I really enjoyed this as music, especially during the instrumental sections where the band just jam for extended periods. I got lost in them, as if I'd put headphones on, closed my eyes and set off for parts unknown, only opening them an hour and change later and not having a clue where I was. In other words, these songs are soundtracks to journeys or perhaps companions on those journeys, but not the journeys themselves. Not once did I forget that I was listening to music, but not once did that music forget I was listening either. It's a symbiotic thing.

I would bring Hawkwind in as a comparison here, because that's exactly what they do for me too, in much the same style. This isn't live, but it reminded me in many respects of Space Ritual. The bass isn't as driving and the cosmic sounds aren't generally here, but the vocals are as agreeably rough and the riffs are just as hypnotically effective and even more neverending. And, most importantly, those jams are much longer without ever losing any of their magnetic edges, especially in the long songs. I really dig the eight minute The Snows of Banquo IV every time I listen through this album, but the longer songs extend that feeling progressively further, to their benefit. The shorter ones are more up tempo and vibrant but less exploratory.

So, much later than expected, I've encountered Wo Fat and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I'd suggest that they're not quite what I thought they would be but perhaps in a positive way. They're rooted in stoner rock but they're definitely heavier than the norm. However, their inevitable Black Sabbath starting point, most obviously on The Unraveling, its edges rounded off and softened with Hawkwind reverb, except ironically on the same track when it gets sassy into a stoner take on Killing in the Name. It's still heavy, but with the psychedelic vibe always more important than the heaviness. I would call it velvety doom metal over heavier stoner rock, even though it's both and I love that feel. This is a peach of an album that's somehow seventy-six minutes short.