hard rock / stoner rock

Valley of Shadows is an album released in 17 May, by American psychedelic stoner/ sludge metal band Duel, from Austin, Texas. With a furious, though vivaciously dynamic, dense and voracious sound, that encapsulates energetic and straight to the point guitar lines that revolves around their acid diagram of lancinating full throttle melodies, Duel showcases on this album a graciously aggrandizing tale of old school sonorous metabolism – truly committed to its wild and savage origins – that heavily dictates the powerful coordinates of a magnet of rhythmic legendary harmonies that burst into flames in a sonic speed, for the glory of rock’n’roll and the total amazement of the audience.      

A relatively concise album, Valley of Shadows is thirty seven minutes long, and has eight tracks: 1) Black Magic Summer; 2) Red Moon Forming; 3) Drifting Alone; 4) Strike and Disappear; 5) Broken Mirror; 6) Tyrant on the Throne; 7) I Feel No Pain; 8) The Bleeding Heart; exceedingly marvelous all the way through, the album is a genuine demonstration of creative musical vivacity, that recognizes no boundaries to the landscape of its restless, audacious and sensitive musical horizon. With the gracious atmosphere of a hazardous and scalding desert that is about to melt everything on its way, the furious, but uplifting sound of Duel definitely lives on the groundbreaking edge proposed by the mordacity of its pungent style.    

With a heavy sound whose tempestuous, but groovy melodies puts the band in a very particular category of hard rock, the expansive and vibrant elements that are abundant in the periphery as well as in the main nucleus of the band’s creative diagram conceives a very balanced sound, that is never predictable or monotonous. The synergy displayed by the ostensibly solid virtues that are highlighted in their complex sound arrangements exposes a very dense and methodic musical alignment, that dilapidates in a concentrated panorama of extraordinary artistic grace a sensational conjuncture of qualities, that are rarely combined in such a vivacious manner.

An almost impeccable album, that displays a genuine style conceived in very exceptional and singular musical perspectives, Valley of Shadows reveals itself to be a very elegant and original work, with no artistic nor technical deficiencies whatsoever. A greatly conceived and executed work, Duel deserves to be seen as a fundamental group in the psychedelic hard rock underground scene, as they are ready to take, to shake and to reinvent the genre, with the aim to create something extraordinarily exciting and authentic, as only a few other bands have the abilities to do so, with the same amount of competence and professionalism. 


Wagner

stoner rock

Sonic Sloth is the eponymous debut album of a German stoner rock band, released on 18 May. With a hazardous, but intelligent and dynamic sound, the group proves that they came to aggregate more dilated virtues and to rearrange in a new, more distinct set of qualities the eviscerating and lugubrious musical patterns of the genre. With a consistent sound – that plays with the expansive layout of its own allegoric harmonious vicinities –, Sonic Sloth showcases a meticulous and methodic style, that definitely improves with an efficient degree of perception the profoundness of its effervescent and cohesive intensity.      

A little more than fifty minutes long, the album has five very extensive tracks: 1) Elders Of Azah; 2) Power 9; 3) Blaine The Pain; 4) D.A.S.; 5) Sonic Sloth; with a diligent and marvelously dilapidated sonorous atmosphere that showcases the arduous instrumental possibilities fearlessly explored by the band, the group’s style seems to dilute its consistent and energetic horizon of harmonies in the sensible vortex of its own volatile magnificence, revolving around the darkest contingence of its own abrasive and pervasive calmness.   

Like most bands of the genre, one of Sonic Sloths’ biggest triumphs are the viciously dense, penetrable, cohesive and sometimes perfunctory guitar lines, that conceives an arduous sound that definitely resonates throughout the limitless virtues of its profoundly introspective and dispersive artistic nature. With a sound that seems to be describing an entirely new and different colorful universe of personal diligence, the style of Sonic Sloth is a marvelous and brave exposition of creative authenticity and inherent audacity, greatly conceived as the apex of a genuine sensibility, that really knows how to correctly pursue and achieve its fundamental artistic goals.      

With an extraordinary grace that unveils the marvelous and dissonant nature of their music, Sonic Sloth enters the underground scene in great style. Displaying a formidable level of sensibility – easily perceptible by the discreetly delicate and accessible diagram by which their music is conceived –, that irradiates in each molecule of its creative components a salutary and proficient tribute to serenity itself, the sound of Sonic Sloth gradually, but efficiently consolidates the most abrasive, hostile and stagnant, yet profoundly peaceful in its spiritual essence, elements of the genre as its new fundamental virtues, converting a generally brutal and acid style into something more tranquil, despondent and introspective, without ever distorting the genre, not even for a second. 


Wagner

stoner rock 

Greatestits is an album released on May 19, by Israeli stoner rock band The Great Machine. A visceral album with formidably acid melodies, and crudely abrasive, dense and intense guitar lines, this is a sensibly lucid and technically sober work, that definitely delivers at its finest moments the best elements the genre has to offer, all of them perfectly dilapidated with an infuriating creativity, that definitely attends the highest expectations of the genre’s audience. With a savage sound – that grows more and more brutal as the album evolves, and seems eager to explode everything ahead of its lancinating ferocious and mordacious hostility – Greatestits reveals itself an exponentially prestigious work of art, that can be exceedingly aggressive and direct as well as concomitantly refined and elegant.      

Relatively concise, the album is little less than thirty-nine minutes long, and has six tracks: 1) Chris; 2) Bitch Too; 3) The Capricorn's Silent Walk Through Pagan Fire And The Sea Of Blood; 4) Keith; 5) Hollow; 6) DM II; with a marvelous sonorous dissonance that revolves around the most formidable aspects of the genre, The Great Machine – on its slowest songs – showcases exasperating musical tonalities, whose harmonies reverberates around the discreet peripheries of its own diffusive and overwhelming shadows. Now, despite the fact that they can be relatively conventional at times, their sound never disappoints, as their rhythmic ferocity seems always to be escalating towards an endless creative voracity, that will totally dismantle the organic flexibility of its own sensitive virtues. 

With the relentless nature of their compositions, even their calmer songs seems to be impregnated with a sense of fatality, though there is a serene and gentle side discreetly placed into their music, that softly displays the most introspective abilities of their art. With a lucid, though sometimes lugubrious atmosphere that highlights the greatest possibilities that the trio’s musical diagram has to offer, The Great Machine certainly has conceived this work as a glorious and ardent triumph of the genre. 

With a sound that can be melancholic and lethargic in one moment, and marvelously aggressive and furious on another, The Great Machine reveals itself to be a formidably versatile, genuine, inventive and demanding band, that definitely pushes hardly the volatile boundaries of their expansive creative energies, to offer to their audience the best songs they could conceive, playing them with an astounding level of sonorous exasperation, whose efficient qualities definitely proves why they can be considered majestic exponents in their genre of choice.   


Wagner

stoner rock / progressive / experimental

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Different Layers of Fear is an album released on May 10, by Romanian stoner/psychedelic rock band Methadone Skies. A very interesting and abrasive album, the level of powerful energy, consistency and creative strength demonstrated by this work is simply above all the extraordinary measurements one can imagine, much more by their creative audacity than the beauty of the music itself. With elegant and symmetric, though mostly diluted harmonies, the style of the group gravitates towards a vast and dense cosmogony of dynamic, but synchronic musical tonalities, where a modest degree of experimentalism and graciousness showcases a proverbial and dispersive sense of lugubrious tenacity. 

Seventy-one minutes long, Different Layers of Fear has seven very extensive tracks:
1) Where Were You When We Were Into the Void?; 2) God Help Us All; 3) Focus; 4) Contra; 5) Ol' Painless; 6) A Glitch in the Sun; 7) Manos; though the album eventually resents itself of some degree of monotony – given the length of some songs –, this beautiful work has a formidable set of qualities, intrinsic to its exceedingly peculiar, delightful and audacious musical style. With expansive melodies and a dynamic density that lives by the color of its graciously designed and sculpted sonorous atmosphere, the general creative diagram displayed by the songs revolves around a rhythmic synergy between creativity and technique, that proves to be a major point of cohesion in the axis of the group’s restless, but competent style.  

With a gracefully vivacious sound that departs from the horizon of its sometimes slow, but consistent patterns, this album is a collection of lovable dream-like symphonies, that definitely creates a peculiar, but methodic universe of harmonies within its diluted introspective existence. As the album evolves, the sound becomes more serene, perceptive and transparent, showcasing a stylish lucidity whose clear visibility exposes a strong and visceral degree of musical authenticity, whose standards definitely highlights the most formidable virtues – stability, cohesion, serenity – displayed by the band. 

With vocals eventually surfacing a little after forty-minutes, this additional surprise comes as a pleasant quality that aggregates a gracious element of sensibility and grandiosity within the band’s musical atmosphere. All along the way, Different Layers of Fear proves itself to be a majorly epic, genuine and ambitious album, whose ostensible levels of excellence, experimentalism and originality certainly will please all enthusiasts of the genre, possessing all the necessary qualities to shake and to take the underground scene by storm, with a natural and inherent artistic authority.  


Wagner

stoner rock

bandcamp

High Road Trippin' is an album released on May 3, by French stoner rock group The Psychedelic Kings. A very concise work – only half an hour long –, the record has six tracks: 1) Soul Elevator; 2) High Speed Mama; 3) Vintage Motel; 4) Pacific Winds; 5) Cream Buick Ride; 6) Trippin' Ball; while the band departs from more conventional musical standards, here you find an incredible abundance of qualities, such as dynamism, contingence, creativity and authenticity, firmly inserted into the sound, as well as ardent amounts of endless genuine energy. Despite the fact that you can’t expect too much from this album in what concerns innovative qualities, The Psychedelic Kings display a formidable and ostensibly lucid degree of competence and stylish fidelity, while delivering exceedingly great traditional old school stoner rock, throughout the whole album.  

With an intense synergy that disrupts, but also complements the sensibilities of its own vivid and sonorous graciousness, High Road Trippin' navigates into dispersive and delusional waves of greatness, creating atmospheres of prominently sensorial distinctions of rapture, that positively eludes the listener with the colorful density of its artistic pragmatism, though with a honest, efficient and consistent degree of satisfaction. With methodic, but vivaciously creative and flexible guitar lines – that travels highly in the vicinities of a psychedelic horizon of gracefulness –, the music of The Psychedelic Kings definitely aggregates more sensible and cohesive principles into the genre as a whole, while the captivating elegance of their sound remains probably as their greatest quality. 

With revolving virtues that are dynamically combined to produce a certain sonorous effect, The Psychedelic Kings reveals themselves to be methodic artists that really know how to create simple, but timeless and impactful music, with enough abrasiveness to shake the entire underground scene, even with a record as concise as this one.     

With a restrained and discreet sonorous ambivalence that definitely knows how to implement in the crest of its melodies the greatest virtues of a truly poetic and organic creative vivacity, The Psychedelic Kings unveils on High Road Trippin' the very best they have to offer to their audience: pure, simple, direct, honest and straight to the point stoner rock, as only a few other bands out there are able to give with such a genuine, sincere, graceful and impeccable level of dedication and strength. 


Wagner

stoner rock

bandcamp

Electric Dust is an album released in April 24, by American stoner rock band Stoned Company. A highly interesting and energetic instrumental work, the record has seven tracks: 1) Electric Dust; 2) Whiskey Soaked Bones; 3) Jesse James; 4) Doomed in Texas; 5) High Mist; 6) Smoke Without Fire; 7) Mud Man's Blues; despite the fact that this album is mainly grounded in the most conventional elements of the genre, Electric Dust is a very good work, and has some powerfully delightful and dynamic guitar lines, that contributes to sustain highly diffusive, but belligerent harmonies, whose intriguing sonorous layout definitely displays a laborious, dense and effective style, exceedingly pleasant to hear and to appreciate.    

With a synergy that emanates from a melodic expansion that highlights the density of its own atmosphere, the sonorous excellence displayed by the band irradiates from the horizon of its simple, but meritorious creative convergences, that wisely explores the most graceful musical arrangements mastered by them – within a diagram of preconceived sonorous possibilities –, while concomitantly consolidating an elegant, but abrasive style, that definitely values their creative standards diligently. 

Despite the ordinary limitations of the general musical structure, the level of musical competence and professionalism displayed by Stoned Company is exceedingly sophisticated. They know perfectly how to make the sound gravitate towards the dispersive axis of the melodies, without being redundant or monotonous, though their style is marked by an acceptable level of ostensible homogeneity. Nevertheless, with a dynamic and organic sensibility that conflagrates with a voracious energy the latent spirit of their music, Stoned Company proves with this release that they really understand what is necessary to create marvelous instrumental stoner rock.  

Despite the fact that there isn’t any innovative elements on this album, Electric Dust deserves attention, because the style displayed by the band navigates competently and passionately by the most gracious and abrasive traditional elements of the genre. So people who are passionate for stoner rock certainly will love this record, regardless of its deficiencies or common ground features, that doesn’t affect at all the quality of the work. Definitely, this is an album worthwhile listening, that will make you feel more closely attached to the genre.  


Wagner

stoner rock / doom

Strangers is an album released by a Bulgarian stoner / doom metal band, named Obsidian Sea, that definitely aggregates some interesting qualities to the genre, while maintaining their musical roots firmly established into its more conventional elements. With slow and extensive harmonies, and, above all, deeply corrosive and abrasive guitar lines, Strangers is an album that explores wisely – with a very fugacious degree of sagacity – the most pungent and traditional musical layers of stoner rock, subjugating with creatively organic and sensible strategies the most dilated and rapturous atmospheres conceived by their pragmatic method of dilution of sound, while concomitantly delivering their laborious melodic uneasiness with dynamic and elegant energetic proficiency.  

While there are no extravagant innovations on this record, the guitar lines and their expansive capacities are worked to define and conceive parallel universes of personal restlessness, that extends the creative perceptions of the genre to a more effective and salutary ground. With six tracks – 1) The Birth of Fear; 2) Every Heart Hides a Killer; 3) A Shore Without a Sea; 4) Strangers; 5) The Demolished Man; 6) The Play; – Strangers can be classified as a diligent and gracefully conceived album, sometimes almost poetic in the volatile paroxysm of its brilliance. Nevertheless, musically, to a minor degree the work resents itself of some limitations, though this fact, in a general evaluation, doesn’t do the album any significant harm. 

With some exceptional qualities that makes their style to be somewhat superior to other bands of the genre – especially on a technical level –, Obsidian Sea definitely proves a point with this album, displaying a talent and a creative musical disposition that deserves to be appreciated. While they have to work it out some minor structural limitations, their music is exotic and full of discreetly irreplaceable virtues, that revolves around a peculiar conjuncture of elements ostensibly aligned with an intuitive perception clearly entrenched to the genuine spirit of their artistry.   

Attractive, intense and filled with a gracefully ardent set of harmonies that work out the best the genre has to offer, Strangers is a very good album, that definitely delivers to its audience a marvelous degree of sensibility, that rejuvenates the quintessential elements of its own nature. While on the other hand you can’t expect too much from this album because there isn’t major innovations here, definitely Obsidian Sea has the competence, the abilities and the talent to please with a high degree of satisfaction the most inveterate enthusiasts of the genre. 


Wagner
 
 

stoner rock

Bury the Hatchet is an album released on April 19, by American stoner rock band Shotgun Sawyer. Forty-one minutes long, the album has nine tracks: 1) Ain't Tryin' to Go Down Slow;
2) (Let Me) Take You Home; 3) Backwoods Bear; 4) You Got to Run; 5) Son of The Morning; 6) Hombre; 7) Love You Right; 8) When the Sun Breaks; 9) Shallow Grave; a fantastic album – a truly great and wild sound whose marvelously spectacular guitar lines conceives otherworldly harmonies of imperishable and genuine resistance –, the style displayed on Bury the Hatchet is a wonderfully majestic grace of inimitable authenticity, whose astonishing qualities really master the virtues of its impeccable creative ordeal.  

With an elegant savagery that seems to have been pulled out of a desert desperate to scream for some life of its own, the sound of Shotgun Sawyer is a sensible, but powerfully energetic work of art that invites the listener to dive into a sonorous paradise of truly magnificent wild rock. With guitar lines that defy the melodies of its own arrangements – unveiling a sophisticated, but also audacious fury that underlines the rhythmic dissonances of its own organic devices –, despite the fact that the song structures are generally simple, the creativity and the graceful  synergy demonstrated by the band in the whole record surpasses all expectations. 

Displaying also a sensational level of versatility, the general sensibility of the melodies downplayed in the peripheries of gracefully optimistic and ironic colorful atmospheres of playful easiness deeply contrasts with the more lenient and crude fatalism exposed in the lancinating melancholy of the more depressive and dense elements of the band’s sound. 

All in all, the band’s sound – despite the fact that it is highly indebted to a somewhat ordinary extravagance – definitely surprises, by revitalizing with a vivacious and genuine energy the most sensational qualities of the genre. With brutal, but also highly sophisticated guitar lines that dictates the rhythm of a nicely crafted and finely sculpted musical style, Bury the Hatchet definitely can be defined as a masterfully exceptional and wonderful record, that works, arranges and exposes in a salutary cohesion full of artistic precision the most sacred virtues of stoner rock. 


​Wagner

stoner rock

The Horologist is a formidable album released by Swedish cross-over stoner/doom savage rock trio Cities of Mars. With a slow and corrosive sound, abrasive and dense guitar lines, and brutal, fatalist harmonies that definitely dismantles the ordinary and predictable sensibilities of the human nature, the style of the band is extraordinarily extravagant, hyperbolic, dense and refined at the same time, playing to a certain degree with an authorial and audacious level of experimentalism, whose creative, but pungent lucidity is diversified by the methodic principles applied to the structural consistence of the music.

With eight tracks – 1) Neconograph; 2) Trenches of Bahbelon; 3) Inner Sanctum, Outer Space; 4) Hydrahead; 5) The Last Electric Dream; 6) The Floating Museum; 7) Work Song; 8) Lines in the Dark; – The Horologist can be considered a formidable album, that rightfully departs from the most brutal and aggressive elements of stoner rock, making extensive use of the band’s talent and greatest triumph, profoundly cohesive authorial virtues, deep-rooted in a mordacious originality, whose creative features definitely establishes an extraordinary level of grandiosity into their music.

The last two songs of the album – Work Song and Lines in the Dark – are tracks of exceptional beauty. Work song is a sentimental cantilena of fraternal fidelity, brotherhood and love, whose depressive, but elegant spirit divides melancholy in an everlasting horizon of beauty, that makes the soul levitate in the splendor of an imperiously graceful and pacific existence. Lines in the Dark, despite its more lugubrious tone and its corrosive, almost aggressive guitar sounds, is a reflexive anthem of sensibility, despair and emotional agony, whose epic features definitely resonates throughout the marvelous omniscience of the undeniable parameters of human fragility. 

Definitely a terrific album whose fantastic level of creativity positions the band as an exponent of the genre in the contemporary underground scene, The Horologist reveals itself a fundamental cornerstone of originality and elegance, that deserves not only to be widely appreciated, but also has potential to make history. An exceptional record that is as concise as it is remarkable, Cities of Mars proves with this fabulous work that they must have their place of honor, for their astounding contributions to the development of 21st century stoner rock. 


Wagner

stoner rock / psychedelic rock

Time of the Healer is an album released on May 10, by an interesting and very promising stoner rock group, named Bright Curse. The record has only five, generally ten minutes long, tracks: 1) Smoke of the Past; 2) Laura; 3) Une Virêe; 4) Shadows; 5) Time of the Healer; with beautiful, extravagant and cohesive harmonies that are imperiously, gracefully, discreetly diluted in a sensational ocean of marvelously miraculous melodies – fulfilled by the colorful virtues of extraordinary creative qualities –, Time of the Healer reveals itself a splendorous and majestic album from the beginning, with remarkable stylish ordinances, that definitely makes this concise, but profoundly consistent musical effort worthwhile listening, easy to love and to appreciate. 

With a degree of experimentalism that fears or sees no boundaries in their creative horizons, the band conceives with an authorial level of sagacity and proficiency peripheries of sound that flirts with the laborious contingencies of psychedelic blues and stoner doom in a very dispersive, expansive and sometimes lethargic synergy. Looking for harmonious dissonances that resonates in an entirely different category of sound – possibly to elongate the melodic tissues of the compositions to achieve more sophisticated and genuine patterns of dynamism –, the band continuously displays with melancholic graciousness the exponentially vivid layers of opaque easiness that is a constant feature of their dilated style. 

Despite the fact that the sound becomes more homogeneous throughout the album, the quality of the sound and the beauty of the music generally stays in a very satisfactory and cohesive level. The band – loyal to their style and musical proposal – delivers to the audience a very exotic sound, whose discreetly innovative features displays an impressive degree of refined authenticity, though discreetly indebted to the cultural inheritance sculpted by the work of audacious and genuine predecessors. 

With a calmer sound that slowly reveals the consistency and the grace of its sensible peculiarities and fusions, Time of the Healer – though predictable in some occasions – is an interesting album, that aggregates and combines a whole new set of elements into a very distinct and elegant set of harmonies, despite some minimal limitations that, in general, doesn’t compromise the longevity scale of their sound. Nevertheless, this is a very interesting album, that certainly will please all the enthusiasts of the genre. 


Wagner