psychedelic rock / garage rock / stoner rock

experimental / jazz / drone / ambient

Ormo Records

doom / stoner rock

drone / ambient / experimental / noise

Attenuation Circuit

electronic / techno

bandcamp

drone / doom / shoegaze

ambient

equanimity. Those twenty minutes of Sublime Silence contain healing and reposeful sounds which are welcome in this over-stressed society we live in. If you are into this kind of meditative sound creations, there is a lot to discover from this artist on his Bandcamp page.

ambient / dark ambient

Dark and melancholic ​moods change into spacey ambient tonalities, sometimes kittenish, other times filled with doom. The world of Sílení is covered with alienated sounds and moods. This is an excellent piece of work. Dark ambient lovers, if you listen to Sílení’s Long Forgotten Bowers, you will get hooked. We sure did!

dark ambient

Mother Destruction above standards in this genre. The album is a varied piece of work caught in a deep haunting, emotional prison. Sacrifice and dedication are translated in penetrating sounds and choruses. The nightmare never seems over in this pungent journey of hellish fires. 
Another quote from Empty Chalice: ‘… the lost ones are retracing the path of the oldest fairy tale: coming home’. Well, we did come home and we still feel home between the moods and vibes of this wonderful dark ambient recording.

dark ambient

Winter Light

over a ten year period. Nimh is active since 2001 and has already more than twenty physical albums released. Sound chasers will be pleased and excited with the multi-layering of soundscapes, field recordings, voices and the experimental manipulations of samples this album contains. The sustained drones create darkened and emotive moods. Beyond The Crying Era is an outstanding soundtrack for a SF/horror movie that does not exist. It’s time to dig deeper in Nimh’s music history. Speaking about a discharge!

dark ambient

the world of Anantakara. We’ve noticed psychedelic influences appearing in the mysterious structures of  the tracks. The eight adventurous ambient pieces on Momentum Lapses are filled with a variety of lovely compositions and moods. Rumors told us that this album will be released on CD in the future. Anantakara stands for “ to make infinite” in Sanskrit. In some way this album does.

Serge (1-6)
​Patsker (7-11)

art rock / stoner rock / experimental

Heroica is an album released on February 3, by American experimental art rock project Sight, from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Fifty-one minutes long, the record has seven relatively extensive tracks: The Call, Contemplations/Refusal, Meeting the Mentor/Crossing of the Threshold, Confrontation/Celebration, Reflections, Finality/Revelation and The Return. A dense and beautiful album, that has great synergy and an imperative sense of artistic grandiosity, this magnificent state of the art work has a genuinely pure essence, with a style that is exceedingly singular, vibrant, serene and profoundly proverbial. With somewhat mythical, inspirational vocals, and sensible guitar lines, that drive the sincere nature of the music’s inherently poetic alignment, the melodies present on Heroica are a virtuous and energetic alignment of marvelous creativity, that impresses the listener from the very beginning until the album’s conclusion.  

While you may not become impressed at all at the beginning, slowly, the album unveils all of its fantastic and primordially definitive qualities. With an impressive versatility that reveals incredibly rapturous harmonies, profoundly engraved at the crest of a pungently audacious degree of musical experimentalism, gradually, the style of Sight reveals its strength, which is the almost symmetric combination of deeply furious melodies with slower, calmer symphonies full of ghosts, shadows and expansive melancholy, that occasionally ends in happier sonatas of elegant, astoundingly graceful and original beauty.

Definitely, a majestic album by all standards, Heroica possesses individual qualities, that conceives an entirely different style of music, that reveals an original disposition of sensibilities, in what concerns intelligent charisma, sagacious sonorous perception and creative sophistication. Despite occasionally flirting with pop music, the vigorous sound of Sight never loses its unusual strength, and the album easily maintains its salutary grandiosity all the way through. 

With a lucid and visionary musical pragmatism competent enough to establish its own creative standards, Heroica is a sensational and remarkable album, that is never limited by ordinary artistic principles, always eager to surpass sonorous boundaries whenever this is possible. With a great display of virtues that is fantastically elegant and mordacious, Sight is an unexpectedly original project, that is marvelously out of the blue in what concerns technical definitions. As a surreal disposition of colors that fell from the sky in the everlasting night of an empty emotional despair, the indefinite serenity that revolves around the music is a utopia old enough to calm down all the urgent vitalities that systematically hides within the vast demise of the human nature. 


Wagner

sludge metal / stoner rock

The Mound Builders is an album to be released by the eponymous American band from Indiana, in January 18, 2019, by Failure Records and Tapes. With eight tracks – Torchbearer, Hair of the Dogma, Separated From Youth, Acid Slugs, Star City Massacre, Regolith, Broken Pillars and Vanished Frontier –, this veteran sludge metal group returns after seven years from their previous work, their debut album,  Strangers in a Strange Land. With enough voracity, strength and fury to reverberate for over a decade the dense restlessness of their aggressive and direct, but expressive and methodic sound, The Mound Builders seems eager to defeat all the grim shadows that may appear in their way. With savage, rude and pungent guitar lines, the sound of the band can be described as a hostile drive through the desert, with enough fuel to change the driveway in reverse. 

Although the beginning seems promising, and the interesting, precise incursions the band does in more stoner musical terrain is definitely refreshing, dynamic and musically stimulating, the group eventually falls in a series of serious, pervasive and mediocre clichés, that rapidly makes their music sound too inadvertently ordinary and predictable. As the album evolves, but the music sound all the same, you eventually give up, and loses the patience.   

The band has an artistic vitality, and solid musical principles, as they let this fact transpire, in their best moments. But unfortunately, this is not enough for the album to sustain itself throughout its entire run. On this work, The Mound Builders lose their track on originality, creativity and purpose too soon. As a matter of fact, after just a few minutes into the album, it’s difficult to find a musical passage that is decent or good enough to be memorable. 

For its entire run, the album seems a bad collage of stoner and sludge metal clichés. Not a single moment of original sonorous rapture can be heard. What can be written favorably about them is that the crossover in their genres of choice are definitely skilled. The “arid” feeling concerning their music seems genuine too. They have passion and a virulent, sincere aggressiveness, but sadly, this is lost in a vast amount of sonorous sameness and vagueness, that doesn’t have any moment capable of standing out. This album is very generic, and will hardly impress enthusiasts of the genre. 


Wagner

stoner rock

When a registered mail with something physical falls into your letter box there is always the curiosity how it will sound and how we can write about it. Dirty Habits -Rule Us All- is Dreckneck’s second release. The band was founded in 2015, in a Dutch town near the German border. Their goal was to play solid rock music. After adding  a drummer, they could finally play and record some butt kicking songs in their small barn.

The trio produces fuzzy stoner rock. They start their first full length album with an instrumental track Route 69. It’ s groovy tunes give you immediately that rock ‘n roll vibe of forgotten and steaming rock bars. The guitars sound heavy and omnifarious. Harm, the guitar player who takes care of the vocals too, brings a bluesy touch to the songs. His voice sounds deep, not too rough and fit’s perfect with the music.

Still, this Cd gives us a strange feeling. We heard this all before, but the enthusiastic playing works like a weep. The music needs to grow and isn’t that easy to swallow. We heard Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age and several traditional heavy rock bands as influences. Dreckneck are persistent and brave to follow a style that is already sucked out to the bottom.

Variety is their strength. The drummer (Tinus) works his heart out and gives the album an extra dimension. Dreckneck succeeds to create a sleazy and dirty stoner sound without being boring. Roaring guitar riffs guided by catchy bass lines and on top that peachy voice. So take your time and listen to Dirty Habits -Rule Us All-. Feel what is needed to be felt: fuzzy, groovy, bluesy stoner rock with a perspective attitude. The Cd is available at their Bandcamp page as a limited edition. Dreckneck kicks ass!!


​Patsker

alternative rock / stoner rock / grunge

One might wonder, "what's in the Belgian waters?" Bands and releases are popping up by the minute here. A rock band in that corner, a noise act over there and a trip-hop act in another place, it never seems to end in this little country. To answer that question: I don't think it's in the water. It's what Belgians do with that water. We turn it into beer, another thing we have been doing for ages, and pretty damn good too. It's a magical chemical process, turning ingredients into something almost otherworldly. The same goes for our music industry, people come together and create magical chemistry. 

Another one in the never-ending tsunami of Belgian releases is 'Superglue For The Broken' by Antwerp residents Tangled Horns. Influenced by rock music of all ages, from the psychedelics of the sixties & seventies to the raunchy grunge scene of the nineties, Tangled Horns invite the listener to a wicked ride of their rock 'n roll rollercoaster. In short: 'Superglue For The Broken' is a groovy-ridden powerhouse that can get any rock 'n roll heart beat a little faster.

Of course, these days you can't write and record a decent rock album without adding a heap of influences. The most obvious reference on this album is Alice In Chains, whose sound shines through in opener 'Shadow (A Personal Piece Of Darkness)' and in 'The Timeline Is A Noose'. Loaded with groove and power, these two tunes can easily get any rock party started, and metalheads will join in on the fun.

Other bands that come to mind include Soundgarden, Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age and The Foo Fighters. That surely makes one interesting list. But, even if it's all in good fun, Tangled Horns also show a well-thought out, mature sound. It's not a bunch of youngsters messing around in a rehearsal studio. It's five bearded dudes paying tribute to the one thing that kept them living their lives the way they do: alternative rock.

'In The Now' clearly shows that. Along with the aforementioned songs, this is my favorite here, a strong rock song that aims for a spot in the grunge-classics lists. On the noisy, gritty 'Beautiful Flaw', Faith No More even comes to mind, combined with either Led Zeppelin or Brant Bjork. Yes, I can easily imagine these tunes rolling over big, crowded meadows next summer. I can see people dancing on 'Destination Tipping Point', go nuts on 'Magnificent Maniac' or make sweet love on 'Icebound'.

So if you're looking for a groovy, versatile and immersive rock album, you should really give this one a change. Once again, a local band proves my point about this country's musical underground (read 'Belgium Rock City' - Dutch only). Naturally I will recommend this to every fan of decent rock music. 


​Serge

alternative / metal / metalcore

heavy metal / power metal

hard rock / stoner rock / alternative rock / grunge

thrash / death metal

doom

doom / sludge / post hardcore

pop rock

pop rock / alternative rock

​Serge

stoner rock / psychedelic / blues

Well, this dreary day can use a dose of searing hot desert blues. The fuzz-scene is still going strong, so there is plenty of groovy music to choose from. Today, i picked this album by Swiss trio Mystic Sons from the pile of albums to be reviewed. Not without hesitation by the way.

Psychedelic stoner fuzz blues rock is awesome but vocals can quite often destroy everything. That was my main concern when opener 'Intro' first pierced my eardrums. The intro is a neat piece of instrumental stoner rock, Karma To Burn, Monkey 3 and Colour Haze, that kind of stuff. All good and well, but what about the songs with vocals?

Luckily for these guys, that seems to perfectly find here. First appearing in the heavy and intense 'Mephistopheles', Bochat's vocals perfectly fit the warm and jammy nature of the music. Still, the massively groovy 'Californian Desert' and closer 'Black Ritual', which are mostly instrumental, are my absolute favorite here. I simply love these lengthy psychedelic passages. There is also a small element of grunge rock in here, which is quite nice. On the other hand, the sluggish blues track Leather Apron is a pretty creepy tune, perfectly suited for your upcoming Halloween party.

If I have top compare Mystic Sons to other bands, I'll probably throw in some well known acts like the aforementioned Karma To Burn but also Kyuss, Black Sabbath, Sleep, Uncle Acid and Truckfighters. Their music is nothing new but it is executed perfectly and it comes with exactly the right dose of variation and every single anthem is well written. Plus, there are these sweet-ass guitar solos I'm sure every stoner/psychedelic rocker will appreciate. So don't hesitate, download or buy this album, roll yourself a fat one and play this thing loud. You'll love it.


​Serge

post rock / stoner rock 

Afar is an album released by Meuban, a four-piece musical group from Israel, whose magnificent sound is an intelligent mixture of stoner and post rock.  Relatively concise – being a little over thirty six minutes in length –, the album has eight tracks: Youth, Material Love, The Future Is Behind You, Smash Things, Afar, Reprise, Hibernation and Nowhere. With a majestic, iridescent and calmer sound, that really understands the poetic perfection underneath its serene diagram of lovely surreal tranquility, Meuban is a group that definitely has a profound and peculiar style, characteristic of their own. With a graceful infinity invariably attached to the unorthodox nature of their harmonies, the songs are mutually sensible and expansively dense, and touches the soul of unexplored enigmas, unraveling the fragility of human nature as a creative device driven by a preciously diluted level of splendor, yet to be deciphered. 

The melodies can be described as unexperienced, wonderful and splendid pieces of sensorial comfort, from the beginning until the end. Despite their simplicity, and the linearity that strikes the most elemental consistency of its inflexible nature, the music of Meuban is a continuous, but resilient graceful symphony of striking sensibility, that drives deep the soul of the listener into the most sincere labyrinths of the collective human mind.

With its lucid impeccability showcasing the restlessness of its warm melodic sensitivity, the second song, Material Love, definitely became one of my favorites. In the vicinities of allegories projected to be felt as a sonorous narrative of profound immersion into one’s soul – marvelously designed by intricate intonations that smiles over the rainbow of its intuitive nature –, Meuban extrapolates the glorious density of its unapparent, but fabulous simplicity, in a salutary artistic ordeal that elaborates and consecrates the vitality of its own precious originality, in order to fully exist, and to be free from more restrictive patterns of artistry. So, the general layer of the songs is fully sidelined with the ardent rapture of its discreet cosmic vastness.    

In a marvelous universe made of colorful human thoughts, Afar is the unexpected treasure that seeks the ordinary perceptions of the human grace. With marvelous guitar lines, that seems oblique, intrusive and diffuse in certain specific passages, the brilliant technicality that drives the musical skills of the group has resulted in a decent parameter of resonant serenity, that ardently pursues the restless abilities of its own horizon of invisible musical melancholies. 


Wagner

doom / stoner rock

Eye The Tide is a formidable album, released by Polish stoner rock act Spaceslug. A cohesive, dense, anxious and exceedingly atmospheric work, it’s fascinating musicality is proverbially intense and ostensibly lugubrious. The sound floats easily throughout the intermittent zones of your fragile anger, while the sensible, but toxic nervous breakdown experienced by the melodies are beyond the irrelevant limits of reason. With slow, but proficient, tense and pungent guitar lines, and very somber, sacramental vocals, which are sparse and occasional, that anticipates the cruelty of an imminent melancholic doom, the style of the group is a monumental harmonious treasure – where proficient technicality and intuitive creativity are perfectly combined – that comprehends the lucidity of its own furious demise, in a consonantal veil of surreptitious and discreet agony, that embraces an ocean of dust filled with a surreal dilution of sincere, but dissolved sentiments.         

While – on an overall analysis –, the musical structure of Spaceslug is more or less generic, they have a crude and rude, but strong and very genuine style, ostensibly marked by sensational and preeminent guitar lines. All the other elements are there as well, and are preciously synchronized, but the frivolous passive-aggressive razorblade style displayed by the strings certainly outstands itself in a very sensible solution of lugubrious resignation.  

At fifty-three and a half minutes long, the record has seven generally extensive tracks: Obsolith, Spaced By One, Eternal Monuments, Words Like Stones, Vialys Part I, Vialys Part II and I, The Tide. While the album do have some vague and monotonous passages, these occurrences are sporadic, and doesn’t damage nor compromise its general qualities. Eye The Tide can be firmly appreciated as a groundbreaking record, that definitely establishes a new style of doom and stoner rock, whose singularities make it difficult to categorize in an ordinary or specific musical zone. 

With melodies that are carefully elaborated – and, indeed, are amazingly beautiful – and a thoroughly original style that departs from a very authentic creative axis of nefarious desolation, Spaceslug does not fear nor recognize any limits to their creative horizon. Certainly they aren’t only a promising band, but an amazingly peculiar musical act, whose instrumentality works in such a pretentiously colorful density, that you can certainly say that they have masterly articulated their own particular universe of melodies, one that you can feel only if you are inspired enough to completely dilute yourself in it. 


Wagner

stoner rock / psychedelic rock / hard rock

Rift is an album released on August 17, by American stoner rock group Forming the Void. Forty-four minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Extinction Event, On We Sail, Arcane Mystic, Transient, Arrival, Ark Debris and Shrine. Rift – analyzed on a purely technical basis –, is a decent and competent work, without a doubt, but the style of the group unfortunately departs from a more common ground musical axis, whose elements doesn’t differ them too much from other bands of the genre. They certainly know how to accommodate and incorporate different components into their music, although they definitely fall almost entirely on a stoner rock ground. Their rhythms and melodies can be easily assimilated, and are definitely interesting. But, unfortunately, this album, on an overall evaluation, doesn’t manage to impress at all. 

Don’t get me wrong: Rift is a good album, and certainly has potential to please enthusiasts of the genre. The guitar lines are slow and dense, and displays quite a gracious and discreet aggressiveness, with walls of sound that cohesively builds around its own calm highlight an atmosphere of tense, but lucid expansion. On the other hand, their music is so saturated with generic elements that you never feel too thrilled while listening to it. Certainly, the album can be appreciated with modesty – without any expectations –, but you also wish after some time for the end to come as soon as possible.

Forming the Void is a band that has potential, but they certainly have to be more audacious, and leave their comfort zone. They do what they do with amazingly competent technical skills, but they lack a more effervescent degree of passion and enthusiasm. A little monotony – or too much calmness, if you prefer – is inherent to this genre of music, but you have to push up the boundaries, at least to a certain level, to avoid being just another generic act. 

If you want to listen to Rift, you can definitely do it, without any fear. This is a decent album. But like I wrote some lines above, there’s nothing extraordinary about this work. They follow their genre of choice with a certain amount of competence; but, in the end, Rift is just an ordinary stoner rock album, that ends up being too similar to many other albums of the genre.  



Wagner