Turn It On

Check out this brand new band! It's coming from Montreal, Canada and this group of four is called Lion Farm. These guys play very nice Rock 'n' Roll with a Stoner Rock base, but there are also other elements, such as Hard Rock, Metal, Psychedelic and Space.

This EP contains four excellent songs with brilliant riffs and a great sound. These are catchy songs with great vocals.

A very impressive start of a new band! So keep an eye on Lion Farm! Enjoy!

Born out of a volcano of fire and fury, Lion Farm sinks its teeth into the jugular of Rock n’ Roll. With metal overtones and psychedelic underpinnings, Lion Farm claws their way down the mainline of anthemic rock.

Mike Foxxx and Malstain are longtime collaborators, first surfacing in the late 90s from the same fertile Toronto scene that spawned Peaches, Feist, Gonzales and Mocky. Their bands Rock ‘n’ Roll Bad Boy XXXpress and Seventy Whore were known by underground rock cognoscenti for their embrace of unabashed party-rocking in the po-faced indie-rock/post-rock era.

Pounding out catchy, heavy tunes, Lion Farm has quickly laid claim to the title of The Pride of Rock n’ Roll.

(Their bio)

Lion Farm - Lion Farm EP (2012)

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Snail The Wah

Electric Magma is a band from Toronto, Canada. This trio plays incredible great Instrumental Stoner Rock. These guys have released until now six albums and the seventh one called Canadian Samurai is coming up.

The album Snail The Wah is my personal favorite. It contains 13 tracks of Wah Wah madness. This great pedal is all over this album. Even the bass is here and there infected with this magnificant effect.

Beside that does this album have a very awesome sound. It is thick and heavy. The riffs are stunning, just as the bass and drums.

All of the 13 songs are compositional masterpieces. A brilliant album! Enjoy!

Electric Magma formed in 2000 in the tiny hamlet known as Toronto, Canada. Emerging from the ashes of previous musical endeavors, the thunderous trio comprised of Tryg Smith , Tim Reesor and Mario Lunardo forged ahead with their vision of sonic eruption. Halfway up the fuzzed-out sludge ladder, somewhere in between the metal boogie rock of Clutch and the surfed-up stoner rock of Fu Manchu, lies the sound of burning liquid rock. Electrified Magma.

While many groups struggle with the concept of applying vocal melodies over their musical groove, Electric Magma opted to side-step this dilemma and simply forgo the vocals and in their place drop in double the riffs. While the lack of a singer can be a crippling obstacle for many a lesser band, it has only added fuel to their collective fire and driven their fuzzed-out riff rock into another dimension.

Notorious merch whores, Electric Magma are second only to KISS when it comes to pimping the name onto anything and everything…soup to nuts, condoms to candy bars…their merch table alone is often an event unto itself, representing a bigger spread than Grandma’s baked goods table at the local church bazaar.

Currently promoting the release of their latest album entitled “Mudshovel”, which was released in April 2009, Electric Magma barrel ahead like a runaway freight train. This latest record may in fact be every stoner rock fans wet dream as they have created the ultimate sing-along for psychopaths and hard rocking maniacs. It’s riff rock karaoke night at the Sirloin Saloon, so grab your beer and belt buckle and give it your best.

(Their bio)

Electric Magma - Snail The Wah (2005)

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The Drop And The Sea

Stone In is a duo from Vancouver, Canada. These guys play Heavy Stoner Rock with Psychedelic, Progressive and Post Rock influences. Their music is stunning and quite unique.

The Drop And The Sea is the title of their debut 12" single. This single is also available as free download.

Side A of this single is the title track. This song is an combination of four separate songs. Side B contains the awesome track Take A Look. This song is also subject to seventies influences. On this side there is also a bonus track called Backing In Future Days.

This 12" is a small masterpiece and I hope certainly to hear more from Stone In in the near future! Enjoy!

Stone In brings new meaning to the words 'stone' and 'in'. Held together by a common love of vintage heavies, psychedelic organisms from around the world, progressive noise making and ecstatic drone we sculpt the air around us.

Although there are many ingredients in our sonicfridge, none are more beloved than our ride cymbals, loop pedals and electric amplifiers. Canyon grooves deep and winding. High-flying guitar solos like a mermaid choir in heat.

Alberto Centurion on drums and Greg Valou on multi instruments incluiding the now-legendary double neck bass guitar.

(From their website)

Stone In - The Drop And The Sea (2011)

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Dark Age

Here is another great contribution. This time it is the three track EP First Chapters by the Canadian band Tunguska Mammoth. These four guys from Montreal play Hardcore influenced Stoner/Sludge Metal. According to their Facebook page, Tunguska Mammoth is inspired by the following bands: Mastodon, Baroness, Priestess, Clutch, Bison B.C., Crowbar, the bands of Stéphane Vigeant (Karmadooza, Floating Widget, Madking Ludwig), High of Fire, Pelican, Black Sabbath, Doomriders, Kyuss and Groovy Aardvark.

This list gives quite an impression of what Tunguska Mammoth is about.

They're heavy, brutal and aggressive. The lead guitar player is a true Metal virtuoso. But the other members of this band deserve as much credits.

The songs of this EP are pretty impressive. I look forward to their upcoming concept album. Enjoy!

With the growing desire to play their own music not fit for their cover band, GPS, Maxime Bellerose (ex-Lacrimae Mortalium), Paolo Di Stefano and Mathieu Savage decided to get together with drummer Pierre-Hugues Rondeau (ex-Hope&Horror), to try and fill this void. After a few rehearsals jamming on Melodic Metal riffs, the sound naturally progressed towards wahat Tunguska Mammoth is now: a combination of the energy of Metal and Hardcore mixed with Stoner groove and progressive rock’s intensity. Their first EP intitled “First Chapterse”, recorded in their own rehearsal studio, serves as an introduction for the band’s forthcoming concept album.

(Their bio)

Tunguska Mammoth - First Chapters EP (2011)

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Awesome Instrumental Stoner Rock From Canada

Thanks to Sam from the band Monobrow for sharing this fantastic album!
Monobrow is a trio from Ottawa, Canada. This band plays Instrumental Stoner Rock and they do that more that awesome! Their self-titled debut album is an excellent piece of work. The guitar player Paul is nothing less than a virtuoso. This guy plays great riffs and outstanding solos! The accompaniment of drum and bass should not be shortchanged. Brian and Sam are also gifted musicians.
Monobrow treats you on eight great songs on this album. The sound is well produced. This is a highly recommended album! Listen this album and you will agree with me! Enjoy and support this band!

Instrumental rock enthusiasts Monobrow churn out a love of powerful riff-driven psych-rock on their debut.

Where modern instrumental rock bands tend to fall down is in a lack of originality and variation during the ideas process, something that thankfully, can not be said about Monobrow.

It was in the bustling Canadian metropolis of Ottawa, that the trio of Sam Beydoun (bass), Paul Slater (guitar) and Brian Ahopelto (drums) first gained exposure to a wider audience thanks to Carleton University’s CKCU station.

Swirls of feedback surround ‘Naught Witch’ as does the genre-crossing experimentation of hard rock, thrash and warm wah-wah drones that fleet into the appeasing afternoon sun.

Each of the eight tracks on this release is between five and nine minutes in length, and you can not help feeling that this is certainly not by chance.

The complexity of compositions such as: ‘From the Brown Sun’ and ‘Buried in the Backyard’ rise and fall naturally.

It is as if the trio find their composed and natural state towards the end of timely segments that unite a well thought out melody or chord-sequence while ending on a high.

This timely release co-insides with a resurgence in psych-rock, which will no doubt help Monobrow turn the liquid assets on their Bandcamp inventory into gold.
(By Chysounds at Stonerrock.com)

Monobrow - Monobrow (2010)

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Not Fragile

Like Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, this album was important in my early youth. Bachman-Turner Overdrive was a Canadian 70's Hard Rock band. They have made several albums, but Not Fragile was the most famous one. Everybody knows the song You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. But I must say there are better songs on this album like Not Fragile, Roll On Down The Highway, Blue Moanin' and Second Hand. Enjoy!

After gaining some recognition from the success of the band's previous album, Bachman-Turner Overdrive got around to recording Not Fragile. Not only had one of the three Bachman brothers (Tim, the rhythm guitarist) left the band to BTO's advantage, but Randy Bachman and C.F. Turner had clearly grown musically. To the album's benefit, most of the material on Not Fragile are the band's much-liked rock anthems, ranging from the hyper-distorted title track, through the famous but far more timid song "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." Indeed, for hard rock fanatics, it doesn't come much better than on Not Fragile. Randy's electrifying lead guitar is here more raucous than ever before, as are his rowdy vocals (particularly noticeable on the predictable, but fun "Sledgehammer"). The man steals the show on Not Fragile through his extensive and often astounding guitar solos. Generally, though, Bachman-Turner Overdrive are at their prime as a whole, both in songwriting and playing terms. As regards the mixing, it's hard to find fault with this release. The drums are clear but not so prominent that they dominate the recording, while the guitars, along with the bass, are kept rigidly in their place. Not Fragile is one of the finest arena rock albums of the era, featuring all the hallmarks of what makes a classic release in the genre. Randy's impressive guitar work and typically boisterous vocals complement the overall framework of the album superbly, as do the crunchy rhythm guitars. This release will astound fans of the genre and band, while those thoroughly against stadium rock may find something to convert their views.
(By Ben Davies at All Music Guide)

Bachman-Turner Overdrive - Not Fragile (1974)

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Canadian Heaviness.

This is another great and strange EP that is send to me! Cop Shades is an Experimental and Punk influenced Stoner Rock band from New Brunswick, Canada. Their self-titled EP is awesome! And they do it without guitar! Still the sound is complete, because of the use of some electronics and the heavy fuzz bass. The music is really heavy and the songs are great. I don't even miss the guitar! Go listen to this and enjoy! It will be a nice experience!
A big thanks to Kyle for sending this!

(February 12, 2010 – Moncton, NB, Canada) - COP SHADES, a new Moncton based stoner/indie/experimental rock band, have released their debut EP as a free download via Superbob Records - the home of The Monoxides formed by drummer Ken Kelley in 1993. The band consists of veteran musicians of mainstay Moncton bands The Peter Parkers, The Woods, and MEN (a 2-piece band featuring Eric’s Trip drummer Mark Gaudet).

Musically, COP SHADES exhibit a blend of influence from bands such as Kyuss, Death From Above 1979, Liars, and Shearing Pinx. This unification combined with absence of guitars, powerful mind numbing drum beats, fuzzed out electronic bass tones, and a plethora of vocals styles and effects all further contribute to their fresh approach.

“We simplify our creative and ethical process of maintaining an artistic outlet. The state of music in its entirety has been dumped on its head, as such so should ones approach and mindset. COP SHADES is the medium in which we are viewing and ultimately experiencing our personal vision.” says drummer Kyle McDonald.

The band recently shot a video for their single “North Korean Arts Degree” which will be debuting in March 2010. Additionally, this spring they’ll be hitting the studio to record their debut full length due this summer prior to their extensive coast to coast tour of Canada in August.

Formed in mid 2009, Introducing a slick fusion of indie, psychedelic, electronic and desert rock - COP SHADES are shooting for one of the fastest up and coming bands on the east coast of Canada.

This summer they’ll be representing Atlantic Canada with an extensive tour from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia and back throughout August 2010 - sharing the stage with bands such as Bad Vibrations (ex-Dog Day), Flying Fortress (ex-Goat Horn/Zuku), Ash Lee Blade (ex-Tchort), Black Moor, Shearing Pinx, Hunter Gatherer, Amelia Earhart, Feral Children and many more.
(Their biography)

Cop Shades - Cop Shades (2010)

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Macrosolutions To Megaproblems

Voivod is a Canadian Thrash Metal band that has more developed into a Progressive Metal band. I while ago their very last album was released. After guitar player Denis “Piggy” D’Amour died, he left a lot ideas behind at his note-book. These were the base for the albums, Katorz and Infini.
Back to the past now. The fourth album,Dimension Hatröss is my favourite Voivod album. In those days it was a stunning album, cause there was nothing that sounded like this. Psychedelic Metal?


Released nearly two years after the transitional Killing Technology, Dimension Hatröss is the first album where Voivod's experimental metal is explored from beginning to end. Shedding the clichéd lyrics that the band relied on for their first two releases, they're thankfully replaced by much more thought-provoking lyrics. The group has also grown as musicians -- guitarist Denis d'Amour is one of metal's finest, the rhythm section of Michel Langevin on drums and Jean-Yves Theriault on bass is tighter than ever, and vocalist Denis Belanger sings more conventionally (no more shrieking). The band's sudden songwriting maturity becomes evident from the opening track, "Experiment," when futuristic imagery collides head on with heavy sounds. "Macrosolutions to Megaproblems" contains impressive, busy interplay between the bandmembers, while "Tribal Convictions" is a simpler, Sabbath-like number that opens with some primitive drumming courtesy of Langevin (who also designed the album's cover). Dimension Hatröss is Voivod's first fully realized album and sets the stage for their best ever, 1989's major-label debut, Nothingface.
(By Greg Prato, All Music Guide)

Voivod - Dimension Hatröss (1988)

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Fly On With These Canadian Stoners

Sea Of Green is a Psychedelic Stoner band from Toronto, Canada with some 70's Hard Rock influences. Time To Fly is their second from three albums. This is enjoyable listening stuff when you smoked some "Sea Of Green" (Even if you didn't!) Their version of Pink Floyd's Breathe is very nice!

Sea of Green's live shows -- with their liquid lights, incense, smoke machines, and pyrotechnics -- evoke the heaviness of the early '70s as much as their monstrous, riffed-out, and slightly skewed music. With a sound that draws logical connections between Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd, the band produces a head-trip of seriously psychedelic stoner rock. Sea of Green formed in 1999 in Toronto, Canada, when bassist Eric Kuthe (whose parents used to run a rock club in Toronto in the '70s that played plenty of Sabbath, Hendrix, and Grand Funk Railroad) and drummer Chris Bender got together with guitarist Travis Cardinal to jam. Cardinal took over vocal duties and the band began to write songs, citing influences as varied as the Queens of the Stone Age, Cream, and Oasis. They released their first EP, Northern Lights, on the Music Cartel label in July of 2000. The band completed their first full-length in late 2000 at the Chalet in Toronto. Time to Fly, produced by Nick Blagona of Nazareth and Deep Purple fame, and which includes a mind-bending cover of Pink Floyd's "Breathe," secured Sea of Green as one of the leading purveyors of psychedelic metal. On their latest album, Chemical Vacation, drummer Matt Dowd was introduced to the line-up. Due to obvious drug references in many of their lyrics, Sea of Green are largely classified as stoner rock.
(From MySpace)

Like I've said in the "Northern Lights" review, the full-length will show the qualities of this Canadian band and after a lot of spins in my player I must admit, that "Time To Fly" is a high-quality debut. The album includes eleven tracks and a fine cover-version of Pink Floyd's "Breathe". There's still this British-sounding influence in a few of the songs, especially vocalwise. And this time I don't think of Sabbath, it's more in the Psychedelic vein. But I won't say, that SEA OF GREEN are a Psych-Rock band or a Doom band. They are playing classic 70's influenced heavy Rock, that's very catchy, melancholic and positive in words and sound. And they aren't trying to imitate todays boring cliches (you know what I mean!). "Time to Fly" ranges from softer tracks to hard-rocking stuff and so it doesn't belong to the sort of albums, where you think that you've listen only to one long song. Everything is arranged very well and the production of Nick Blagona (Deep Purple, Nazareth, The Police) just fits. This isn't a groundbreaking album, but it's very solid and the more you listen to it the more you'll like it. It was released in 2001 on Rise Above Records and on The Music Cartel. If you want to know more about SEA OF GREEN, check out their homepage.
(Review from Cosmic Lava)

Sea Of Green - Time To Fly (2001)

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One Of The Many Things Jello Biafra Did.

Jello Biafra is a well know Punk singer who got famous with the Dead Kennedys. At this album he worked with D.O.A.

Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors is a real classic, especially the last song, Full Metal Jackoff. This epic song almost last 14 minutes and has some great guitar playing. Enjoy!

The first of Jello's post-Dead Kennedys collaborations was a barnburner; hooking up with Canada's legendary DOA ensured all the punk power that fans could want would be there in a big way. Even though Joey Keithley and company aren't quite as agile as Jello's ex-bandmates -- everything here is more brutally Motorhead in feel than the nervous aggro and sometimes restraint of the Kennedys -- this album can't be faulted for sheer crunch. Jello himself is in fine voice throughout, tackling his favored targets with the frenetic bile that he's made his own. Some of the songs have become outdated -- "Wish I Was in El Salvador" is very much of the '80s -- but "Attack of the Peacekeepers," memorably tarring NATO's forces as "the joke brigade," has had just as much of a point after Kosovo. "Power Is Boring" captures Jello at his most hilarious, pointing out how being a dictator must really stink (the job security issue alone, for one). Not much on the first side varies from song to song musically -- pounding, chunky feedback that smashes head-on, along with good gang-shout choruses from the band more than once -- but if that's the needed fix, this album provides in spades. The wild card here is a spooky, mid-paced romp through the Animals' "We Gotta Get Outta This Place," with Jello's tremulous vocals suiting the lyrics perfectly and Keithley's backup on chorus fitting in, in its own rough way. The concluding, side-long "Full Metal Jacket" takes absolutely no prisoners, elevating Last Scream from good to great. With Keithley in particular turning in some great guitar work over a steady, snaky rhythm, Jello offers up one of the most bilious, pointed slams against Washington D.C.; this album is as "city/feds-as-corrupt-institution" as you could imagine. Kennedys artist Winston Smith offers up some great cover art to top it all off.
(By Ned Raggett from All Music Guide)

Jello Biafra With D.O.A. - Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors (1989)

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Some Goodness From Canada

Here's another great album I found on the web. Flood from Canada plays some great Sludge/Stoner. Unfortunately there's no website or MySpace of this band.

These local sludgemeisters are gonna give our resident bong-bubblers the Donkeys and Floating Widget some serious competition for the Montreal Sabbath throne. You know the M.O. here: Ozzy-like vocals, vintage Monster Magnet riffs, Hawkwind phase noise etc., but Flood surprise with unlikely jazz jams (“Slough of Despond”) and bludgeoning grooves (“Loose”). Flood prove that they’re no Johnny-come-lately types either by adding a Blue Cheer cover for good measure. The lyrics are a bit iffy here but with riffs dripping with this much heaviosity, who gives a toss what this guy’s singing about? 8/10
(By Johnson Cummins from Montrealmirror.com)

Flood - Stone Core Fever (2002)

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