From The Editor’s Desk

Oh yeah, you knew it was coming! I’m always one to wait until the dust of “Hurry, hurry! Gotta publish your list of best albums!” has passed in November and early December. After all, it would be a mistake for a music-minded outlet like this to solidify our choice albums, but miss out on the bounty that inevitably drops at year’s end. I’m may be just a floppy-eared, weed-eating personification of the humble capra hircus, but I know good doom metal and stoner rock – two styles that grew up together in the ‘70s and have evolved into the rich, varied, and nuanced styles they are today.

In January, we brought you Doomed & Stoned staff picks. I had every intention of following this with my own Best-Of list, but contracted COVID-19 (again, after getting Delta last summer). While the initial symptoms were benignly cold-like, the virus played my nerves like a fiddle for weeks and weeks. Let’s just say it was not fun to be a traveler in my body.

As I slowly got back to my old killer self, an internal debate raged over whether or not to publish my top albums, like at all. I was embarrassed every time I thought about how many months had passed. And, by the way, who even wants to remember 2021? Yet there were albums released during our last trip 'round the sun that are still worth talking about in '22.

Look Behind You

Before I get into the breakdown, let me just take a moment to thank all of you for reading, sharing, and supporting Doomed & Stoned. Thanks especially to the team of contributors who submitted excellent concert reports, heartfelt album reviews, and in-depth interviews each and every month.

I’m grateful to the local scenes who collaborated with us on another round of incredible compilations. The series, now 8 years old, spans a labyrinth of 40+ editions exploring the fuzzy, low-tuned sound of doom metal and stoner rock as it erupts in heavy hotspots 'round the world.

Of special note is the four-part series, Doomed & Stoned: The Instrumentalists (2022), which was a partnership with YouTuber Rob Hammer and received considerable love from you all. Volume one may even outpace our most popular compilations of all time, Doomed & Stoned in Portland (2014) and Doomed & Stoned in Canada’ (2014). The latter was given a a sequel in October (and raised over $800 in donations for Orange Shirt Day).

We also issued a follow-up to our Greecian compilation, Doomed & Stoned in Hellas (Vol. II), and touched down for the first time in Scotland, Chile, and Colorado to visit bands there.

Perhaps most significant of all, Doomed & Stoned made headway into the Russian heavy music scene (long before the clouds of war gathered) with Doomed & Stoned in Russia (Vol. 1) and Doomed & Stoned in Russia (Vol. 2), which bookended a year of haze and malaise.

RIP Eric Wagner (April 24, 1959 - August 22, 2021)

While we’re celebrating milestones, let us not fail to honor the fallen. Eric Wagner was the embodiment of doom, even when you met the guy in person.

While I love Trouble, I believe Mr. Wagner reached the apex of his powers with The Skull. He leaves us with an artistic legacy that will no doubt continue to inspire new generations of Doomers. Alive or dead, he remains the Doom Father, our beloved Prophet of Woe. May he rest in peace. ☨

You know I once wrote a song for you
Think it was the one about the sun
I find it strange you never knew
We are here just to love everyone

On the tail-end of my visit to Ripplefest Texas, I found myself at The Well in Austin for what would be Eric Wagner’s last show. I filmed the performance as well, and some of you may be interested in that footage. I hope it brings you consolation as you contemplate the contribution and legacy of our deary departed Brother in Doom. His approach to the medium was remarkable in many ways, not the least of which was that he spoke from a decidedly Christian worldview. As it turns out, believers can be doomers too.

☁ THE HEAVY BEST OF 2021 ☁

And now what you came here for, the goods. Here is the Editor’s Choice, first revealed in Season 8, Episode 2 of The Doomed & Stoned Show. The records are as follows:

10. Jointhugger - Surrounded by Vultures
  9. Terminus - The Silent Bell Toll
  8. Shallow - …From The Ground Down
  7. Oak - Fin
  6. Savanah - Olympus Mons
  5. Moon Coven - Slumber Wood
  4. Moanhand - Present Serpent
  3. Blackwater Holylight - Silence/Motion
  2. Apostle of Solitude - Until The Darkness Goes
  1. King Buffalo - The Burden of Restlessness

That was the way I ranked them when I thought through my selection from the perspective of a music critic, balancing all the variables of artistry with recording, concept with production. But then it dawned on me afterwards, the records I continued to listen to were not in that order. So I decided to look at my favorite records in a more personal way. Thus, the list that follows is based solely on total minutes listened and will appear in ascending order.

Here then are the EPs and LPs I soaked in most often under the oppressive grey skies of Anno Domini MMXXI. Some records inspired me to keep going despite the gloom, while others gave me no end of consolation when I felt stuck and spinning my wheels. As this is a more subjective echelon, you may find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with my choices for various reasons of your own. All things considered, my hope is that these recordings will sink their hooks into you as well.

Blackwater Holylight - Silence/Motion

Yeah, this turned out to be quite special. When Blackwater Holylight teased out “Around You” as their first single, I really wasn’t sure what kind of an album Silence/Motion was going to be. I mean, the song is as sanguine as you could wish (it reminds me of a dreamy Hawaiian sunset). I had been getting into the first and second BWHL albums again, but hesitated to invest in their third.

Thankfully, my will was quite easily broken when I heard the opening “Delusional” with backing vocals from Thou’s Bryan Funck (who gets the funk of the Portland band’s vibe, if you’ll pardon the pun). The atmosphere on the band’s third LP can emit a real misty feeling, like the thick fog of a Willamette Valley morning. When I encounter a sound this recognizably true to life, it makes my inner doomer rejoice.

Apostle of Solitude - Until the Darkness Goes

Dark and brooding atmosphere surrounds us like an Alice in Chains music video from the MTV '90s. But there is a light that shines pierces even these clouds, the vocal team-up of Chuck Brown and Steve Janiak, who give us soul-stirring duets reminiscent of albums like Dirt and The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. Chuck & Steve generate warm, irradiated guitar tone capable of melting anything Winter throws at us (heed the opening bars of “The Union”). The riffs are gorgeously sad and moving. The rhythm section of Mike Naish and Corey Webb offers a convincing conversation of its own, breaking any misconception about doom metal drumming and bass play. This band deserves to be huge.

King Buffalo - The Burden of Restlessness

I wore the album out with listens, but it keeps on giving. “Locusts” remains one my favorite track, as it reminds me so much of “Sun Shivers.” When the band dropped The Burden of Restlessness in June, I didn’t know how genuinely it would connect with me. The Rochester trio understands pandemic angst like few others. If Nothing captured the feeling of numbed unreality, King Buffalo surely it our wakeup to cruel sobriety. I don’t consider it a depressing spin at all, more a diary of honestly feelings with a robust desert metal sound. This record gets me.

Melvins - Five Legged Dog

You’ve never heard the Melvins quite like this. Five Legged Dog was a massive gift to fans, right when the pandemic was wearing us all a little thin. In fact, this 4XLP single-handedly (-leggedly?) reignited my love and (best of all) my appreciation for the great Seattle band. Unplugging can make a band sound really bare, so it’s a risk – especially if you’re wanting to play songs that are really girthy like “Hooch,” “Revolve,” “Night Goat,” and “Boris” (yes, they do an acoustic cover of “Boris”).

Here it pays off via some really clever arrangements and musicians who are absolutely at the pinnacle of their craft. I liked it so much I forked out a pound of flesh to get the vinyl edition. There’s humor, there’s majesty, there’s wonder, and as always that rambunctious Melvins spunk. Don’t miss the coup de gras “Civilized Worm” and the song that got me through a fierce bout with Delta: “Don’t Forget To Breathe.”

Terminus - The Silent Bell Toll

Many of us awoke to a kind of cautious, nihilistic optimism in 2022, as we tried to come to grips with a fucked-up world that is nevertheless filled with some wonderful people and opportunities still to mine a little piece of happiness. Not that this is a happy go-lucky album, more that it’s vibe feels positive.

The Silent Bell Toll is a record that’s both “doomed” and “stoned,” though on balance more doom metal than stoner rock. Every song feels important, with weighty drumbeats powering our feet as we move closer to the mysterious, the uncertain, the frightful. Not only is the low-end undeniable, the choruses are exceptional and this is largely because of the multi-part vocal harmonies. On guitar, they achieve some exquisitely tragic tones (check out my review here). I guess you can tell, I’m really into it.

Weedpecker - IV: The Stream Of Forgotten Thoughts

It’s strange to think about it now, but I avoided so many albums I thought would be “too happy” for me in 2021. It wasn’t until later in the year, well after the release of Weedpecker’s fourth album, that I gave it a fair shot. Suffice it to say, I became addicted to the Polish band’s fuzzy, distorted, beautiful and twisted sound. Come to think about it, I’ve loved everything Weedpecker has put out. One of the very first bands we featured in the early days of Doomed & Stoned, you might say we’ve kind of grown up together.

Sentimental feelings inside, The Stream of Forgotten Thoughts is hands down one of the best conceived and executed, recorded, and produced psychedelic spins of 2021, perhaps top of the heap. I respect Weedpecker’s artistic game and savvy musical choices.

Dopelord - Reality Dagger

They took my Album of the Year by a long mile, and Dopelord’s 'Sign of the Devil’ (2022) was indeed the consummate summary of the angst, disillusionment, and dread we were each feeling as we watched the world fall nation by nation to the behest of novel coronavirus. Who could have known Dopelard had three new songs cooked up for the occasion? Each of them individually is brilliant, but taken together Reality Dagger rules hard (review here). I keep coming back to these three songs, which I find myself sporadically humming (and yes, attempting to sing) when I’m out and about. “Your Blood” will forever echo in my skull.

Eyehategod - A History of Nomadic Behavior

I actually never gave this album a review. For one, the press release included the most thorough track-by-track description of an album I’ve ever seen in an EPK and I really didn’t know what I could say beyond it. Beyond that, however, it was tough for me to pin down just what kind of animal A History of Nomadic Behavior actually was. Certainly, the song-style is unconventional (and always has been), so it’s not at all certain what you want to do in response to the music. Sometimes you want to mosh or headbang or slam dance or whatever. Other times you feel “hostile, holy and diseased.”

These 12 songs (averaging more or less four minutes a peice) strike me as walking songs, and by that I mean the ravings of someone who is charging down the street, verbally shadowboxing his enemies. It makes me want to go and do likewise. Songs like “Anemic Robotic” and the legendary album closer “Every Thing, Every Day” play out like solioques – at times pissed off, at others Quixotic. Mike IX is the perfect madman, though he’s anything but crazy. You need to listen to these prophets of sludge because they’re speaking to today’s miseries, recounting what went wrong, and poking the future with a big stick as if to express both curiosity and contempt for what’s still ahead. Eyehategod is still the emphatic middle finger of Generation X.

Oak - Fin

We didn’t really get a chance to mourn the acts that disbanded last year beyond The Skull. There were so many storied or promising outfits that called it a day for a multiplicity of reasons. Many of them left so suddenly (or drifted away quietly) that we didn’t get a chance to really give them the goodbye we wanted. Take for example London’s rough 'n’ tumble rockers Oak. This band has some serious talent and could be on the stage with the best of them, operating somewhere in the neighborhood of Baroness, Elder, Dozer, and The Sword, and not too many doors down from Norma Jean. When I got the press release stating this was going to be their last EP, I offered to debut it for them and wrote my impressions. What a way to make an exit!

Megalith Levitation - Void Psalms

Mesmerizing, hypnotizing. This dirge is the epitome of stoic nihilism and cultic worship. To prepare you for what you’re about to hear, I recommend listening to the classic Melvins song “Boris,” only imagine it a tad more gritty, dismal, and darkly hued. Now you’re primed for the Megalith Levitation experience. Misty occult atmosphere pervades this surreal horror-trance. Monastic death chants, an electric wall of hazy fuzz, and a “bring out your dead” rhythm section – who wouldn’t fall hypnotically into the arms of Void Psalms? This one helps me to get shit done when I work (review here).

Misery Men - Devillusion

Portland’s Misery Men are as authentic a product of '90s grunge and the Pacific Northwest ethos as you’re liable to find anywhere else in doom metal. I discovered the band about 8 years ago, before they recorded a damned thing and have enjoyed watching Corey Lewis develop as a songwriter. Don’t suppose that you’ve witnessed it all when you come to this magic show. Misery Men have a bag full of Devillusion that’ll keep you guessing to the finish. Besides Corey’s storied love of cats, he’s got the best darned track on God’s green earth about those itty, bitty, butt-faced tardigrades you’re likely to hear, like ever.

The Waterfall King - Vol. 1

Their sound is at once earnest and dismal, drawing from a similar well of melodic doom as England’s Dopesmoker, and would fit well on a playlist with Helmet, Nothing, The Company Corvette, and bands that traffic in a depressive sound I call “dark apathy.” The Waterfall King nails that “sick of it all” mood with some wonderfully bleak expressions of azure blue. Songs like “Earth Roamer,” “Droning,” and “Heavy Rain” are morose, but irresistibly grungy. Their cover of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” succeeds. I’d like to think that had Kurt Kobain lived on, this is the kind of vibe he’d be into. After all, Kurt was a doomer before it was hip.

The Conclusion of the Matter

And there you have it – the 30 albums that were my constant companions in 2021. There were many others that impressed me, including releases by the magnificent Acid Mammoth, the mysterious Aiwass, and the revelatory Cavern Deep.

Clouds Taste Satanic put out the ultimate in instrumental post-doom covers, taking on some of the most unlikely material for a metal artist, juxtaposing the odd with the awesome. And High Desert Queen proved they could write more than one hit (“The Mountain vs. The Quake”) and dropped an album chock full of 'em.

The new Hooded Menace nailed it (of course). Old Horn Tooth birthed a genuine masterpiece of the doom genre in True Death (all 21 minutes of it). Purification released a new record, a collection of songs that singer Rainbow intended as the last album by the late, great Troll.

Both Savanah and Stargo gave us records (an LP and EP, respectively) that were positively cinematic in vision and execution. I’m telling you guys, the new classical music is being composed right now, in our times, with some of the bands I’ve mentioned in this piece. If you get a chance to see any of them live, you’re in for something monumental.

2021 was also the year that Shallow came back to life after a two-decade absence. Doomed & Stoned had the privilege of debuting their comeback LP …From The Ground Down almost exactly one year ago. I subsequently had a wonderful interview with the UK desert-grunge rockers (their story is remarkable).

Also not to be missed: new sounds from Blóð, Cave of Swimmers, Conviction, Domkraft, Dr. Colossus, Dunbarrow, Green Lung, Grieving, Hippie Death Cult, Jointhugger, Lazer Beam, Lucifungus, Moanhand, Monolord, Old Man Wizard, Sonic Flower, Spaceslug, Spelljammer, The Age of Truth, Thunderhorse, Vokonis, Weird Tales, and many others my brain fog is hindering me from mentioning.

Let me not fail to laud, however, Heavy Psych Sounds for their most enjoyable Doom Sessions series, pairing the likes of Bongzilla and High Reeper with Tons and Hippie Death Cult. It’s a thing of real beauty.

And now we move forward, looking to the remainder of 2022 as filled with intriguing possibilities. Despite meaningful setbacks, we trudge on ahead. So grab a slice of satisfaction, answer your curiosities, pursue what baffles you, and let loose your dearest ambitions. The world may be damned, but it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the sun when it does shine.

\DoomOn/

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

King Buffalo - The Burden of Restlessness

True story: King Buffalo is one of only two bands I’ve ever written fan letters to. Pretty sure I was afraid to write Guns 'n’ Roses when I was 13, but now in the age of email it makes a little more sense. The other band was Blackwater Holylight, by the way. Something about The Burden of Restlessness just struck me as wholly authentic as we weathered another year of pandemic listlessness.

The soul-wounding impact of fear turned to worry turned to sorrow and despair is real. For some it was fear turning into skepticism and anger or boredom devolving into apathy and cynicism. Whatever your experience, King Buffalo captured it all, with just right vocal temperature (one that exudes a spirit of that worn out and jaded “Whatever, Dude” mentality we get every now and again) combined with that patented guitar tone, a cascade of cleansing riffage, and clever integration of keys. You can read my full review to get the panorama of my thoughts on this apathetic little gem.

SONG OF THE YEAR

Apostle of Solitude - “Apathy in Isolation”

Fostermother’s “Hedonist” is a strong runner-up and was leading until those fall leaves got crispy, and my tastes took a turn for the melancholy. Monolord gave us a bonafide doom classic in “The Weary,” but it was Apostle of Solitude that really summed up the year with “Apathy in Isolation.” If year-one ushered in one traumatic event after another, year-two was listlessly boring, surreal, and laden with limitations and regrets.

Sometimes you just need a song for grieving, and this is such a track. It allows us to feel deeply without resorting to heart-on-the-sleeve sensationalism (or by playing so damn slow we’re in tears yawning). The Indianapolis quartet paints a picture of pandemic seclusion with deep, colorful shades of grey, ebony, and blue (with just the hint of a silver lining). It’s really three different songs united by an interlocking chorus. However you break it down and interpret it, there is respite here for the weary soul.

ALBUM COVER OF THE YEAR

Vokonis - Odyssey

After giving Vokonis several fantastic single-edition covers, Kyrre Bjurling shows what he can do with a full-on full-length album cover. I had this pinned as my favorite album cover of 2021 all the way back in January, when I received the promo for Odyssey.

To be sure, there were many extraordinary covers last year, but the vibrant nature of the statement Bjurling makes here is extraordinary. It’s just not something you see often in metal subgenres, which tend to gravitate toward a color scheme of black & white or muted earth tones.

That said, heavy music is breaking stereotypes and shattering preconceived notions every day. Here is a band that continues to evolve one expressive album after the next. In a way, the artwork also symbolizes Vokonis’ artistic journey. Having begun eons ago with Sleep-worshiping doom, Vokonis is taking their music ever closer to the horizon’s edge.