Number 1

 

 

Number 1

And now, on January 1st, 2026, with almost a hundred points more than Kal-El at Number 2 we arrive at the Number 1 album of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2025. Happy New Year to one and all! And we thank you all for voting and following along. As we stated before, it is the reason we started Stoner HiVe back in 2009, so it is amazing and humbling to see how it has blossomed into what it is today. And so did the band which is featured here on the Number 1 spot. We followed them from the first self-titled EP in 2015, through ten years of heavy progressive riffing and into the landmark album they released two years ago and then again topping that one this year. We wrote about the record right before the album came out at the end of October on Magnetic Eye Records. And without ruining that entire review, the crux of it was something along the lines of this: “At the very edge of existence, the band ignite a universe. The album feels like a myth forged in molten riffs, soaring harmonies and cosmic ambition. The quartet’s boldest work to date, transforms progressive stoner into a living creation story, where fragile worlds rise, gods clash and fate is written in fury and fire! From the opening detonation, the record plunges the listener into a realm of tectonic guitars and celestial melodies, both beautiful and volatile. Crushing anthems, thunder with divine aggression, while moments of shimmering calm, add depth and wonderment. The epic finale binds it all in apocalyptic splendor. With expanded textures, lush synth work, and razor sharp songwriting, the album captures the sound of a band bursting with inspiration and at full creative power. Delivering a sound, heavy enough to shake the heavens, and visionary enough to leave a mark... On eternity… 

According to all of your votes, on Number 1, we find: 

 

HOWLING GIANT - CRUCIBLE & RUIN

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Magnetic Eye Records

 

Howling Giant – Howling Giant EP Review 

 

Howling Giant – The Space Between Worlds Review

 

Number 13 on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2019

 

Number 5 on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2023 

Number 1

 

 

Number 1

This is it! We’re here. January 1st. Happy New Year! And we thank you all again for voting for the Countdown and then following along. We love doing it! And as we stated before, it is why the little old Stoner HiVe blog started back in 2009. We jump 296 points from Slomosa on Number 2 to get to the album that received the most love from all the albums that were showered with love by you all this year. It arrived early this year and its by the band that made the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown back in 2020 as well, with that years’ amazing album. Number 9 back then and they receive the Gold Medal this year. We are once again so happy we got to see them whirlwind around the globe and catch them many times live in one year. That 2020 album was amazing, but this one is different. This is much wilder, rougher and more disturbing. With almost white-out droning noise moments, contrasting those prog rock turning into kraut instances and vocals that might haunt your dreams. Grandiose in scale and execution, the main goal for this album seems to have been to keep the listener strapped into a chair, floored on a boat braving a storm or a rocket ship blasting through space, never knowing what comes next, but always keen to find out. A story about an expedition in the distant past, bringing people together in a community, through a language they share. This odyssey seems to define a distinct shared world from which heroes have sailed and to which they attempt with varrying succes to return. The West was shaped by many an odyssey that was first chronicled in the East. This album, Herculean in proportions, as rich and as powerful as it is, is an odyssey that might shape the music of a future to come…

According to all of your votes, on Number 1 we find: 

Slift – Ilion

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Sub Pop Records

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Number 1

The jump in points is staggering. No less than 1332 points above Green Lung on Number 2 we find the Number 1 album according to all the votes that came in. Indeed, it was at the very top of many a list and actually on some spot somewhere on almost every list that came in. Crazy! Which results in this majestic lead. Which does fit a majestic band and their majestic comeback album. On many levels a landmark album and on many levels a dangerous release. Cause what does this mean for the other band half of the members are in? Cause the past years we could enjoy that signature circling, stomping and grooving guitar sound that the main axe slinger produces while he rocked out with a different quartet. And after eight records with that band, you could easily have forgotten that the band once started as a side-project. Because the guitarist wanted to explore more seventies rock touches and because the other band did not want to tour as much anymore. Some of them wanted to finish their education or something weird like that. So, after that final 2008 album, this went quiet around the band. A gig here or there, a few more a few years later. And then, back in April, it was there, suddenly, coming in out of the void. Filled with more of that sultry and sliding stoner rock, that you might have gotten accustomed to from that other band, but now, a bit rougher, edgier and wrapped in barbed wire. Biggest difference of course is the vocalist, who is able to touch that raw and intense nerve in a different way. Although, he does manage to do a bit of that drawling sound you know so well from the other vocalist on a few moments as well. Which makes the new album a complementary and vortex like whirlpool of influences and memories… One that can drown you just as easily as set you adrift…

The Number 1 album of 2023 according to all you who voted for the Stoner HiVe top 20 Countdown is…

Dozer – Drifting In The Endless Void

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Blues Funeral Recordings

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Number 1

 

Here we are. The clock has struck twelve.. It's a new year. January first. Happy New Year everyone!! And we're here, with the Number 1 album of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2022 according to all you lovely voters out there. It’s been a wild ride once again and to all the followers that voted for Top 20 Countdown and all the followers that just followed the Top 20 Countdown, thank you! Thank you from every fiber of my being. To all the bands that were featured, thank you for releasing such incredibly music, thank you providing us with a moment of solace, release, or the perfect soundtrack to a certain moment in time. We all adore the stuff you do! Please keep doing it! And trust me, there’s a huge list of albums that only barely missed the Top 20, proving once again that there is so much great music released, it boggles the mind! And we are blessed, that we have been privy to discovering the Heavy Underground, and all that good and heavy rock that resides there… BUT… Before we get too sappy, too teary eyed, let’s say a few words about Number 1! The band has been around now for some seventeen years, but they still seem to be able to do the impossible. They seem to be able to release an even more incredible album after the incredible album that came before. This, sixth studio album, is an even more progressive piece of art than what came before. And where some might raise an eyebrow concerning the vocals, for others the vocals on this album raises the amount of love for the album. And thanks to the guest appearance of Samavayo-vocalist, Behrang Alavi on two songs, it becomes on of the best vocal performances the band ever produced. And that idea is something that permeates every little detail of the album. Their best. Take the beautiful guitarwork on Endless Return for instance, the keyword on third track Coalescence or that amazing fourth track Merged In Dreams – Ne Plus Ultra with its intense tension arc, diamond hard riffs and whirling interplay between guitar and keys. It simply does not get any better than this… Well… At one point in the future, the band will surely release another album… The Gold Medal.. The Number 1 album of 2022 according to all you who voted.. is…

 

Elder – Innate Passage

 

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Number 1

There can be only one… We jump a whopping seven hundred points from King Buffalo on Number 2 to reach the Number 1 spot of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2021… An album that quickly took the lead when the votes started coming in and never really relinquished it. The Swedish outfit did the same back in April when it made the Doom Charts and has been turning ever more into the all out favorite. Or as The Doom Oracle wrote on the Doom Charts: “The album provides in a mercilessly challenging way that seems to beat the ever-living breath out of you with tracks like Perpetuator, Into Orbit and Dawn of Man only to be lured into a false sense of safety from an instrumental Krank Blekhet, then chewed apart and spat back out again by Audiodome, at its conclusion, left bereft and speechless and in a painfully deafening silence longing for more. Without a doubt, we’re going to be hearing about this release all year and into end-of-year lists if not at the top of them.” Exactly, it is a pummeling affair, without much moments of clarity or moments of light; it is something that grows beneath the surface and actually promises something for a new future that will be here soon. Or might in fact be here now. Organic. Electric. Hypnotic. Loud. We wish all the bands, all the people that voted for the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2022, and everybody else on this rock that soars to space, all the best for 2022! The HiVe freaks have spoken, the Gold Medal goes to, the Number 1 album of 2021 is, according to you all out there that voted:

Domkraft – Seeds

 

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Number 1

 

There can be only one… We climb almost two hundred points from the amazing Venus Skytrip album by Psychlona on the Number 2 position of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2020 to reach the Gold Medal. The Number 1 of 2020! According to all the lists sent our way, all the votes cast, this is the best album of 2020. So we thank all of you once again for voting, for helping the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown become more valid with every passing year and we thank all the bands for delivering all those amazing albums! Twenty years ago this Swedish quartet delivered a landmark album and now the boys are back with a follow-up and yet another masterpiece! Atavistic stoner rock with a majestic groove; an ode to all that pure heavy rock goodness and that spacey delivery. It is not the work of a band trying  to recapture the magic of that first album but just a band of brothers that are finally taking the next step of their journey. We can go on and on about all the albums that we heard during this insane year; we can profess our love for many of them; but this one delivered all of that condensed and turned their sound into quicksilver and made it move through all manner of energy and particles that simply became unbreakable adoration for all that we worship about this thing called stoner rock. It is a dream come true, an ode once again and even bigger that before! We bow before the four and beg them to keep taking a next step in their majestic journey; we give you the Number One album of 2020… The Gold Medal goes to:

Lowrider – Refractions

 

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Blues Funeral

Number 1

Number 1

We jump almost forty points to reach the Gold Medalist of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2018 according to the 79 of you lovely freaks that sent in their lists of favorite albums this year. We thank all of those voters once again, without you this would not be possible and it would not be this much fun to do. We also thank all those bands that made the Top 20 with all of those amazing albums! But we also thank the bands that did not make it; cause there is beauty on all of them! And like every year, we will list the 21 to 100 in the next few days somewhere. So, at least a few of those albums will get a little more attention; even though they probably deserve even more. But even though it was obvious from the picture above, we still need to say a few words about the Number 1 album of 2018. Cause it came with a bang! Like a gunshot on an empty street! Like a hammer strike against the Gods… We are referring to the album released by a legendary trio. A gang of three who had not produced a full album for twenty years. The doom is vibrant, alive and more ingenious than ever. This is not doom that will drag you towards the abyss, but one that takes you up high and on an adventure. We’re going on a journey packed with riff-axes and bass-machetes. Raw, slow, delaying and discoloring sludge-riffs, carrying monotonous vocals that waft you to sleep. Thick, dirty, bass-tones deliver the perfect heartbeat for your slumber and dreams of the ideal marriage between stoner metal and doom… The Gold Medal goes to…  

Sleep - The Sciences

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Number 1

We have arrived at the Number One spot. The Gold Medal. The Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown that started on December 13th ends today, on the First of January of 2018. We jump another seventy points from Monolord and their amazing Rust album on Number Two to reach the top position. An album by a band that has made the Number One position every year they released an album. (Well, since 2011) So, they must be doing something absolutely right for all you lovely freaks out there. You gals and guys voted this album to be the best one released this year. As you did back in 2011 and in 2015. Well. There is no need to beat around the bush here, we all know what is coming. The Boston trio released another thrilling album that kept us spinning the record until the needle ran through the groove. Their mixture of psychedelic rock, heavy stoner and epic metal has you soaring through all the marvelous dreams they evoke. The progressive nature of the music they create has them searching for new boundaries every time again. Hence, guest spots were filled during the making of this album and the trio became a quartet or even a quintet. Adding extra guitar, keys and pedal steel to the sound, and adding vibrancy and lushness to a sound that already seemed to have everything. It is riff-awesome, tasty melodic, soulful and catchy metal. But above all, the tectonic tension arcs that we know this band to deliver have evolved into something other worldly. It seems to reflect something completely different and perhaps upside down. So yes, there can be only, and now,  right before everyone around the globe has celebrating the coming of 2018 we present to you the Number One Spot, The Gold Medal according to all the lovely freaks that voted... Here it is... 

Elder - Reflections of a Floating World

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Number 1

There can be only one. A 1000Mods stood firm on Second Place. But to reach our Gold Medalist, the Numero Uno, the one true legendary album of 2016, we almost have to double the amount of points of the 1000Mods album Repeated Exposure To… Incredible! And something I had not expected. Not because of some form of doubt about this album or this band. Cause they were ofcourse also present on the Countdown before, on Number 9 back in 2014 and Number 14 in 2012. But because there were so many great albums released this year. I reckoned the field would have been much closer together. I, have to say, to some shame perhaps, that I had not recognized the status and amazing beauty of this album. In former years I knew, as everyone probably did, that Elder would win. Or Wo Fat or even Electric Wizard. But while I kept listening to this album over and over and enjoying every freaking riff and moment of it. I had not recognized it’s true quality. I do now. And it will continue to be pure energy for me from this moment on. Righteous fuel. And I need fuel. I am a serious consumer. And I am a firm believer, that on some nights, when the moon is full, and the animals are on the prowl, a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles with the right kind of music very loud on the radio… And yes, this album will make it run even faster and even further…

Greenleaf – Rise Above The Meadow

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Number 1

Number 1

“My rider is a few biscuits, a few cakes, a meat plate, a cheese plate, some cigs, some JDs. I must say, I'm not completely fixated on Jack Daniel's – it's just that it's the one with the best distribution system worldwide. At one point I mainly drank Southern Comfort mixed with Special Brew. What was I thinking?” ~ Lemmy

The jump from Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats as runner-up in the Stoner HiVe top 20 countdown of 2015 is no less that thirty-seven points. The absolute Gold medal this year goes to a trio that was already predicted to steal the prize back in February. And who already took first place back in 2011 with their Dead Roots Stirring album. They managed to turn the musical year upside down and uprooting the expected slow start of the year. They ran away with the Doom Charts those first months and came in second place in the overall Doom Charts. Where yours truly wrote: “Stupefying all of us. Or at least most of us. They came out swinging with an album at the very beginning of this year that perhaps even bested that awe-inspiring performance on Roadburn 2013. The Boston trio released their album unto the world in February and all of us kept spinning that record until the needle ran through the groove. Their mixture of psychedelic rock, heavy stoner and epic metal will have you climbing to incredible heights in the dreams they evoke. There is no escaping and once you’re in, there is really no way out until those final mythical fading moments... For the album is one gigantic tension arc. It will make you forget all about time and place and experience something that only the true wise men know. It won’t teach, but simply show…”  The stuff of legends, a contribution that will live on forever in the pantheon of rock. A perfect record, a pure ballistically delivered album, a blow against the empire, a rigging singular beautiful strike, a hammer of the gods that will sound on for eternity…

Elder – Lore

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Number 1

Number 1

“The first whisky from Lakes Distillery, a British distillery in Cumbria that are as proud of their picturesque part of England as they are their excellently blended whisky. Both The One whisky and Cumbria are equally beautiful, but only one of them has sweet, spicy notes and a whiff of smoke, so we know which one we'll put in our glasses (it's the whisky, in case you were wondering). Sublime, mellow whisky, a gorgeous blend with the slightest hint of peat, pepper and wood. Don’t mess with The One…”

We jump 90 points from YOB’s majestic album Clearing The Path to Ascend to reach the gold medal of this year’s Stoner HiVe top 20 countdown. Produced by a band that has made the countdown with almost every release the past years. Reaching Number 8 in 2009 and Number 13 in 2012. A band that inspired honorable madman Tony to write a love letter this year and inspired so many more to vote for this band as the number one release or among the top of their favorites in 2014. And the groove is indeed strong in this band. They know how to stoner and they know how to metal. With a distinct swagger and luscious riffs that call for a spittoon looking container in the manner of stomping drums; they manage to control and evoke that late night blues feeling that flows underneath all that heavy rock. It will be that trusty companion that you will turn to whenever you need something summoned or awoken. Something swinging, with distorted fuzz, molasses sludge and hypnotic bass work. It is the voodoo they do so well! And we all know these three cats will deliver and keep delivering… Don’t mess with Texas…

Wo Fat – The Conjuring

Tony’s love letter…

Fast N Bulbous’s description

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Number 1

Number 1

“Fiji Gold Beer is by no means a pilsner that deserves that gold label. It is a basic yellow fizzy in appearance, but with a slightly richer color and a pathetically thin head. The aroma is not offensive, but it doesn't conger up a huge desire to drink it, either. The hop profile in the nose is slightly reminiscent of a decent Pilsner, but that's where the similarities end. The least attractive part of this beer is the sweet graininess in its taste. It's out of place, and has the same kind of malt off-flavor you usually find in a first-time home brewer’s beer, before he or she has discovered the complexities of grain and hops and just throws a pre-hopped extract brew together and wonders why it doesn't taste pro. I often describe this flavor as tasting "like a headache," though it's not usually an alcohol or ester issue. The mouth feel is fine. But, that's not enough to carry this beer…”

 

In a last ditch effort, after Clutch held the Number 1 position for days on end, this one surpassed it during the final two days. It now has the Gold Medal firm in its grasp. With eight points more. It is of course the album that was highly anticipated for quite some time. One that was meant to be released earlier; but due to legal issues which arose (thanks to the one that did not partake) after their initial successful reunion run (minus one), they had to change name and lots of bass players that were also there in the very beginning decided to call it quits at that point. For the band that started it all, the band that forever will be known as the godfathers of stoner and the flag carriers of the desert sound was brought to life in 2010 thanks to the vocalist. After which the original drummer joined and plans for the future were brewing at the start of 2011. As mentioned before the project grinded to halt due to multiple legal complications and fans feared the worst. But all good things take time and will always come to pass. For it was definitely worth the wait. The album is a throwback to the good ol’ days; and that lo desert sound that we all love so dearly. But with a more loose, bluesy and perhaps even jazzy sound; you can hear the boys matured and discovered their inner soul and recognized its beauty. The vocalist sounds better than ever, the grooves are there, the riffs are damn fine and the drummer is so magnificent that he alone would have deserved a top spot this year. All that’s left to do is to poor another beer, put on the album and dream away under the starry sky as the fireworks explode above… Peace…

 

Vista Chino – Peace

 

 

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Number 1

Number 1

“Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power and they will reign with him for a thousand years.” Revelation 20:6

I guess there’s only one way and one place to end this list truly righteous and beautifully poetic. For it is the year of Sweden and of a lust for that vintage feeling of musical magic. So it is fitting that these guys that sparked so many of the bands we listen to ended up on the Number One position. For they themselves honor the music that inspired them and most of the other great releases this year. With twenty points more than Kadavar they pay homage to the heavy and darkened sounds of yore and exhume a dusty brown air of nostalgia but never one that is stale or forlorn. In fact their vintage atmosphere has a loud and modern feeling to it. Which is something they might have to thank their new members for. It is mystical music that speaks of ancient legends and conjures up visions of true artists fighting their way out of kaleidoscopic straightjackets of their own making. And cast away they dare to take flight in a new fashion that takes some getting used to. But once the buttons are buttoned; it is snug and fits like a glove!

Witchcraft – Legend   

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Number ONE

“I am Garak, the original Guru of Stoner HiVe. And I proclaim this to be the number one album of 2011…”

Number ONE

We have come to the absolute winner of 2011. The gold medallist so to speak. These young puppies ended up as top dog after a gigantic sprint in the end in which they overtook Graveyard, Skraeckoedlan and Lo-Pan, which occupied the first place for the first few weeks. Their sophomore album keeps in vein with all the retromania records that have been released in 2011; but this time around they use the seventies doom variation foremost and add to this a fuzzy groove that surfs over the sound waves like a mad Hawaiian sea cowboy. And even with their progressive sound structures they still remain droning and hypnotic with an ever present cosmic and psychedelic feel to it. It gives new meaning to the word heavy and uses the blues roots in a distinctive, personal and excellent way. It flows in a melodic way that is unparalleled and delivers after every build up in their own way without aiming to be explosive all the time. They know how to be subtle, they know what silence is all about and know when the fires of old must burn and burn and char and destroy. As if these guys know the old soul of the world and have been here for many a year…

Elder – Dead Roots Stirring