DeWolff – Muscle Shoals

 

 

DeWolff – Muscle Shoals
Mascot – 2024
Rock, Roots
Rated:  

Formed in The Netherlands in the year two thousand and seven, DeWolff have been cranking out tunes as a collective for almost two decades. They say time flies when you’re having fun and boy do DeWolff have fun! The brothers Pablo and Luka van de Poel and Robin Piso have traveled the world playing venues and festivals alike. They have played with tons of musicians across the world. The band has recorded in different countries, provinces, and states across the globe. Which brings us to the small yet historical town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, USA. Three Dutchmen walk into an Alabama studio, sounds like the setup to a bad joke your Uncle Joe might would tell at a family gathering right? No, this is not the case. The reason of course, as I mentioned, is the historic significance of Muscle Shoals. Specifically, the musical significance of the town and the famous studios within. DeWolff found themselves with a chance to record in FAME Studios and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, both of which produced legendary acts of R&B and Soul, as well as Rock ‘n’ Roll and Southern Rock, respectively. When that opportunity came, DeWolff seized the moment.

Which brings us to the album Muscle Shoals. Even those that are familiar with or have heard of the band DeWolff may not realize this is their tenth studio album. However, there is no burnout or lack of inspiration from this group, and you need only listen to Muscle Shoals as proof. DeWolff have their own personality, it’s an irresistible feel-good atmosphere projected throughout the entire album, and you can’t help but feel its energy. The retro vibes are strong, not only in the compositions and production, but also in the songwriting. We have the rockin’ tunes of ‘Natural Woman’, ‘Truce’, and ‘Ophelia’ that achieve a 70’s sound with the vocal harmonies and the ever-present keys that are staples of DeWolff’s music. They aren’t afraid to add claps, saxophone, or backing vocals to the mix, and the songs are all the better for these additions. We have the groovin’ tracks of ‘Out on the Town’, ‘Hard to Make a Buck’, and ‘Fools & Horses’ which are full of stories and perhaps even life lessons. The influences of old school rock and soul that have shaped DeWolff are evident as they shine on Muscle Shoals, and the chemistry of the band is undeniable. The brothers have similar voices, and the back-and-forth vocals on ‘Hard to Make a Buck’ and ‘Fools & Horses’ are really special, a true highlight of the album. We have the lovin’ songs, I put them in the same category as they are all related to love, though I’d like to point out the three different stages of a relationship. You have the upbeat beginning of ‘In Love’ with a walking bass line and splendid percussion, while the backup vocals echo the fresh new excitement of affection. ‘Let’s Stay Together’ is more of a reflection of the past, longing for that initial connection that has somewhat faded over time. The track is more of a somber affair, with an orchestral sound to the organ. Then we come to the end of this trio of songs with ‘Ships in The Night’, I feel it can be interpreted in two different ways. Either the love is rekindled or the realization hits that like ships in the night, separate paths can only align for a short time.

There are four other tracks that I didn’t mention, though I hope you go out and check the album out yourself and see what all my rambling and praise is about. After enjoying their previous album, last year’s ‘Love, Death & In Between’ as much as I did, I wasn’t expecting a new album so soon, nor was I expecting such a great album. DeWolff has so many components that I enjoy. Organs, vocal harmonies, and a retro sound, just to name a few. There’s plenty to love on Muscle Shoals, and if you love Blues, Soul, and Classic Rock, you’ll enjoy this latest outing.

(Written by Jon McGough)

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Review for Live at Royal Theatre Carré with Metropole Orchestra

Review for Tascam Tapes

Review for Thrust

Review for Roux-Ga-Roux

Review for Grand Southern Electric

Review for Orchards / Lupine

Review for Strange Fruits and Undiscovered Plants

Review for Dewolff

Stoner HiVe’s Top 10 Most Listened Artists Last Week…

 

 

Stoner HiVe’s
Top 10 Most Listened Artists Last Week…

DeWolff
The Silver Linings
Phe
Kadabra
Kambodsja
Morag Tong
Baroness
Ritual King
Robots of the Ancient World
Spider Kitten

G’morn! We used to do this little tom-tom write up at the bottom of the weekly list. And we shall try to start that up again. A sort of glance back on the week that has passed. So, as we are still recovering from the Phe album release party from Saturday, that was a good party! We’ll try to keep it short and sweet… September had a gazillion great releases; and October is shaping up to be the same. And we hope to write a few words about a handful of them. Last week we mentioned those two Umbra albums, by Gévaudan and Kadabra. We wrote something about Spider Kitten, The Silver Linings and Morag Tong. And we were extremely happy to see Reek of STOOM write something cool about Tumanduumband and Kyle SB about 10% Reptile. If you haven’t had the chance yet, scroll down or visit the blog to read up on those. Later on today, we’ll have another one by Kyle SB going live! But for now, we’re gonna try and get a bit of sunlight and see if we can get that head straight after that wild Phe party!

Stoner HiVe’s Top 10 Most Listened Albums Last Week…

 

 

Stoner HiVe’s
Top 10 Most Listened Albums Last Week…

DeWolff
Ruben Block
Abrams
Arthur Brown
Odonata
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
Acid Witch
Robot God
Candlemass
Dario Mars and The Guillotines

My sincere apologies for the lack of updates recently, but we have been swamped with work. The rent needs to be paid, and those ever-rising energy bills as well, as we all know. Some of the stuff was the usual horrible and annoying crap, but we also had some very fun interview assignments as well. That’s what keeps our energy level up! Spoke to Pablo from DeWolff, to Ruben from Triggerfinger and to Arthur. Or should we say, the Crazy Sir Arthur Brown! Got another one lined-up for Wednesday, but until then, we’re back to the horrible stuff for two days. Good news though, that Gravitational Perturbation album by Odonata is damn addictive! Good kicks! Check’m out! Check’m all out!

Nirwana Tuinfeest 2022

 

 Nirwana Tuinfeest 2022

 

Tomorrow... After what seems like a lifetime, it's finally time for the legendary Nirwana Tuinfeest festival again! All the way down in fields surrounding Lierop, Netherlands...

With amazing bands like Temple Fang, Speedmobile, Kadavar, DeWolff, De Staat, Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons, Supergrass & Sloper it will surely be legendary... Legendary... But we already said that... Legendary... 

I'm going to bed early tonight...

Stoner HiVe’s Top 10 Most Listened Albums Last Month…

 

 

Stoner HiVe’s 

Top 10 Most Listened Albums Last Month…

DeWolff
Electric Valley
Stonekind
Van Groover
Gods & Punks
Kvasir
The Blind Pilots
Seum
ZZ Top
Solar Haze

We don’t normally do those monthly lists anymore. Only the weekly ones… But this one, felt right to share, for some reason, only a day or so before the new Doom Charts will appear. And also because we have been swamped with work and have had little time to do some proper HiVe stuff and because we were keen to see how many of those will link up with the July Doom Charts…

DeWolff – Live at Royal Theatre Carré with Metropole Orchestra

 

 

DeWolff – Live at Royal Theatre Carré with Metropole Orchestra
Suburban / Electrosaurus Records – 2021
Rock, Blues, Seventies
Rated: ****

The three-headed classic rock ‘n roll monster from the South of the Netherlands keeps on doing that thing you would love to see them do. It’s DeWolff, the band we’ve been mentioning ever since the HiVe started. It’s the band we’ve dug ever since their first release from 2008 and that we’ve seen release majestic album after majestic album, blossoming and exploding into those wonderful records we keep on spinning. Especially that Grand Southern Electric and Thrust album of later years, which were simply put: classic solid rock gold. And then during that pandemic year of 2020 they went into Carré with a handful of people in the audience and a stage filled with musicians. Cause they got the Metropole Orchestra to perform live with them and it works pretty darn good! Even though it’s not that needed across the record, cause the three have enough power by themselves, it still add enough or even more on those moments that called out for something orchestral. Those subtle touches during the blues track Medicine for instance or on those few tracks when it all comes together perfectly and during Sugar Moon when the Orchestra takes center stage. A track list of old and new songs, translated into epic proportions by the DeWolff three and the Metropole fifty. It’s DeWolff, Hammond, guitar and drums. And a complete orchestra to subtle fill every nook and cranny and turn the compositions into something grand…

(Written by JK)

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Stoner HiVe’s Top 10 Most Listened Albums Last Week…

 

 

Stoner HiVe’s 

Top 10 Most Listened Albums Last Week…

Stonekind
DeWolff
Deathchant
Wolf Alice
Kvasir
Electric Valley
Subterranean Masquerade
Van Groover
Civilized Worm
Yo No Se

Stoner HiVe’s Top 5 Most Listened To Albums Last Week…

Stoner HiVe’s

Top 5 Most Listened To Albums Last Week…

I Saw The Deep

Lord Loud

Millionaire

Wor Pigs

The Goners

Another telegram style tam tam update of the past week before we head out into the sickly world! Cause the world is sick. Has been for a while. On many levels. But it is now visible to all. The plague is upon us. We will all sneeze ourselves to death. It’s still hard to believe that a new strain of the flu can already disrupt human society and the world to such a degree. What if something even more deadly or contagious hits us? Ye gods! I think everyone should start thinking about heaving a vegetable garden instead of flowers. Might be the wise thing to do… But of course in a few months time this will all have passed and we all will think fondly back at the time when the entire world almost grinded to a halt… We’ll see… But let’s not go the route of all media and start blabbing the same things over and over about the disease. Let’s focus on the things that will get us through this period! Awesome freaking music!! DeWolff streamed a show they did for an empty venue because their tour got cancelled. In my hometown there will be the Isolation Sessions. Featuring bands from the  region, like An Evening With Knives, who are now, like DeWolff unable to tour for their just released album. Those Isolation Sessions will be streamed and will become available for pay what you want purchase on Bandcamp. But that’s the future! The past week was filled with other stuff. We’ve have become totally addicted to I Saw The Deep. We mentioned their Vimana release last Friday on the Quick Fire Friday round and man, the release has rocked me to my core! It’s been on repeat the entire weekend. A gigantic slab of doom, progressive and psychedelic, deep sci-fi rock, which features power rock drumming with metal riffing and grungy vocals. A cathedral of heaviness if ever there was one! Lord Loud’s new album Timid Beast won’t be released till somewhere around September. But we have been blessed by King Volume Records and Kozmik Artifactz to get it earlier. Fuzzy, gritty garage that ticks all the right boxes, from proto to punk and from psych to power! One to look forward to! We had the pleasure to speak with Tim ‘Tipover’ Vanhamel when he released his Sciencing album in 2017. And now he’s already back with another Millionaire release Applz NOT Applz record. (Where’s the ‘not’ sign in ascii codes?) Out on Unday Records its filled with more  earworms and catchy melodies than one can handle, especially since it always turns around on itself and become weird or even insane. And those earworms, those melodies that will stick with you throughout the day do that more and more with every new listening session. Wor Pigs from France released Beasts and it is righteous animal indeed. Heavy rock! Stoner and psychedelic in abundance, bluesy and enthralling. It drags you along on an adventure from those first few notes. There is no escape! And it will get rid of the pain of being a man. And when you’re looking for some tunes to cruise with? To rev up the engine and go out looking for trouble? Check out The Goners new release Good Mourning. The Five from Sweden have delivered a tasty garage and hardrock album that has no trouble showing us all some class. Yes, we are the squares now. And we shall have to pony up the dough, they immediately give you a whiff of something you might never even knew existed. They ride and raid like marauding cavalry, and sound like they’ve punched their way out of a hundred rumbles, stayed alive with only their boots and their fists. Ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on and we love to get loose! So, you’d better go and check’m out! You know you have all the time in the world now! Check’m out! Check’m all out!

DeWolff – Tascam Tapes

DeWolff – Tascam Tapes

Mascot – 2020

Rock, Soul

Rated: ****

I remember a Blue Cheer gig in my home town back around 2008. I remember me and my buddies watching this band of really young kids playing the warm up set for the few people already there. The band was called INFA and wasn’t really that interesting, except for the young guitar player. We all looked at each other and said: that kid is going places! That kid was Pablo van de Poel and has been touring the world with his two DeWolff brothers for a while now. Their thirteenth release is called Tascam Tapes and was recorded in every dirty little hole they visited the past year. Often recorded in the dressing rooms, toilets or one of the rented chambers in some rundown little shithole people dared call a hotel. Without amplifiers, without a drumkit, no Hammond organ but just some weird looking eighties synthesizers and rhythm tracks lifted of old soul songs. For a three piece band that is known for their massive sound on stage and wild sound on earlier records it is a damn different approach. And one that famously cost the band only fifty bucks to record. Well, it still has a massive amount of soul and can still sound angry, mean or filthy. But it is more laidback and seems to float through so many layers of soul it seems insane. It is a different kind of evolution and one that is definitely welcomed by a DeWolff lover from day one, cause the past records have been a steady line into the past, the sound of yore and the roots on all the greats that came before. This explores soulful dimensions that groove, that swing, that grate, that stutter and makes you long for more. Cause we know all about their hard rocking hard rock, their seventies approach and their psychedelic trucking. This is different and we love it!

(Written by JK)

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The Number One album of 2011

The Number One album of 2011

Before we start the Countdown of 2019 we look back at those past 10 years of Stoner HiVe. We know it is now the eleventh edition of the Countdown. But we celebrate 10 years. 10 years of heavy riffs, romps and stomps! 10 years of heavy magic! That all started back in 2009 when the blog started, just so we would have a vehicle to count down the best 20 albums of 2009. The edition of 2011 had 48 lists to tally which of course made the outcome even more valid then when we started two years earlier. That list, deduced out of the lists sent in by 48 heavy music fiends,  started with DeWolff – Orchards / Lupine on Number 20. It featured Lo-Pan and their Salvador album on Number 3 and the amazing Hisingen Blues album by Graveyard on Number 2. So what album beat even that one to the Number One position back in 2011... (For the rest of the Top 20 of 2011, visit the Countdown So Far post on the blog...) We wrote:

“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…”

And this record, to be honest, still gets spun on a fairly regular basis. It was the album that started the infatuation with the three from Elder. Dead Roots Stirring still has something special. It might truly be one of the best ten albums of the decade. The progressive side of it offset by the psychedelic meandering brings out the best of these three. It soon become this otherworldly current that has you envisioning recurring riffs, recurring hooks that aren’t really there or are they? And after that seminal release they took the world by storm nobody seemed to be able to outmaneuver Elder. And guess what, it still is one hell of a record!

Elder – Dead Roots Stirring 

The Grand East – What A Man

The Grand East – What A Man

Self released / BB Records – 2018

Rock, Blues, Soul, Classic, Psych

Rated: ****

Are you looking for something soulful? Something with an irresistible groove? Check out the new effort What A Man by Dutch five-piece The Grand East. These cats show their love for their influences and there are influences a plenty. Think The Doors, The Who, Velvet Underground and even something classic like the Allman Brothers. But none of them become more than influences cause it’s The Grand East we hear here. A feel for the days of yore and everything retro; but with so many modern touches that it never becomes anything but a majestic rock record that quickly warms your heart. Producers Pablo van de Poel (from DeWolff) and Simon Akkermans (from Bombay, Jungle By Night) have delivered an intense crispy and energetic sound that works extremely well on the song with a more garage approach, the psychedelic ones and all that soulful gold that is spread out across the album! What A Man, what a record!

(Written by JK)

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Helldorado

Helldorado

In two weeks time the crazy train departs once again for trip through Helldorado! The festival that had it’s glorious first edition last year and is now back for more. What a ride that was! And they are upping the scale of this rock ‘n roll freakshow for the second edition! So, what you thought was weird last time around will now be mundane! Ofcourse we’re all just going for the clowns, bearded ladies, knife throwers, wrestling acts and everything bizar! But what a line-up as well!!! Monolord, Greenleaf! Kadavar! Vintage Caravan! Turbonegro! Danko Jones! Zeke! Dewolff! Nick Oliveri! Dwarves! Lucifer! Death Alley! Supersuckers! And quite a few more! Not sure what the side show will be this time around?! It might be you!!! Go grab one of the remaining tickets and join the freakshow!

Helldorado

Not sure what the side show will be this time around?! 

It might be you!!! 

Go grab one of the remaining tickets and join the freakshow!

Helldorado

Stoner HiVe's Top 10 artists listened to last month...

Stoner HiVe's

Top 10 artists listened to last month...

DeWolff

Arctic Monkeys

Depiedra

Fire Down Below

Gozu

Khan

Sierra

Kayamata

Green Desert Water

Lords of Acid

Stoner HiVe’s Top 5 artists listened to last week…

Stoner HiVe’s

Top 5 artists listened to last week…

DeWolff

Khan

Depiedra

Kayamata

VRSA

So yeah, Sonic Whip happened! What a fine festival that is. Good beers, good people and great music! Let’s hope there will be more editions of this fine little festival. And with the hangover in great form we did not do much then listen to the records we had already been listening to for the better part of the week. That awesome new record by DeWolff! Thrust is a classic in every sense of the word. Khan and their Vale album; cause when Doktor420 says it’s his favorite album of the month, we’d better listen up and put it on repeat! Cause the Doktor is always right! Main man Steve Howe and Outlaws Of The Sun put us on to Depiedra and their Desertico album. Steamy Chilean stoner that will put you in the right mood for a wild night! The Dutch fourpiece Kayamata is back with a release called Below, stoner metal, space rock, nineties alternative and so much more. Damn fine album! And VRSA have released a new three-track EP called Cvlt of Machina. Phantom Of An Era from 2015 was already damn good; this new release ups the ante in fine form. Wilder, grittier and on a different plain of heaviness altogether! Check it out! Check’m all  out!

DeWolff – Thrust

DeWolff – Thrust

Mascot – 2018

Rock, Blues, Psych, Southern

Rated: *****

As ya’ll know, we’ve been in love with everything DeWolff does since they started putting out music. Well, almost. We did not dig their former one called Roux-Ga-Roux as much as all the other albums. But they are back now and better than ever! Sexy, sixties, seventies, seducing and southern! These are the real super sounds! The new record is called Thrust and gives us everything we always loved from DeWolff; and they continue that trek towards the great musical past that they seemed to have started on with the Grand Southern Electric album. Ever more Allman Brothers, ever more Zeppelin and ever more pure gold. It’s their seventh studio album and the boys have produced a grand classic if ever there was one. Describing small personal moments just as easily as commenting on the big evils in the world. And just hear that luscious Hammond wailing away and ofcourse the magnificent guitar work by Pablo himself. Yes, we go overboard on superlatives again, and we do not apologize for that, cause Thrust is magnificent!

(Written by JK)

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