Number 6

 

 

Number 6

We mentioned it before the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2025 started and mentioned it again when we talked about Number 7. But today, we jump more than 700 points to reach Number 6! 700 points! That’s a lot! A personal favorite of mine that will surely end up in the Top 3 of my personal list. A band that also made the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown  of 2023 with their album from that year. Released through Full Contact Safari Records in October we jotted down some words about this album at the moment of release. The Melbourne, Australia three outdid themselves delivering a string with which to pull the curtain away and have all onlookers be amazing by the world being revealed. Across two vast, immersive pieces, the trio bend time, letting guitars swell like tides, synths haunt the horizon, and rhythms pulse with ancient weight. This is heavy music that breathes, meditative, cinematic, and deeply physical, moving from sparse, desolate calm to towering eruptions of post-metal force. Solemn, guiding vocals cut through the expanse, leading the listener with purpose rather than excess. Nothing here rushes or unravels; every layer is deliberate. Cosmic yet grounded, ferocious yet serene, the album feels unearthed rather than written, a landscape to inhabit, to return to… and slowly absorb… until everything around you has returned to dust… 

On Number 6 we find: 

KHAN - THAT FAIR AND WARLIKE FORM // RETURN TO DUST

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Khan - That Fair and Warlike Form // Return to Dust

 Khan's Creatures on the Stoner HiVe Top Countdown of 2023

Number 6

 

 

Number 6

Before we get to a few smaller jump in points we make another huge leap with no less than 176 points from Rezn at Number 7 to reach this album on Number 6. A band that made the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown before as well. Reaching Number 9 in 2022 and Number 2 back in 2020. A band who’s vocalist is known to say whatever comes to mind and therefor gets himself into trouble often enough. And a drummer that must have a lot of Scottish heritage in his veins! Ho ho ho, sorry about that, but those remarks might only make sense to the band themselves. It’s an album that features two new members and that fact warped the sound a bit. There is more blues now, in tones and overall feel. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t enough of that riff fuel that was always there. Or those psychedelic and stoner rock motifs that will get you sky high. No, that vision is still quite clear! They are the same comic rockers that will rock every stage and they are the same seventies loving fuzz monsters. They just implore more earthy sounds now and have become even bigger experts in conjuring up a warm and nostalgic feel, whatever the lyrical subject might be… Even if it involves murderous cults…

According to all of your votes, on Number 6 we find:

Psychlona - Warped Vision

 

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Magnetic Eye Records

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Phil Hey Interview

Number 6

 

 

Number 6

It takes almost 60 points to jump from Margarita Witch Cult on Number 7 to reach Number 6! Where we find an album about which we wrote a lengthy piece about when it was released. And a band that made the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown before, back in 2015. And who certainly would have made it more times had we started sooner, since they only released one album since the HiVe started back in 2009. A band that has been putting out music since 1994 and was founded a year before that. And is still fronted by the same Queen. A band that delivered amazing stoner, metal and doom albums, that all meandered through the psychedelic landscape. High dependable and always delivering the good stuff. But with this new album, they go beyond all that. All those boundary markers from before are ripped out of the soil and not just moved but thrown into the endless void.
It’s a sonic trip that tries to make you envision interplanetary existence as well as the fact that linear life does not exist. Your path will swerve every which way but straight. And that is exactly how the music comes across, as an extremely dense, yet meandering path through the wasteland of existence. The moments of release, when inhibitions are elegantly stripped away and euphoria is on the brink of exploding, feels as much as those tab induced experiences, where you were an intrepid inner space wanderer, as music can possibly attain. But as we mentioned, there is light and vision, but also darker recesses that are more dangerous, thanks to that dense and doom approach. And then when it all ends, that final track, if there’s ever been a song in the stoner doom genre that represents that green light, that sense of hope and belief, that there can be a better future, that the journey to the unknown destination, might be fruitful, this is it. Heavily inspired by many space exploration movies and ideas, and the fact that the band makes it sound as big as the universe and thought provoking about human inner workings, is beyond… Many albums have felt like a small and logical step for the King, but this is a giant leap for the Queen…

On Number 6 we find...

Acid King – Beyond Vision


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Blues Funeral Recordings

Number 6

 

 

Number 6

We jump only twelve points from Freedom Hawk on Number 7 to reach this band and their album on Number 6. The next jump will be bigger though… Anyway, on Number 6 we find a band that even got some remarks from voters that did not vote for them, stating: ‘well, I’m not voting for them, they’re going to get enough votes anyway.’ I guess there are even some Stoner HiVe Top 20 followers that do some strategic voting! Holy hell! Well, we never got around to mentioning them on the HiVe this year, but we did manage to see them live again after a gap of quite some years. On the Helldorado Festival in Eindhoven… But due to wild nature of the festival, things tend to get a bit hazy there and I have bizarre memories of seeing them on all of the stages of the Festival. Indeed, it got a bit weird over there! You could say Red Alert! Watch out! But we don’t really listen, cause We Strive For Excellence in whatever we do. Even partying… Or well… And more extremely personal stuff, it also features a song, that in my mind, could have been the best song of this year, if only they did a few things a bit different. I love the voice man. And so do all the fans of this band. And Jackhammer Our Names, could have featured more of the voice, more of the proclamation, declaration nature it does so well… Anyway, obvious from the start… We find on Number 6!

Clutch – Sunrise On Slaughter Beach


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Out on Weathermaker Music

On to Number 5!

Number 6

 

 

Number 6

Only ten points! Once again we only need an exact ten points to jump from Acid Mammoth on Number 7 to reach the album that is featured on Number 6 today… Moving towards the opposite side of the heavy spectrum this album starts so compelling with the atmospheric, Americana bended, bluesy stroked, folky mountain guitar; one cannot help but fall in love with these modest beginnings. The fuzz, the blues, the grunge, the stoner and the doom that is present on this psychedelic rock album comes in waves and both that intro and outro serve as two devious bookends between which the album can rock out, noise out or trickle like saddened blue moonlight dripping from above… Or as Tony van Dorston stated on his amazing Fast ‘N Bulbous year end rundown: “They maintain an element of slow and low desert psych, but the menacing guns, peyote and decomposing bodies lurch now leans toward sludge metal and stoner doom, something there’s no shortage of.” No shortage indeed; and like the lodestone north is will always draw you home… On Number 6 we find:

Jack Harlon & Dead Crows - The Magnetic Ridge

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Number 6

 

 

Number 6

To reach Number 6 we jump a hundred and forty points from BoneHawk on Number 7. Where we find a band that has made the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown before; back in 2018 they reached the Number 12 spot. Once again we hear a partnership between sludge metal, stoner and prog being performed at the very edge of the alchemic dreamstate. You will soon be lost in an golden oblivious state and you will experience the impressionistic compositions in all its glory. With ever more use of melodies, intricate structures and dynamic extremes they conjure up a majestic groove that will swallow you whole. It turns the heavy churn into something transcendental, mystical and magical. And it turns their sound into the all encompassing greatness of genre breaking and boundaries shaking music. An album that should be in everyone’s possession! On Number 6:

Forming The Void – Reverie

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Ripple Music

(ps. I would love that part of the cover as a surfboard!)

Number 6

Number 6

And now for the lift off! We come to the big jumps in points! For the Top 6 positions seem to be in a league of their own. We jump almost 150 points after The Devil And The Almighty Blues on Number 7 reach Number 6. Indeed, Number 6 stands tall above all that came before and the rest as we shall see, even taller. But even so, we can all find comfort in the fact that even though these albums all got way more votes then the other albums, those other albums still got a lot of votes or a few votes, making them all good, great or amazing in the eye of the beholder. And that is the only eye that counts. Right?  But as we arrive on Number 6 we can look back at the times these cats made the Top 20 Countdown before. Reaching Number 14 in 2014 and Number 2 in 2017. Can we compare thee to a summers day? Or the new album, released on Relapse Records in September, to those earlier two? Ofcourse we can. But should we? It was the honorable Bucky Brown that has always been pretty vocal about his lack of understanding why everyone was so smitten with this trio’s sound, that stated what perhaps means the fans are divided on this one. He stated that this was the first album he truly dug and could perhaps even love. And we heard that mentioned by others that were never on board with these cats. Which means it is a step in another direction for the low, slow, yet crushingly loud and fuzz-laden doom of the three. Where the build and the break and the pound and the push was always key on earlier albums, this has more emphasis on melody, while still retaining their colossal side. And still retaining that immense boom these cats create! Oh yes, there shall be no comfort when Number 6 gets loud!

Monolord - No Comfort

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Number 6

Number 6

And then, out of the blue, Christmas has come and gone and we’re back to the grind. Slaving away at whatever it is we all do out there. But luckily there's is all this great music to give us our moments of peace and respite...  And on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2018 where we pay homage to all those amazing album that were released this year. We jump another big twenty points to reach Number 6. Leaving Windhand and their awesome Eternal Return album on position Number 7. The album we arrive at now was recorded in the fabled Rancho De La Luna studio. It has turned their might jam-band-status into something much more concise and groovy vintage. It has turned it into a much bluesier take on everything they did and what’s even a bigger change, is that the mostly instrumental band has decided to use the vocal possibilities as well and that has resulted in the fact that we are now serenaded to for almost three quarters of the album. And it, rest assured, fits the music and it lifts the entire album up into the domain of legendary records. It’s bluesy, it’s psychedelic, it’s heavy and by God, it’s good!  So, on Number 6 we find ourselves….

Earthless – Black Heaven