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
Bandcamp
Instagram
Facebook
Homepage
Sub Pop Records