Hello All,

As a longtime reader of the 'lisk I was surprised & happy to see a forum pop up here, even if in unfortunate circumstances.

As a hello to the community I thought I would pose a discussion on bands that play various different genres of metal, but that have an undeniable, indefinable stoner quality to them at the same time.

The first few that come to mind are;

Orgone - Tech Death / Prog
Saviours - Thrash / NWOBHM
Omotai - Grind
Enslaved - Prog / Black / Psych
Electro Quarterstaff - Tech Death / Grind
Kvelertak - Rock / Punk
Wolves in the Throne Room - Black / Drone

and of coarse Mastodon - Metal / Psych / Whatever

I understand that these genres are being marginalized & continually brought closer together by crossover releases but I think each band has a lil' something about them that would put them under the stoner / doom / whatever umbrella.

Can anybody think of anymore bands that fall into this "feels like a stoner band but isn't" category?

Maybe the Taskmaster himself with weigh in with a kneejerk reaction.

Maybe you all think I'm dead wrong, either way go for it.

Asunder:

I'm probably less of a purist than many people on here, but I like bands that don't say to themselves that they have to adhere to a template.....in any genre. I like alot of coloring outside of the lines. If it's good, that's the main criteria. Some of my favorite bands never made the same album twice, though they have things that could appeal to different people in different genres over the course of those albums and their career, overall. I generally don't like bands that seem like they're asking themselves if such and such band would have done this or that a certain way.

There was a really great band called Bionic that has long since disbanded, but they'd fused heavy music in a way where it combined a whole bunch of great heavy music styles without seeming like they were trying to fit some exact template....you could loosely say that they were a heavy band with some stoner friendly elements in there (Jon is a big High on Fire fan), but they always changed it up a bit on the albums. Some bands sort of got wrongly lumped into the stoner category, just based on label affiliations.....Bad Wizard, I thought, leaned more towards 70's AC/DC styled arena rock, but probably because of the Tee Pee label affiliation as well as the bands that they toured with, that probably had more to do with it. John Garcia could put out a jazz album and it would still be considered stoner, 'ya know?? Bands like Fu Manchu--judging from interviews--have always seemed to be a little more put off by the stoner rock tag than really that embracing of it, and i've actually seen alot of bands near tolerable of that tag on their music, "...actually, we're fine with that label....", "....if it helps get the average person into our music...", etc, not really rah rah about it, but understanding of the need for descriptions on music on where they fit in the musical spectrum.

Meh. Never cared much for the stoner tag. When I first heard the term it was used to describe bands like Kyuss, Fu Manchu and Monster Magnet. All bands that played old fashioned hard rock IMO. Personally I think bands and artists such as (let's say) Funkadelic, Captain Beefheart, Pharoah Sanders, The Chambers Brothers, David Bowie, The Soft Machine and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion have all released stuff that could be considered stoner. Or not. Whatever. Fuck purism. Let the music do the talking.

There's two kinds of music in my mind-- music to smoke pot to (stoner), and music that sucks (everything else).

Sometimes I look at a quadruple sub-genre'd band description, and I just scratch my head... "they're, like totally dropping trad funeral melodic death doom heavy psych influenced black metal dance rhythms on that new jam..."

WTF?


WILL I ENJOY IT WHILE GETTING HIGH OR NOT, A-HOLE??!?

Great topic. I think the "stoner" thing has to do with a certain organic/live element that draws on blues/rocks roots in a heavy active way. Heres three classic '80's stoner roots bands-drawing on the past but editting for their era.

BLACK FLAG.
FLIPPER.
WIPERS.

And a ringer- THE AFFLICTED MAN whom stated off very skin headly in '80? and developed into some thing the NME tagged as ,"A cross between CRASS and HAWKWIND". Hell, they had a tune tittled ,"hippie-punk", and they kinda reworked it as 'hippie-skin". this is all shit in '82 ? It all feels improvised in studio.

RYAN, I have two BIONIC discs, (Canadain kickass band- right?), I'd love to know about any of their other stuff.

For recent aggro-stuff I'd say FIGHT AMP and AKIMBO work the tradition in nicely aggressive ways.

stoner jazz..

Am hoping for more info on Bionic!! Like, best introductory record?

Shit yah!

Don't you think poor Stoner Rock suffered for attention during the mighty rise and dominance of Rap? What guitar-riff based genre that sounds like dad's radio station but with bad singing was going to beat Puffy and Jay-Z? and video games and the internet...

I think the live show's where the genre really does its thing - where the locked-in groove makes more sense and you can see the musicians fingers - since the genre is very friendly to virtuoso playing on bass, guitar or drums - like all of you, more than half of the bands only made sense to me after seeing them live - too bad attendance was/is so horrible at the shows.

More room for me, I dont have to worry about some asshole spilling my beer.

When stoner ceases to be stoner is where things tend to get interesting for me.

I'm not a big fan of the genre term, I remember in the late 90's and early 00's it was used to slag bands, certain reviewers for bigger publications would say, "this is stoner rock, in all its generic stupidity. Notice I don't apply that term to more creative bands like Kyuss and Cathedral."

I think there's always been a love/hate relationship with the term, but as for the music, bands copping Kyuss and Fu Manchu in 2010/2011 just isn't enough for me. You want to make "stoner" music, you're going to have to do a lot more with it if you want my interest, and generally I'm going to want some legit metal/psych influences, and not just four guys who listened to Pantera until 2008, when they discovered Kyuss, downtuned and bought fuzz pedals and Orange amps.

Right on! I'm assuming "Deliverance" and "Black Blood"? That's most of what they put out.....they'd put out a self titled debut that was more of an aggressive pop album, before the lineup changed to include Dwyer, Julius and Blurton. They'd broke up a year or two ago....awesome live band.



"Deliverance" and "Black Blood" are both great....I believe that All That Is Heavy has 'em both. It's kind of tough to really get a full range of what they do over the course of an album (there's some more pop-oriented songs, etc), but they really ripped it up, live:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp6YYXT99kg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiJDQ56X ... KkYnBjPvuA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKkYnBjPvuA