Call it whatever you want: stoner or desert rock, doesn’t matter to me. What does matter are thick, juicy riffs just dripping with fuzz, a bass that rumbles the crust of the earth, and a penchant for melody that can be carried across an array of clean or throaty vocals. Inject it with doom, with prog, with sludge and death…you can’t disguise the pulse of the cosmic harmonic that calls directly to my lizard brain when all pistons are firing, so this week as I once again get ready for vacation (this time hopefully without catching a myriad of viruses and infections) let’s dive into some stoner rock and metal that have been getting me through life over the past few years.

• Lo-Pan – “Go West”
• Sergeant Thunderhoof – “The Tree and the Serpent (Acoustic)”
• King Buffalo – “Habitation”
• Green Lung – “The Forest Church”

I’m focusing on more recent bands for this playlist, and out of the whole list Lo-Pan was one of the first that really hit me with their In Tensions EP from 2017. “Go West” has everything I spoke about in the intro: great riffs, heavy bottom end, and pitch perfect vocals that carry the melodies into the heavens with a killer chorus…The same can be said for the sprawling, prog-laden grooves of the UK’s Sergeant Thunderhoof, who I discovered on a split that just so happens to have given me one of my favorite new bands and one of the best tracks I’ve heard in the last 10 years (we’ll get to that track in a minute). Rather than take the single from the proper album, this version of “The Tree and the Serpent” can be found on their album of acoustic re-recordings, a thing I don’t normally go for but in this instance might be even better than the original tune…

The whole world should be grooving to the alternative progressive stoner rock King Buffalo is consistently putting out. Shades of Tool can’t hide the desert and the nature that rears up all over their album, but there’s something about “Hebetation” and 2021’s The Burden of Restlessness that feels perfect to me…The first time I heard Green Lung and the crazy keyboards on “The Harrowing” from 2021’s Black Harvest I was laughing and crying at how quickly they nailed what I love about music. I had no idea what to expect with their latest offering This Heathen Land but it wasn’t to take their stoner prog influences and go full Ghost opulence, but damn if “The Forest Church” doesn’t live up to and in some aspects surpass what Tobias Forge and his cohorts are putting out there…

• Elder – “In Procession”
• Kadavar – “Doomsday Machine”
• Kryptograf – “Omen”
• Howling Giant – “Masamune”

By now Elder has (rightly) achieved a level of recognition that is putting them more and more in the spotlight, and I couldn’t be happier. The proggier they get the better as far as I’m concerned, and every track from Omens maintains that stoner vibe while getting increasingly more ambitious in its aims…Often partners in crime with Elder, Kadavar typically hew a little closer to the Sabbathian stomp of early heavy metal, but there’s a lot of weird elements sprinkled in their tunes, especially latest album The Isolation Tapes which I’ll eventually cover in full. For now I chose an earlier, more stomp-happy track from 2013’s Abra Kadavar…

The newest discovery on this playlist is Kryptograf, a Norwegian metal band with roots deep in the late 60s and early 70s proto-metal. They currently have two albums out that are both worth a listen, but there’s just a pinch more of the sinister on their 2020 eponymous debut that I find more appealing, which is where “Omen” comes from…I mentioned earlier that awe-inspiring split that I discovered Sergeant Thunderhoof on. That split was Ripple Music’s Turned To Stone Chapter 2. Two tracks, each 20 minutes long and focused on a historical Japanese sword maker. Thunderhoof has the fantastic “Muramasa” Howling Giant, however, had the utterly sublime “Masamura” and those 20 minutes transformed and rewired my brain. After hearing that track I quickly bought everything they had, and there hasn’t been a wrong note yet. Every song, every album transports me to a world where the music of my heart is captured. I can’t say enough about this incredible song, and this incredible band.

Be safe, and see you next week.