Gabriel's Top 20 for 2014

Gabriel's Top 20 Picks For 2014

Well, it's that time of year again.  The time of year at which I start seeing other people's top picks for musical output from the past 12 months (usually jumping the gun by a few weeks, if not more), and as I read them, asking myself "How did I miss this?".  Sure, I've got more albums, EPs, splits, and singles on my plate than my budget of time or money allows me to wolf down to the last bite,  but even so, there's always great-looking releases with glowing praise that didn't even blip across my radar.  And then there's the albums that I did hear, and now I'm wondering how they got so many people to fall in love with them when they left me so unmoved, bored, or even disappointed.
So if you don't see the albums you feel should have taken these spots in this list, there's a number of possible explanations.  Maybe I didn't hear it, maybe I was left cold by it, or maybe I just didn't enjoy it as much as I did the following releases.  There's also the option, like a large number of records I spun repeatedly and enjoyed immensely, that it just didn't fit the RWTD flavors (yeah, it happens).
Whatever the reason, I still want to know what you felt the top albums of the year were, so leave a comment, send an e-mail, or swear bloody vengeance against me, just give me some suggestions (or commandments) on what I should be hearing.  In any event, I'm glad to have been able to have been a link between these bands and you, our readers, and hope that next year is half as great with its musical output as 2014 was.  Without further ado, on to my top 20 picks for studio albums from the past year!

#20. JETDOG - OUTER SPACE IS THE PLACE
"One of the first things you'll notice once you plug this stuff into your ears is how massively fuzzy it is; going with the name, it works as either a dog-fur-lined wall of amps, or the rumbling radiation of a cruiser burning through the cosmos."

#19.Zeppheroin - Methadone Jesus
"Throw yourself down a flight of stairs, get a painkiller prescription, and then blare this as loud as your senses can stand; your neighbors might not appreciate it, but your ears should."

#18. Narcosatanicos - Narcosatanicos
"Distorted vocals add to the fever-dream impressions, with phasing of instruments getting your head to the point of reeling in short order, which they capitalize on by launching into heavy-end crescendos."

#17. Mamaleek - He Never Said A Mumblin' Word
"Sometimes quiet and subdued, other times roaring with a wall of noise, there’s plenty of juxtaposition going on, and the album asks listeners for more than the usual level of openness to trying new things."

#16. Brain Pyramid - Chasma Hideout
"Capturing the spirit of jamming out in the country-side and lathering it up with some toothy distortion and sweet-finger licks, there's a lot of unruly and vibrant energy coursing through the album as it riffs and rips all over the place."

#15. Kalamata - You
"Though there's a sense of doom metal to some of the music (most notably in the way the bassist wields his chords), there's also enough of the more positive, sun-baked desert rock vibes to let the band shift around in the range between the two without getting pinned to either."

#14. Hijo de la Tormenta - Hijo de la Tormenta
"In the midst of their amazingly tuneful heaviness, the drums do a lot to keep things from getting over-saturated, with counter-point rhythms, inventive fills, and a crisp sound to the drum-hits generating some defiant liveliness beneath the down-tuned doom rock."

#13. Merlin - Christ Killer
"While we won't be seeing Russell Crowe hold a thorn-crowned head up on the silver screen anytime soon, Merlin's interpretation provides a satisfying alternative for that experience, melding a Pantera-like sense of hard country...with some psychedelic-edged doom for a trip into alternate history."

#12. Qualeaceans - Capture Of Ziz
"They have an amazingly fluid quality to their music, evident in the rippling echo of the drummer's cymbals, the sinuous guitar-work, their ability to jump from one time signature cleanly into another (or a few simultaneously), and the song's structure, which moves about like a snake that can't stop shedding its skin."

#11. 3rd Ear Experience - Incredible Good Fortune
"At over an hour of expansive musical soaring, there's plenty of opportunities for them to show off their more-than-capable instrumental flights of fancy, with the guitars blasting off and leaving ringing waves of feedback in its wake as the drums, bass and keyboards meld together in some tasty fusion."

#10. The GTVs - Sh'Bang!
"[A]side from the essential electric piano, which adds some serious dazzle to the affair, the personable vocals, hip-shaking riffs, and unabashed attitude all blaze with a liveliness channeled from the likes of the MC5, Mitch Ryder, and Dick Dale, but with a slight layer of ear-pleasing grime on top of it all, as though the recordings have been rescued from the back stacks of some negligent record label."

#9. Wolf Blood - Wolf Blood
"The long and the short of it is, if you have a taste for experimental doom, sometimes fast and heavy with a splash of thrash or death metal, Wolf Blood is not to be missed."

#8. Funeral Horse - Sinister Rites Of The Master
"Funeral Horse's latest release is a fine slab of fuzzier-than-thou stoner rock, perfect for blasting out of your car's windows on a muggy night.  While the distortion on the vocals can sometimes make the words a bit tricky to properly hear, that fits right in with the buzzsaw guitar and drums that thump like a neighbor who thinks you've got the music turned up too loud."

#7. Major Kong - Doom Machine
"The guitar sounds like something out of a sci-fi film (I mean that in the best sense), the drums feel like they should be leading a hooded procession through subterranean chambers, and the bass just swells up and out, filling the room. That cave-like feeling is further enhanced by the almost-complete absence of vocals, aside from the opening sample, so that you can just sit back and let it engulf you."

#6. Billy Tsounis - Nefelibata
"Psychedelic to the point of being semi-hallucinatory, the new album from Billy Tsounis pulsates with energy from the first moments, billowing out in expansive waves of guitar and bass held down by the solid drum-work.  Mr. Tsounis put everything together himself, and the quality and sense of interaction between the assembled pieces deserves some recognition; there's some truly intricate stretches of sound to be found here, and imagining the multi-tracking behind it all is enough to make your head start to spin."

#5. MotherSloth - Moribund Star
"They know how to work a groove, as testified by the opening track, "Hazy Blur Of Life", in which they get a roomy bass riff going, backed up admirably by the drummer, before launching some loose and limber guitar and making everything spark, then just fanning that flame as it burns through the rest of the song and into harder territory.  The rest of the album takes the blood-shot colossus sound of the first song and gives it tweaks here and there, working it into new forms without losing that primal groove connection."

#4. Sunken - Recoil
"The inventiveness Sunken shows is made even more admirable by their decision to go with only two instruments, as it really drives and challenges them to turn their hats inside-out with all the tricks they pull on this album.  The sheer fervor they inject into those instruments has the duo sounding bigger and meaner than bands three times their size, and the way in which they dole it out, making sure the listener will have gotten comfortable with the crunchy melodies before getting blasted by an assault without warning, deserves much respect and recognition."

#3. Sunwølf - Beholden To Nothing And No One
"[T]he full-on metal vocals erupt from the sedation, the guitar swings into action with a grimy buzz, and they rumble into life like a long-buried war machine reactivated after decades of decay; after a few more songs, the rust has been rattled away, and a cleaner, sharper form emerges, rolling relentlessly on into crushing terrain, until all the concrete forms have been wiped away, leaving them back where they began, with only themselves still around to destroy."

#2. Dopelord - Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult
"They find a more-than-happy medium between the blueprints of Black Sabbath and the more aggressive edge of modern fuzz-and-film-samples storms from groups like Electric Wizard and Dopethrone, then dive in head-first, kicking up splashes of psychedelic doom with enough black-light energy infused to make your speakers start to glow."

#1. Salem's Pot - ...Lurar Ut Dig På Prärien
"If you’ve ever wondered what early Black Sabbath might have sounded like if they’d gone into the studio while on acid (and used much more reverb on Ozzy’s vocals), this album will give you a believable answer.   Thick riffs, quick-drone grooves, and an almost trance-like atmosphere help the album deliver a steady stream of ambiguously occult psychedelia."

Skip's Top 20 for 2014

Top 20 for 2014

1. Bask - American Hollow
Every now and then a record comes along that you immediately love, you can't really explain it, but you know it when you hear it. It grabs you by the throat and makes you sit forward and really take notice. That was Bask's "American Hollow" for me, a minute into the first track and I could already tell that the album was going to be in pretty heavy rotation for a while, and it has been. With it's roots in some genres you don't always see listed together, they pull sounds from Doom Metal, Stoner Metal, Post-Rock, even a little Psychedelic and Americana just to round everything out nicely.

2. Grüzer - Path of the Buzzards EP
Another of the groups I mentioned in my Rising Sons article was Grüzer, with their own brand of triple guitar attack Sludge Metal. Their EP "Path of Buzzards" was highly anticipated the moment I found out it was getting recorded, now after a couple weeks of getting a copy, and I don't know how many listens (suffice it to say, quite a few) it hasn't disappointed in the least and already earned a solid spot on my end of the year list.

3. Hooded Menace - Labyrinth of Carrion Breeze EP
The Labyrinth of Carrion Breeze EP is two tracks and just over 17 minutes of some of the heaviest, gnarliest, and most grotesque Doom Metal I’ve heard to date, with both tracks drawing on classic Vincent Price horror film "Cry of the Banshee". ~ Summoning Spirits

4. Greenleaf - Trails and Passes
The second track on the album, "Ocean Deep" opens up with a bashing drum solo that rides for a few seconds until the rest of the group drops in, creating a huge, spacious sound with the guitar tones in an attempt to contain the crushing groove of the track.

5. Fall of an Empire - Songs of Steel and Sorrow
These guys haven't left my playlist since I put them on it at the beginning of the year. Their first album "Songs of Steel and Sorrow" is a great work of Stoner Rock, incorporating traits of '70s Heavy Rock and Southern Rock into the group's whole vibe.

6. Doctor Smoke - The Witching Hour
Another album that I'm thinking everyone had fairly high expectations for, is the latest release from Ohio's fearsome foursome Doctor Smoke, called "The Witching Hour". And even with it being almost the end of the year, the doctor has put down a hellacious slab of doomy, Heavy Rock that stands out from the crowd of similar albums that came out this year, and there were many.

7. Act of Impalement - Echoes of Wrath EP
The track "Echoes of War" opens up their latest EP and you couldn't ask for a better example of their sound, mixing the Black Metal styled vocals with bone crushing mid-tempo riffs, it breeds a feeling of complete disgust and hatred, and it's absolutely stunning.

8. Half Gramme of Soma - Marche au Noir
After their self-titled release from last year, they shouldn't need much of an introduction as that should have done all the talking for them, but the five piece Half Gramme of Soma are a heart liquifying Stoner Rock strike to the chest for those of you who aren't familiar.

9. Tumbleweed Dealer - The Western Horror
What they've put down is a spooky instrumental Stoner Rock journey through the old west, where the cloudy mist hugging the ground at night is pot smoke. 

10. Slow Season - Mountains
Playing off the retro sound is the cool thing to do nowadays, but doing it and doing it well are two different animals. Lucky for us, Slow Season sound like they have the chops to of headlined their own world tour back in '73.

11. Druglord - Enter Venus
The formula is easy; take three very experienced musicians and let them play heavy, disgusting, strung out Sludge. In this instance, the execution is flawless. Recorded and mixed in the fall of last year by Garrett Morris from the group Windhand, Enter Venus is as good a sophomoric effort as you’ll ever see. ~ Summoning Spirits

12. Black Hand Throne - IV
If you're looking for that sense of despair and pure annihilation in a Stoner Doom album, look no further than "IV", or pretty much any Black Hand Throne album for that matter. Their sound is that of men with doctorates in the ways of Stoner Doom Metal, taking what the pioneers did, building on it, and making it their own.

13. Stonebride - Heavy Envelope
Their style of Heavy Rock with Blues, Alternative, Doom, and even a little Psychedelic influence has always the right buttons for me, and this go 'round is absolutely no different.

14. Wo Fat - The Conjuring
The formula hasn't changed a great deal from their last effort, or even their earlier releases, you're still repeatedly smacked around by the torrential Stoner Rock assault that you've come to expect from this band. Sure, it's only a five track album, but with none coming in under a six minute duration you'll be hard pressed to find five heavier tracks this year.

15. Thieving Coyote - Thieving Coyote EP
Thieving Coyote play a liquored down style of Southern Hard Rock and Stoner Metal. If you drowned Orange Goblin in Jack Daniels and propped the corpse up at one of those country bonfire parties, where they blast Lynyrd Skynyrd out of a truck's stereo system all night, the next morning you'd have Thieving Coyote pulling themselves off the ground in a hazy stupor.

16. Seritas - Seritas
This hard hitting, dynamic duo from Michigan play what they have coined "Garage Doom", they lay down fuzzed out early doom riffs that almost take on a Stoner Rock vibe a couple of times in terms of just pure fuzz and groove.

17. Jupiter Zeus - On Earth 

Some of the songs have a very spacey feeling to them, not only in lyrical content, but in atmosphere. Occasionally giving the listener the impression that they could be floating in the great nothingness while the song plays on.

18. Le Mur - In Tenebris
After the creepy organ intro that sounds like it could be lifted from a horror movie, the album really gets moving with the second track "Cage", at eleven and a half minutes it's the longest track, but probably also one of the most straight forward in terms of structure and timing.

19. Steak - Slab City
The title track of the album pretty much sums everything up for you, an excellent representation of their sound, and one of, if not, my favorite of the entire album.

20. Hawkmoth - Calamitas
It opens up with the track "Exsanguinating in the Overflowing Bath", a slow, blissful soundscape that suddenly turns into a ferocious storm of twelve ton riffs and a thundering drum line. This is one of the songs that really gives off a Kylesa vibe for me, and Hawkmoth completely kill it with this one.

These were the top twenty albums that I reviewed over the year, and isn't very different from my regular top twenty list. I'd like to thank everyone who follows the blog, and took the time to read any of the reviews or other posts that have gone up the past year, and I look forward to doing it all again next year.

~Skip