[Fastnbulbous]

I've participated in this poll for the past decade. They like to count down once a day. Two more to go!

The StonerHive Top 20 Countdown of 2017
http://stonerhive.blogspot.com/

03. Ufomammut - 8
04. Colour Haze - In Her Garden
05. Causa Sui – Vibraciones Doradas
05. Kadavar – Rough Times
06. Dopelord - Children of the Haze
07. Red Mountains – Slow Wander
08. Sasquatch – Maneuvers
09. Samsara Blues Experiment - One With The Universe
10. Youngblood Supercult - The Great American Death Rattle
11. Mothership – High Strangeness
12. Pallbearer – Heartless
13. Spaceslug – Time Travel Dilemma
14. The Obsessed – Sacred
15. Electric Wizard – Wizard Bloody Wizard
16. The Flying Eyes – Burning Of The Season
17. Purple Hill Witch – Celestial Cemetry
18. Motherslug – The Electric Dunes Of Titan
19. Ruby The Hatchet – Planetary Space Child
20. Royal Thunder – Wick
20. Radio Moscow – New Beginnings
20. The Devil And The Almighty Blues – II

 

[swspiers]

I've participated in this poll for the past decade. They like to count down once a day. Two more to go!

The StonerHive Top 20 Countdown of 2017
http://stonerhive.blogspot.com/

03. Ufomammut - 8
04. Colour Haze - In Her Garden
05. Causa Sui – Vibraciones Doradas
05. Kadavar – Rough Times
06. Dopelord - Children of the Haze
07. Red Mountains – Slow Wander
08. Sasquatch – Maneuvers
09. Samsara Blues Experiment - One With The Universe
10. Youngblood Supercult - The Great American Death Rattle
11. Mothership – High Strangeness
12. Pallbearer – Heartless
13. Spaceslug – Time Travel Dilemma
14. The Obsessed – Sacred
15. Electric Wizard – Wizard Bloody Wizard
16. The Flying Eyes – Burning Of The Season
17. Purple Hill Witch – Celestial Cemetry
18. Motherslug – The Electric Dunes Of Titan
19. Ruby The Hatchet – Planetary Space Child
20. Royal Thunder – Wick
20. Radio Moscow – New Beginnings
20. The Devil And The Almighty Blues – II

Wow, dude. I look at this list, and I'm hard-pressed to think of another year that yielded so much wonderfully good music in the heavy psych/doom/stoner realm. In 42 years of being a music geek, I can think of no other time that had such an abundance of heavy guitar-worship. Sure, no band can out-do Mountain, Sabbath, Purple, Zeppelin, Heep, and the hundreds of other bands from the 70's and 80's.

But man, add this to the catalog releases from 2016, and it's impossible to keep up.

Prediction: Monolord-Rust #2, Elder- Reflections of a Floating World #1

Thanks for the update!

 

[swspiers]

Nice to see some Sorcerer love, long overdue! They started in the late 80s, took a 23 year hiatus, and I felt were a bit overlooked for In the Shadow of the Inverted Cross (2015). But they have made the Sputnikmusic and Pitchfork metal lists this year, along with my own doom list.

I just don't have time anymore to even try to keep up with things, but I had 2 patients no-show last week. I spent the time at Doom Metal.com, and that's when I read the buzz about Sorcerer. Otherwise I would have totally missed it.

BTW, that site is like...dead quiet....pardon the joke. There's like no one there any more...

 

[Fastnbulbous]

Yes I believe you called the top two. There's a minute chance that Telekinetic Yeti, Taiga Woods or All Them Witches make an appearance, but likely not. I'd have to think about what my favorite recent year for heavy music is, but it's definitely been strong for the past decade. It's refreshing to hear people not reiterate the cliched music was better in their youth line. It's hard to compete with the cultural impact of the initial innovators -- when there's literally thousands of bands making increasingly subtle innovations as time goes by, it's easy for some to write 'em off. At least the good bands seem to usually find an audience. As I write, an old childhood friend is catching The Obsessed for the first time in Knoxville. They're playing with Clutch and Devin Townsend.

 

[swspiers]

Yes I believe you called the top two. There's a minute chance that Telekinetic Yeti, Taiga Woods or All Them Witches make an appearance, but likely not. I'd have to think about what my favorite recent year for heavy music is, but it's definitely been strong for the past decade. It's refreshing to hear people not reiterate the cliched music was better in their youth line. It's hard to compete with the cultural impact of the initial innovators -- when there's literally thousands of bands making increasingly subtle innovations as time goes by, it's easy for some to write 'em off. At least the good bands seem to usually find an audience. As I write, an old childhood friend is catching The Obsessed for the first time in Knoxville. They're playing with Clutch and Devin Townsend.

Well, the Obsessed is definitely from my early twenties. And Clutch and DT? That's one heck of a show!!!

I've always been a cultural outlier. While my peers were listening to Kansas (that band was HUGE in Ohio in the 70's) and Styx, I was digging The Nice and King Crimson. In fact, after Crim, Pink Floyd was downright boring.

Later, it was Metallica that everyone was going nuts over. I heard Celtic Frost, and just could not take ANY Bay-Area thrash seriously. CF changed things, along with Bathory, in ways that are felt to this day. I'm of the opinion that CF is almost as influential as Sabbath in a lot of ways, though I seriously doubt Thomas Gabriel will ever have a #1 album....

Right now is like a golden-age for me. I was lucky enough to see Kyuss. Shoot, that was 25 years ago next month! It was my first clean/sober concert, if you can dig that irony. Changed my life. I swear, "Blues for the Red Sun" kept me clean for a couple years, until "Welcome to Sky Valley" came out. After "The Circus Leaves Town" a bunch of bands stepped in and filled the void left behind. Early Sheavy, Celestial Season, Rotors to Rust, 60-Watt Shaman, and of course Orange Goblin. Back then it was all "Stoner Doom", though that has fallen by the wayside for the most part.

But today, damn! The fact that Monolord and Elder even exist is amazing. Those other 18 bands on the Stoner Hive list, it's just a testament to the staying power of truly underground, heavy music. It just refuses to die!

Okay, ramble over...

 

[Fastnbulbous]

I was a big fan of Boris, Monster Magnet, Sleep and Kyuss in the very beginning, but somehow missed experiencing Kyuss live until their post-Homme tours as Kyuss Lives and Vista Chino, sadly. Also worth checking out, John Garcia's The Coyote Who Spoke In Tongues, where he does some acoustic versions of Kyuss tunes.

http://stonerhive.blogspot.com/2017/12/number-2.html
We seriously jump almost a cool hundred points from Ufomammut's 8 album on Number 3 to reach the album that receives The Silver Medal for ending up on the Number 2 spot of the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2017. Can you guess which? Of course you can, everybody could. And after this everyone will know which album ended up on the Number One spot. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. For this tasty slab of heaviness deserves every bit of attention. There is no denying the fact they reigned supreme on the Doom Charts for a few months. And their 2014 album ended up on Number 14 of that year's Top 20 Countdown. This one takes all the goodness of that album and the one that came after to new heights. This is Doom of a higher plane. A universe of slow psychedelics and meticulous metal repetition. The sludgy atmosphere surrounding the entire record is perhaps what's most addictive about this band. It's thick, juicy and drenching in its grandiose epicness. Oh, yes, we have to go overboard with the accolades and superlatives again. More leads, even more groove and riffs that immediately nestle themselves in every fiber of your being. They sound large, they sound huge and they seem to get better and better with every album they release. They give themselves no rest and there is no rust to the sonic onslaught that is their thundering signature... The Silver Medal goes to...

2. Monolord – Rust

 

[Fastnbulbous]

JJ from The Obelisk always has a good list too: http://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2017/12/28/top-30-of-2017/

Dude should really just do a top 100 though, lol:

The Next 20
You know, I used to feel like once you got past a top 20, the numbers were arbitrary. Then I felt that way about the top 30. This year, I think I agonized more about what to include in numbers 31-50 than I did between 30 and the album of the year. Put that in your “go figure” file while you chew on these picks:

31. Cities of Mars, Temporal Rifts
32. The Midnight Ghost Train, Cypress Ave.
33. Snowy Dunes, Atlantis
34. Rozamov, This Mortal Road
35. PH, Eternal Hayden
36. Sasquatch, Maneuvers
37. Young Hunter, Dayhiker
38. The Devil and the Almighty Blues, II
39. Ufomammut, 8
40. John Garcia, The Coyote Who Spoke in Tongues
41. Paradise Lost, Medusa
42. Beastmaker, Inside the Skull
43. Arduini / Balich, Dawn of Ages
44. Primitive Man, Caustic
45. Motorpsycho, The Tower
46. Arbouretum, Song of the Rose
47. Hymn, Perish
48. Youngblood Supercult, The Great American Death Rattle
49. Pallbearer, Heartless
50. Dool, Here Now There Then

There’s so, so much good stuff here. So much. The Cities of Mars debut was a treasure and the only reason it wasn’t on my top debuts list was because I haven’t had the chance to go back in and put it on. The Young Hunter record? Some of their best work yet. Hell, that Arduini / Balich album alone! Then you’ve got huge releases by Pallbearer, Ufomammut, Paradise Lost, Primitive Man, on and on. Like I said at the outset, one more album and my head was gonna explode this year. Way too much to ever hope to keep up with. One thing though I felt like I really wanted to emphasize including was Dool. They’re in the last spot, but make no mistake, in atmosphere and songwriting that album was something really special and loaded with potential. It’s not there because it came in last. It’s there to highlight the point of how much it should be on this list.

What’s that? More records? Okay…

Honorable Mentions
In case you also weren’t completely overwhelmed this year, maybe another batch of records will do the trick. Here’s some presented alphabetically:

Anathema, The Optimist
Blackfinger, When Colors Fade Away
Child, Blueside
Cortez, The Depths Below
Demon Eye, Prophecies and Lies
Elbrus, Elbrus
Electric Wizard, Wizard Bloody Wizard
Ecstatic Vision, Raw Rock Fury
Five Horse Johnson, Jake Leg Boogie
Mirror Queen, Verdigris
The Obsessed, Sacred
T.G. Olson, Foothills Before the Mountain
Outsideinside, Sniff a Hot Rock
Queens of the Stone Age, Villains
Siena Root, A Dream of Lasting Peace
Six Organs of Admittance, Burning the Threshold
Steak, No God to Save
Summoner, Beyond the Realm of Light
Valborg, Endstrand
With the Dead, Love from With the Dead

Plus: Abronia, Lewis and the Strange Magics, Iron Monkey, Band of Spice, Puta Volcano, Galley Beggar, Heavy Traffic, Coltsblood, REZN, Green Meteor, Demon Head, Lord, Grigax, The Raynbow, Carpet, Norska, Les Lekin, Slow, Ixion, and I’m sure more that I’ll add as the names continue to pop into my head.

I did this back in June as well, but I also want to draw attention to a swath of quality live albums that came out this year. The top pick should be no surprise if you’ve been hanging around the site of late:

Live Albums:
1. SubRosa, Subdued Live at Roadburn
2. Causa Sui, Live in Copenhagen
3. Slomatics, Futurians Live at Roadburn
4. My Sleeping Karma, Mela Ananda – Live
5. Wight, Fusion Rock Invasion
5. Death Alley, Live at Roadburn

 

[Fastnbulbous]

Meanwhile, slipping through the cracks was my favorite album of the year, Motorpsycho - The Tower. It's not all prog, or psych, or simply hard rock. So the only list this album made besides mine was #10 on Prog Magazine's, and The Needledrop's 15 Underrated episode.

 

[Monsterzero]

Hellhaim
Poland
2017

 

[swspiers]

It's not that I'm speechless. It's just that if I wrote the words in my head concerning how good, brutal, heavy, and original this is, I'd get banned. I might need to listen to Bell Witch just to lighten the mood...

Kidding. I'm using King Buffalo for that at the moment,

The name says it all: Catapult the Dead. And I don't think they're kidding!

 

[Fastnbulbous]

http://stonerhive.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-countdown-so-far.html

 

[Fastnbulbous]

https://doomcharts.com/2018/01/02/doom-charts-for-december-2017/

 

[swspiers]

https://doomcharts.com/2018/01/02/doom-charts-for-december-2017/

Atomic Bitchwax. COC.

The charts are getting deep with tradition: both of these bands were on heavy rotation for me about 20 years ago. Looks like a great chart, and all that's 'missing' is Catapult the Dead...

 

[bassboysam]

Meanwhile, slipping through the cracks was my favorite album of the year, Motorpsycho - The Tower. It's not all prog, or psych, or simply hard rock. So the only list this album made besides mine was #10 on Prog Magazine's, and The Needledrop's 15 Underrated episode.

I only recently discovered Motorpyscho. They have some great albums.

 

[Monsterzero]

New Ancient Empire.