Assembled at the behest of SloomWeep Productions and offered as two separate digital compilations, StonedChine Vol. 1 and StonedChine Vol. 2 are specifically focused on the growth of underground heavy sounds in China and the Chinese diaspora. Each volume offers one or two tracks per band and has a runtime that, on its own, would be a 2LP — Vol. 1 is 54 minutes/eight tracks/five bands, Vol. 2 is 63 minutes/six tracks/three bands — if physically pressed. The styles included run a gamut between and sometimes within the bands themselves, as Alpaca from Shanghai lead off with 2019’s single “Drown” (12:04) and the maybe-new “Jauria” (8:03), moving between sludge to psych-dub jamming to grindcore in their first piece while in “Jauria” they use a declarative chug as a backdrop for a Crowbar-style airing of grievances, shifting into a dramatic solo section before looping back to the central riff.

Immediately, StonedChine Vol. 1 claims extremity as part of Chinese heavy, and The Hermit, who close with the whistle-from-the-movie-inclusive “Kill Bill” (6:19) with their Bongzilla-type crust ‘n’ crackle sludge, reinforce the message. But the ‘various artists’ release doesn’t skip on the variety either, as Ramblin’ Roze picks up from Alpaca with a turn toward heavy rock that nonetheless keeps the threat of violent intent palpable with an opening news-broadcast sample about nine hikers being found murdered in the woods.

That song is “Mountain of the Dead” (8:35), and with feedback building behind its start, one expects an onslaught, or, given the content, at very least a madcap boogie in the vein of Japan’s Church of Misery, but the fuzzy roll that ensues is more Uncle Acid in its languidity and guitar interplay, melodic grunge-doom vocals more straightforward to keep up with the tempo boost as they kick into a “Hole in the Sky”-style riff and transition back to the hook with Heaven and Hell-style purpose, lead guitar howling behind the vocals before it goes down the drain at the end. Ramblin’ Roze‘s “Escape” (4:37) is partly acoustic and has an even stronger lead vocal performance, a thick Zeppelin vibe that grows raucous near its conclusion after a relatively peaceful start. They’ve reportedly had lineup changes since 2020’s debut LP, Howl of the Coomb, from which “Mountain of the Dead” is taken as a remaster, but would fit on any number of EU/US heavy rock imprints.

Guangzhou-based deathsludge rockers Rude Gove offer two tracks from last year’s Chirp of Doom in “Save My Soul” (4:15) and “Yeti” (4:15), rawer in production and more beastly in their assault, like they dug a whole in their own low-end mud and decided to record there. Peppered with lead guitar hinting at melody, “Save My Soul” is gritty, low and guttural, and “Yeti” follows suit with a speedier swing and more open cymbal crash, the vocals veering toward cleaner throaty shouts but still with plenty of Carcass-type gurgles to fill it out, catchy and no less coated in dirt-dust for that.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, meditative psych explorers SPAWN issued their righteous Live at Moonah Arts Collective (review here) through SloomWeep in 2021, and are the most tripped-out act on either volume of StonedChine, with “Meditation in an Evil Temple” (6:28) as their lone inclusion, resonant in its worldly acid flow. They’re a sharp curve from Rude Gove just before and they give way to the aforementioned The Hermit to cap Vol. 1, but can’t help but stand out even from the scope of intent Alpaca laid out. Returning to harsh vibes, “Kill Bill” — from The Hermit‘s 2021 The Wall of Desire EP — boasts some subtler layering in the guitar near its finish and is fluid in its movement from one part to the next, making its primary impression in bite with some depth underneath.

Vol. 2 is perhaps more solidified in its methodology, but consistent in the purpose of highlighting the Chinese underground. “My Pet Depression” (8:04) and “Endless Parade” (13:32) come from Apollo 20‘s Endless Parade 10″, released in 2021, and they appeared in succession there as well. The melodies in the vocals of the former remind a bit of Acid Bath‘s brooding slog, but “Endless Parade” offsets its early whispers with blown-out shouts soon enough before re-mellowing and nestling into an engaging solo-topped jam at about six minutes in that carries them for the duration, some cricket chirping added among the light effects swirl to help ease from one to the other.

A lucid ending there lets the punch of bass at the outset of BanyanRiver‘s “The Ghost of Temptation Still Haunts On Me” (15:36) have that much more impact, and as the longest cut on either volume of StonedChine, it declares itself with a patient buildup and a slow, Black Sabbath‘s “Black Sabbath”-type pull in a short opening movement before a dead stop and feedback arrive to announce an ultra-dense janga-janga march. By the time it gets to including what might be vocals beamed in through another dimension, it’s a semi-metallic thrust that will drop to chants and meditative doom, but the bass and drums still hold the march as the guitar gradually freaks out en route to the inevitable noisy ending. “All is One” (7:48) launches from there with standalone chant-like vocals for its first minute-plus, and maintains that ceremonial spirit as it works its way into a central nod, growing furious and punk in its shove at 5:35 and riding that speedier course to its end, laced with feedback.

Bass also introduces HallucinGod‘s “Go Space” (6:49), which is a less-directly sludged nod at first, clean vocals resting atop an angular but flowing doomer riff, turning semi-psych with guitar effects and backing vocals in its midsection before reviving its prior lumber. HallucinGod‘s second track, “Marijuaua Desert” (11:27) (sic), is broader in its arrangement and remains grounded in the kickdrum even as the guitar reaches into ethereal atmospherics branched outward from the solid groove underpinning. Layered group chanting in the verse fascinates and gives over to speech in the left channel and swirl in the right, but the hint toward the intensity to come is in that drum, which grows steadily more active before taking off into a modded High on Fire-style breakout turned almost cosmic in HallucinGod‘s hands, if only momentarily. They’ve grown huge in the interim, which is shown in the slowdown and subsequent roll toward the return of the folk instrumentation that started the track for its ending, which fades out and brings StonedChine Vol. 2 with it.

With more than a few surprises throughout, these two StonedChine compilations get their point across in the freshness of the bands’ approaches to heavy. As SloomWeep posits, the Chinese heavy underground is new — the label counts 2011 as the country’s first stoner-doom show; Never Before (who don’t feature here) played — and many of these acts sound accordingly young, but it’s new bands, new players and new ideas that result in new sounds, and it may be that the bridges being constructed between styles by some of these groups, whether it’s sludgy grind-dub or just an individualized take on doomed psychedelia, will continue to flesh out as the next decade or so plays out. In any case, the mission of StonedChine in showcasing China’s flourishing heavy scene — as well as SloomWeep‘s roster of talent — is unquestionably a success, and coming out of a comp with the homework of more bands to dig into is an ideal made manifest here. It’s not a minor undertaking, but being split between its two volumes helps, and both the educational value for those outside its own geographical sphere and as a listening experience, easily worth the minimal chasedown. All you have to do is be willing to hear something new.

Various Artists, StonedChine Vol. 1 (2023)

Various Artists, StonedChine Vol. 2 (2023)

SloomWeep Productions on Facebook

SloomWeep Productions on Instagram

SloomWeep Productions on Bandcamp

Day two, huh? Don’t know about you, but I’m feeling positively groovy after yesterday’s initial round of 10 records en route to 50 by Friday, and maybe that’s all the better since there’s not only another round of 10 today, but 50 more awaiting in January. Head down, keep working. You know how it goes. Hope you find something cool in this bunch, and if not, stick around because there’s more to come. Never enough time, never enough riffs. Let’s get to it.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Khemmis, Deceiver

Denver’s Khemmis are everything an American heavy metal band should be in 2021. The six-song Deceiver is the fourth LP from the band — now comprised of guitarist/vocalist Ben Hutcherson, guitarist/vocalist Phil Pendergast and drummer Zach Coleman — and it soars and crushes in kind. It is no more doom than thrash or epic traditional metal, with sweeping choruses from opener “Avernal Gate” onward, and yet it is intense without being boorish, accessible without being dumbed-down, dynamic in presentation. It commits neither to genre nor structure but is born of both, and its well-timed arrangements of more extreme vocalizations on “House of Cadmus” and “Obsidian Crown” are no less vital to its sonic persona than the harmonies surrounding. Even more here than on 2018’s Desolation (review here), Khemmis sound like masters of the form — the kind of band who’d make a kid want to pick up a guitar — and are in a class of their own.

Khemmis on Facebook

Nuclear Blast store

—

 

Low Orbit, Crater Creator

Somebody in Toronto’s Low Orbit likes Dr. Who, as signaled by inclusions like “Tardis” and “Timelord” on the trio’s third album, Crater Creator. Also huge riffs. Working with their hometown’s house helmer Ian Blurton (Rough Spells, Future Now, Biblical, etc.), guitarist/vocalist Angelo Catenaro, bassist Joe Grgic and drummer Emilio Mammone proffer seven songs across two-sides bent toward largesse of chug and spaciousness of… well, space. The opening title-track, which moves into the lumbering “Tardis” and the driving side-A-capper “Sea of See,” sets an expectation for massive tonality that the rest of what follows meets with apparent glee. The fuzz-forward nature of “Monocle” (also the cowbell) feels straightforward after the relative plod of “Empty Space” before it, but “Wormhole” and “Timelord” assure the mission’s overarching success, the latter with aplomb fitting its finale position on such a cosmically voluminous offering. Craters accomplished, at least in eardrums.

Low Orbit on Facebook

Pink Tank Records website

Olde Magick Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Confusion Master, Haunted

One assumes that the Cthulhu figure depicted breaking a lighthouse with its cthrotch on the cover art of Confusion Master‘s Haunted is intended as a metaphor for the coming of the German four-piece’s engrossing psychedelic doom riffery. The band, who made their debut with 2018’s Awaken (review here), owe some debt to Electric Wizard‘s misanthropic stoner nihilism, but the horrors crafted across the six-song/56-minute sophomore outing are their own in sound and depth alike, as outwardly familiar as the lumbering central riff of “The Cannibal County Maniac” might seem. It’s amazing I haven’t heard more hype about Confusion Master, with the willful slog of “Jaw on a Hook”‘s 11 minutes so dug in ahead of the sample-topped title-track you can’t really call it anything other than righteous in its purpose, as filthy as that purpose is on the rolling “Casket Down” or “Under the Sign of the Reptile Master.” Shit, they don’t even start vocals until minute six of 10-minute opener “Viking X.” What more do you want? Doom the fuck out.

Confusion Master on Facebook

Exile on Mainstream website

—

 

Daemonelix, Devil’s Corkscrew

Sludge metal punishment serves as the introductory statement of Los Angeles’ Daemonelix, whose Devil’s Corkscrew EP runs just 18 minutes and four songs but needs no more than that to get its message across. The band, led by guitarist Derek Phillips, are uniformly brash and scathing in their composition, harnessing the punkish energy of an act like earlier -(16)- and bringing it to harsher places altogether, while still — as the motor-ready riff of “In the Name of Freedom” demonstrates — keeping one foot in heavy rock traditions. Vocalist Ana Garcia Lopez is largely indecipherable in her throaty, rasping growls on opener “Daemonelix” and the subsequent “Raise Crows,” but “In the Name of Freedom” has a cleaner hook and closer “Sing for the Moon” brings in more atmospherics during its slower, more open-feeling verses, before crushing once more in a manner that’s — dare I say it? — progressive? Clearly more than just bludgeoning, then, but yes, plenty of that too.

Daemonelix on Facebook

Metal Assault Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Wooden Fields, Wooden Fields

While I’ll admit that Wooden Fields had me on board with the mere mention of the involvement of Siena Root bassist Sam Riffer, the Stockholm trio’s boogie-prone seven-song self-titled debut earns plenty of allegiance on its own, with vocalist/guitarist Sartez Faraj leading the classically-grooving procession in a manner that expands outward as it moves through the album’s tidy 38 minutes, taking the straight-ahead rush of “Read the Signs” and “Shiver and Shake” into the airier-but-still-grounded “Should We Care” before centerpiece “I’m Home” introduces a jammier vibe, drummer Fredrik Jansson Punkka (Witchcraft, etc.) seeming totally amenable to holding the track together beneath the extended solo. The transition works because no matter how far they go in “Don’t Be a Fool” or “Wind of Hope,” Wooden Fields never lose the thread of songcraft they weave throughout, and the melodies of closer “Endless Time” alone establish them as a group of marked potential, regardless of pedigree and the familiarity of their stylistic foundation.

Wooden Fields on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

—

 

Plaindrifter, Echo Therapy

Surging forth with lush progressive heavy psychedelic rock, Plaindrifter‘s debut full-length, Echo Therapy, showcases an awareness of the context in which it arrives — which is to say the German three-piece seem to be familiar with the aesthetic tropes they’re working toward. Still, although their emphasis on bringing together melody and heft may result in flashes of Elder in the extended “Prisma” or the closer “Digital Dreamcatcher” or Elephant Tree in “New World,” with opener “M.N.S.N.” making its impression as much with ambience as tonal weight and centerpiece “Proto Surfer Boy” sneakily executing its linear build in space-creating fashion before its long fadeout, there’s an individual presence in the material beyond a play toward style, and from what they offer here, it’s easy to imagine their forward-thinking course will lead to further manifest individualism in subsequent work. That may be me reading into the possibilities cast by the melodies of “M.N.S.N.” and in the quieter break of “Proto Surfer Boy,” but that’s plenty to go on and by no means the sum of Echo Therapy‘s achievements.

Plaindrifter on Facebook

Plaindrifter on Bandcamp

—

 

Spawn, Live at Moonah Arts Collective

The kind of release that makes me want to own everything the band has done, Spawn‘s Live at Moonah Arts Collective enraptures with four tracks of meditative psychedelic flow, beginning with “Meditation in an Evil Temple” and oozing patiently through a cover of “Morning of the Earth” — from the 1971 Australian surf film of the same name — before “Remember to Be Here Now” issues that needed reminder to coincide with the drift that would otherwise so easily lead the mind elsewhere, and the 13-minute “All is Shiva” culminates with a spiritually-vibing wash of guitar, sitar, bass, drums, keyboard, tabla and tantric vocal repetitions. Based in Melbourne, the seven-maybe-more-piece outfit released a studio EP in 2018 on Nasoni Records (of course) and otherwise have a demo to their credit, but the with the sense of communion they bring to these songs, studio or live doesn’t matter anymore. At just under half an hour, it’s a short set — too short — but with the heavier ending of “All is Shiva,” there’s nothing they leave unsaid in that time. This is aural treasure. Pay heed.

Spawn on Facebook

Spawn on Bandcamp

—

 

Ambassador Hazy, Glacial Erratics

Formed as a solo-project for Sterling DeWeese, the lo-fi experimentalist psych of Ambassador Hazy‘s Glacial Erratics first showed up in 2020 after four years of making, and with a 2021 vinyl release, the 14-track/39-minute offering would seem to be getting its due. DeWeese — sometimes on his own, sometimes backed by a full band or just drummer Jonathan Bennett — delights in the weird, finding a place somewhere between desert-style drift (his vocals remind at times of mellower Mario Lalli, but I doubt that’s more than coincidence), folk and space-indie on “Ain’t the Same No More,” which is somehow bluesy while the fuzzy “Lucky Clover” earlier taps alterna-chic bedroom gaze and the subsequent “Passing into a Grey Area” brings in full backing for the first time. Disjointed? Yeah, but it’s part of the whole idea, so don’t sweat it. No single song tops four minutes — the Dead Meadowy “Sleepyhead” comes closest at 3:51 — and it ends with “The World’s a Mess,” so yeah, DeWeese makes it easy enough to roll with what’s happening here. I’d suggest doing that.

Ambassador Hazy on Facebook

Ambassador Hazy on Bandcamp

—

 

Mocaine, The Birth of Billy Munro

A wildly ambitious debut — to the point of printing up a novella to flesh out its storyline and characters — The Birth of Billy Munro follows a narrative spearheaded by Mocaine guitarist/vocalist Amrit Mohan and is set in the American South following its title-character through a post-traumatic mental decay with material that runs a gamut from progressive metal to psychedelia to classic Southern heavy rock and grunge and so on. In just 43 minutes and with a host of dialogue-driven stretches — also samples like Alec Baldwin talking about his god complex from 1993’s Malice in the soon-to-be-churning “Narcissus” — the plot is brought to a conclusion on “The Bend,” which touches lighter acoustics and jazzy nuance without letting go entirely of the ’90s flair in “Psylocybin” a few tracks earlier, as far removed from the swaggering “Pistol Envy” as it seems to be, and in fact is. However deep the listener might want to explore, Mocaine seems ready to accommodate, and one only wonders whether the trio will explore further tales of Billy Munro or move on to other stories and concepts.

Mocaine on Facebook

Mocaine on Bandcamp

—

 

Sun Below, Sun Below

Toronto riffers Sun Below would like to be your entertainment for the evening, and they’d probably prefer it if you were also stoned. Their 71-minute self-titled debut long-player arrives after a series of three shorter offerings between 2018-2019, and after the opening “Chronwall Neanderhal,” the 14-minute “Holy Drifter” lets you know outright how it’s gonna go. They’re gonna vibe, they’re gonna jam, they’re gonna riff, and your brain’s gonna turn to goo and that’s just fine. Stoner is as stoner does, and whether that’s on a shorter track like “Shiva Sativa,” the shuffling “Kinetic Keif” and the rumbling “Doom Stick,” or the 18-minute “Twin Worlds” that follows ahead of the 12-minute closer “Solar Burnout,” one way or the other, you get gargantuan, post-Pike riffage that knows from whence its grooves come and doesn’t care it’s going to roll out an hour-plus anyway and steamroll lucidity in the process. Is that a bongrip at the end of “Solar Burnout” or the end of the world? More to the point, can’t it be both?

Sun Below on Facebook

Sun Below on Bandcamp

—