As someone who has continually used StonerRock.com not just as a place to put reviews and promote this site, but also as a way of finding new bands and discovering things I may have missed, learning more about this genre, the news today that the site is down for good hits almost too hard to put into words. Thank you to Dan and Melanie for your years of service to the community and, hell, for being the community. There is a huge void left in the wake of the site, and it’s going to be a long time before anything can take its place.

Amidst the splinter cells of blogs out there (this one included), StonerRock.com was the central location that had the power to bring everyone together. It unified the scene and gave an outlet to both bands and fans that, now, simply doesn’t exist.

Dan and Melanie posted a statement on the site this morning, and it’s with a heavy heart that I reproduce it here:

StonerRock.com R.I.P.
December 15, 1999 – November 29, 2010

On November 29, 2010, the StonerRock.com website was suddenly sucked into the void. We did everything we could do, but it was not possible to save it.

We would like to extend our heartfelt appreciation to the community supporters, forums administrators and content contributors. You can give yourselves a high five for keeping StonerRock.com online for an extra year. Thank you!

We are not revealing any details about what happened because we don’t want to give the perpetrators any satisfaction or notoriety.

From now on we will be 100 percent devoted to our other websites, All That is Heavy and MeteorCity. We hope that you will continue to support us in our continued efforts to bring the rock to the people.

This is our final statement with regards to StonerRock.com and this very difficult situation. Our heads are spinning. We are devastated.

Sincerely and regretfully,
Dan & Melanie

A quick note to say congratulations to Dan and Melanie of StonerRock.com on the site’s turning 10 years old yesterday. I know that for me personally it’s been a major resource over the years to discover new bands, and this site probably wouldn’t exist without either it or the All That is Heavy webstore, so thanks for all the hard work. Here’s the news they sent out:

We are very happy to announce that today (December 15, 2009) is the official 10 year anniversary of StonerRock.com!

By “official” we mean that it’s the anniversary of the official launch of the website to the general public on December 15, 1999. StonerRock.com was online for a month or so before that in a “beta test” form.

It’s quite astonishing to us that we’ve lasted 10 years! Even more astonishing is that we’re still going as strong as ever! Apparently we’re here to stay!!

You can read the rest of the update (and find out about the bitchin’ contest they’ve got going on) at StonerRock.com.

In a word: passion. Take, for example, Dan and Melanie, who run StonerRock.com, the All that is Heavy webstore and MeteorCity. They’re on vacation, and still, rather than skip a week of updating, they decided to send out an update saying there won’t be an update. Brilliant. You think whoever runs CrappyAutotunedPopSongs.com is doing that? Not a chance.

Here’s the email. To sign up for the All that is Heavy mailing list (a recommended move), go here.

Howdy!

This is just a quick update to let you know that there will be no update this time around! Usually, we would have done one on Friday but we just got back from vacation so that is impossible. Instead of killing ourselves trying to get something together in a rush we’ve decided that it would be best to just skip this update altogether.

So, now’s your chance to dig into our back-catalog and/or start chipping away at your wishlist!

We’ll be back in 2 weeks for our next regularly scheduled update.

Over and out from:
Dan and Melanie

Howdy!

 This is just a quick update to let you know that there will be no update this time around! Usually, we would have done one on Friday but we just got back from vacation so that is impossible. Instead of killing ourselves trying to get something together in a rush we've decided that it would be best to just skip this update altogether.

 So, now's your chance to dig into our back-catalog and/or start chipping away at your wishlist!

 We'll be back in 2 weeks for our next regularly scheduled update.

 Over and out from:
 Dan and Melanie