Stoner Metal: A History
- Paul Taylor
- 11 minutes ago
- 9 min read
I'll keep this introduction brief because god knows the rest isn't.
This is the first part in a series of two articles I am doing on this genre, in the next I'll fully dissect the modern day stoner-prog microgenre.
Stoner rock and stoner metal were my gateway into the world of metal (the grunge to stoner to doom pipeline is very real). So in deference to the genre I've compiled a fairly comprehensive history detailing it's progression from classic-rock origins through detours in doom metal, sludge, and grunge, all the way to it's modern subgenres and subscenes. I'm no historian, but I've listened to a hell of a lot of albums and I'll try to illustrate the genres slow development and the innovations made along the way.
As a bit of a TL;DR I've also placed a list of the most notable albums/artists/songs in this genre at the end. You can skip straight there if you'd like with this link.
A Birth
The earliest traces of stoner rock's psychedelic roots can be found within the acid rock of The Jimi Hendrix Experience on Are You Experienced (1967) or the bluesy doomer "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (1969) by The Beatles. And even before then we can find traces of proto-punk in early releases by The Who, The Kinks, and most notably in The Stooges. And finally, the emergence of hard rock- boiling out of psychedelic rock itself- with Cream, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple is another vital piece in stoner rock's puzzle.
But the true roots lie in Black Sabbath, when the Birmingham band nearly single-handed invented heavy metal in 1970 on Black Sabbath and Paranoid. And crucially, Sabbath had layed the foundation for doom metal with "Black Sabbath" off the debut and "Hand of Doom" on Paranoid. Even more important to this particular story however is their 1971 follow-up: Master of Reality, whose guitar tone has been the proverbial Holy Grail for nigh-all stoner bands to come. "Sweet Leaf" is frequently considered the very first stoner metal song, with Tony Iommi's fuzz heavy and psychedelic riffage and lyrics describing the bands love for sweet Mary Jane.
Other contemporary acts like Blue Cheer with Vincebus Eruptum (1968), Sir Lord Baltimore with Kingdom Come (1971), and Leafhound with the bluesy Growers of Mushroom (1971) also proved a big influence on stoner rock. But after only a few years, the heavy metal and hard rock acts of the '70s seemed to have completely forgotten what Sabbath had pioneered on those first 4 albums.
Essential Releases:
First 4 Black Sabbath LPs:
Black Sabbath
Paranoid
Master of Reality
Vol. 4
So Close, Yet So Far
While Heavy Metal would see development grow throughout the 1970's and early '80s the vast majority sounded little like those first 4 Sabbath albums. Stoner metal Budgie, Judas Priest, Motörhead, and Iron Maiden were not.
But finally in the early 1980's you start seeing bands pick up what Black Sabbath were laying down in 1970. Bands like Pentagram, Candlemass, Trouble, Witchfinder General, and The Obsessed start creating slow, meandering, and desolate heavy metal which dwells in depressive themes. But these early doom metal groups still weren't all the way there. They may have shared the plodding tempos and thick riffs, but they were missing the fuzzy tone, psychedelic atmosphere, and less-bleak lyrical themes.
The earliest of these was Pentagram, who had their start in the early '70s, but they didn't release a full-length until 1985. maybe the first full release of this wave of Traditional Doom Metal as it is called would be Pagan Altar's eponymous debut in 1982.
But for our purposes the most important of these trad-doom bands were Saint Vitus. The band were actually put out by SST Records, the indie label founded by Black Flag, and this connection to the punk scene would prove massively important for stoner metal's development in the underground. And as for SV's music itself: their 1986 album Born Too Late brought a hazy sound to the gloomy hard rock-influenced doom of their contemporaries, bridging some of the gap to what's to come.
Essential Releases:
Born Too Late by Saint Vitus
Pagan Altar by Pagan Altar
Three Sister Genres
Moving into the mid-late 1980's we have three different genres evolving in three distinct music scenes across the US.
First, in the pacific northwest, you have a growing scene of punks who take massive influence from the sludge antics of Black Flag on their 1984 slap-in-the-face My War. These punk groups started churning out a dynamic blend of punk and metal, later labeled grunge. Melvins release their influential sludgy debut Gluey Porch Treatments in 1987, Soundgarden put out their wicked doom-punk Ultramega OK in 1988, and Alice in Chains unleashed the fun-house-mirror-heavy-
metal of Facelift in 1990. You also had lesser known but still influential acts like Skin Yard and TAD that further expounded on grunge and sludge metals' development.
Skipping ahead a bit, many later grunge records would also prove to be huge influences to swaths of 21st-century stoner bands. Soundgarden's twin masterpieces Badmotorfinger (1991) and Superunknown (1994), AIC's depressed and destructive Dirt (1992), and Melvin's trifecta in Bullhead (1991), Houdini (1993), and Stoner Witch (1994) all introduced many (including myself) to the genre.
From Melvins's loins came NOLA sludge metal. A deluge of grimy punk-metal coming from the swamps of Louisiana, helmed by the downers in Crowbar, the disturbed Eyehategod, the deviant Acid Bath, the disgusting Soilent Green, and later, the d-.... uh... DOWN. Acid Bath's sole two albums, 1994's When the Kite String Pops and 1996's Paegan Terrorism Tactics, brought more of the psychedelia and fuzz associated with stoner metal into the piano-wire sharp riffs and throat-shredding vocals of sludge. Eyehategod similarly took to a fuzzier doom sound on the devastating Dopesick (1996). And DOWN split the middle between stoner metal, sludge metal, and southern metal, with some grunge-isms thrown in for colour.
At the same time, bands in California's Palm Desert began to crystalize. Kyuss- highly influenced by the recently defunct Across the River- formed in 1987. By 1990, others like New Jersey's Monster Magnet and the monstruous Sleep began to make waves. Kyuss released their first EP in 1990 and their first full-length- Wretch- in 1991, soon to be followed by Blues for the Red Sun. Sleep put out the 1000 tonne Sleep's Holy Mountain in 1992, preceded by Volume One in '91. And Monster Magnet released the space-epic Tab in 1990 before following up with Spine of God in 1991. At this point, we can definitively point to the establishment of stoner rock and stoner metal proper.
Kyuss blended the aggressive youthfulness of Black Flag with the vibrant-yet-depressive fuzz found on Master of Reality. Sleep pushed the limits of doom metal, not in it's aggression or slowness diSEMBOWELMENT or similar groups, but instead in it's reverence and groove.
Essential Releases:
Blues for the Red Sun by Kyuss
Sleep's Holy Mountain by Sleep
Bullhead by Melvins
When the Kite String Pops by Acid Bath
Spine of God by Monster Magnet
Dopesick by Eyehategod
Moving On Up
With the explosion of grunge in 1991, stoner rock was able to somewhat break through the underground. Kyuss were endorsed by what is now the world's biggest band, Nirvana, based on their 1992 masterpiece Blues for the Red Sun. And they again planted themselves as the genre's figure-head by opening for Metallica's Australian tour in 1993. And Sleep (yes, Sleep) were signed to a major label off of the success of Holy Mountain, taking years to develop their ambitious follow-up. Looking back, it is truly crazy how desperately the major labels wanted to repeat the success of Nevermind that they were willing to gamble on Sleep and Melvins of all bands.
Around this time, former hardcore bands Fu Manchu and Corrosion of Conformity began working themselves into the conversation. C.O.C. released the sludge-stoner blend Blind in 1991 and the southern rock-influenced Damnation in 1994. And Fu Manchu debuted their stoner-skater punk on 1994's No One Rides for Free.  The mid-late 1990's saw many of the most legendary releases in stoner rock and stoner metal's history: Kyuss's Welcome to Sky Valley in 1994, Fu Manchu's The Action is Go in 1997 and Godzilla's / Eatin' Dust in 1999, Monster Magnet's Dopes to Infinity in 1995, Clutch's Elephant Riders in 1998, Cathedral's The Ethereal Mirror in 1993, and Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics in 1997.
Essential Releases:
Welcome to Sky Valley by Kyuss
Dopes to Infinity by Monster Magnet
The Action is Go by Fu Manchu
Come My Fanatics by Electric Wizard
Shifts In the Foundation
After the dramatic upward momentum of the '90s, stoner rock hit a sort of
equilibrium in the 2000s. Kyuss broke up after releasing And the Circus Leaves Town in 1995. This led guitarist and songwriter Josh Homme to form Queens of the Stone Age, whose mixture of stoner metal and alternative rock on Rated R (2000) and Songs for the Deaf (2002) would lead to worldwide fame. Sleep, after struggling to record and release their monolithic Dopesmoker from 1994 through 1997, called it quits. But before Dopesmoker would eventually see release in 2003, guitarist Matt Pike formed the substantially faster and more brutal High on Fire, and Sleep's bassist-vocalist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius formed the experimental, eastern-tinged Om.
Clutch hit it big in this period (Blast Tyrant [2004]), their style of retro hard rock leading them to become a major headliner alongside the sleezy heavy metal of Monster Magnet. Japan's Boris (named for the Melvins track), built off their '90's roots in drone metal and put out the stonery Heavy Rocks in 2002 and post-metal Feedbacker in 2003. The Fu Manchu-expats Nebula also reared their head at the start of the 2000s, and new acts like Sasquatch (II [2006]), Colour Haze (Tempel [2006]), and Earthless (Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky [2007]) began making a name for themselves. Others from this period include the New Wave of American Heavy Metal-adjacent The Sword, the melodic stoner pop of Torche, the crusty stoner-punks Kylesa, and the soon-to-be megalithic Elder.
Essential Releases:
Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age
Dopesmoker by Sleep
Death Is this Communion by High on Fire
Feedbacker by Boris
Division and Diversification
Come the 2010's and smaller acts like 1000mods (Super Van Vacation [2011]) and Stoned Jesus (Seven Thunders Roar [2012]) truly place themselves at the front of the conversation. This can be attributed to the degrading levels of innovation in the elder bands. With the exception of the reformed Sleep, whose follow-up to Dopesmoker (The Sciences [2018]) is a certified banger, most of the bands who formerly led the charge in the genre had lost their way.
After releasing one of the heaviest slabs of stoner-doom ever in 2000's Dopethrone, Electric Wizard quickly lost their magic touch and never came close to their previous heights. Monster Magnet had struggled to keep their macho sound together since the late '90s and were never able to replicate the likes of Spine of God, Superjudge, or Dopes for Infinity. Fu Manchu fell into a hole of self-reference, pounding out what appeared to be the same album one after the other (with the exception of Gigantoid [2014] which is pretty good). Because of this, there was a shoe for new bands to fill; Now that Monster Magnet, Clutch, QOTSA, and Vista Chino (partially reformed Kyuss) were permanent headliners, someone had to be in the middle of the ticket.
So given the staleness of much of the old vanguard new bands picked up the slack. As the genre grew and aged it had developed several distinct styles within itself:
The afore-mentioned 1000mods, Stoned Jesus, and Sasquatch, along with Red Fang, The Sword, and Ruby the Hatchet, play a familiar blend of stoner-metal and stoner rock as was popular in the '90s, with Red Fang's "Wires" being one of the genre's greatest singles.
Earthless, Samsara Blues Experiment, Colour Haze, Dead Meadow, and My Sleeping Karma play a spacey, psychedelic, and often jammy style with minimal-to-no vocals. Relying on post-rock dynamics, wide open soundscapes, and potent atmospheres.
All Them Witches, Elbrus, and the solo works from former Kyuss members Brant Bjork and John Garcia worked more blues and roots elements into the sound. This more bluesy style is epitomized by ATW's modern classic Lightning at the Door (2013).
More doom oriented bands, taking inspiration from Conan and Electric Wizard, continue to play a part in the modern scene. Bands like Windhand, Spaceslug, and REZN keep the low-and-slow tradition alive with their transportive stoner-doom epics.
And the final style, incorporating vast influences from Hawkwind space rock, Neurosis post-metal, and Pink Floyd-ian prog-rock, is stoner-prog. The microgenre utilizes intricate riffs as in Humanotone's "Light Antilogies", tight and complicated drum patterns as in King Buffalo's "Hebetation", and unconventional song-structure as in Elder's "Lore".
Essential Releases:
Dopethrone by Electric Wizard
Lore by Elder
The Sciences by Sleep
Lightning at the Door by All Them Witches
The Burden of Restlessness by King Buffalo
And now here's a quick run-down on the most essential releases of the genre in no particular order. If you're completely unfamiliar with the genre this is where you should start:
Welcome to Sky Valley by Kyuss ("Gardenia")
Dopethrone by Electric Wizard ("Funeralopolis")
Lore by Elder ("Lore")
Dopesmoker by Sleep ("Dopesmoker")
Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age ("Song for the Dead")
