The Heavy Eyes
Heavy Eyes
Self-Released

Full-on Delta doom from these Heavy Eyes, whose debut full-length is dripping with enough Southern cough syrup to make you forget you’re listening to a stoner rock record. Between the tumbleweed riffs of songs like “Wax Apple” and “Where is Wilder” to the Memphis medicine of songs like “Iron Giants” and “It’s Been So long,” Heavy Eyes slides on through the smoke and takes a midnight sail down the winding river of groove. Of course, this is a stoner rock record, a real lid-dropper, and the fuzzy psych-blues of songs like “5%,” “Voytek,” and “Supermoon” play right into your floating hand, man. A real solid album, this one, and The Heavy Eyes do awfully well to treat you like the custodial prize in the landmark case of Cactus V. Clutch, presided over by judge Fu Manchu in the court of Sabbath. Hell, you just have to have an affinity for bands with ‘leaf’ in their name, and The Heavy Eyes will do right by you.

Listen to The Heavy Eyes’  Heavy Eyes right here!

Skraeckoedlan
Äppelträdet
Transubstans Records

There’s no use fighting it; I’m gonna have a new favourite Swedish stoner rock band just about every month. And why not? When a band like Skraeckoedlan (that’s Horror Lizard for those of you desperate for a translation) drops a planet-devouring full-length debut like this one, it’s perfectly reasonable to proclaim the coming of a new fuzzy messiah. You may recall that I was thoroughly impressed with Skraeckoedlan’s 2009 EP Flykten Från Tellus, describing the band at that time as “a trio of northern woodsmen from outer space” whose sound was “medieval, alien dopespeak urging on the psychedelic juggernaut of heavy fuzz that rolls over you like a cosmic tempest,” comparing them to Dozer, Asteroid, Kyuss, Valis, and Los Natas. Well, all of that still stands, but somewhere between now and then (during which time they released the three-track demo Världarnas Fall) the band has grown bolder and more confident, and their sound has progressed from a loose groove to a more precise bludgeoning (although it still grooves, man).  Äppelträdet (The Apple Tree) stands deep-rooted and thick-trunked, its branches offering  the sweet taste of mammoth melody, and each song you pick is bigger and juicer than the next. It’s an abundance of pure heavy, a bushel-full of bottomed-out riffs in which they cover many of the essential stoner sounds, including the green-smoked “Haven,” the space-fried “Doedaroedlan” and “Cactus,” the dual harsh/clean vocals of “Soluppgång,” and the muddy “Chronos,” which will remind you of a whole host of American sludge bands. They even treat us English-speaking weirdos to a few tunes in our native tongue this time around. You know, I kind of hope this month lasts for a really long time because I don’t want to get off Skraeckoedlan’s trip anytime soon. It’s that good.

Listen to “Doedaroedlan” from Äppelträdet!

Gentlemans Pistols
At Her Majesty’s Pleasure
Rise Above

The Gentlemans Pistols are stone cold rollers steeped thigh-high in the foggy bluster of ’72′s hullabaloo who, now four years removed from their self-titled full-length debut, have forged a grin-and-lick-it campaign aimed at monopolizing the gold-dusted, classic rock racket. This enterprise, known simply as At Her Majesty’s Request, is uproariously glorious, and you don’t so much as listen to it as you do walk into its dark and musty den and stare at all the trophy riffs mounted on the wall like 10 point bucks. The UK band’s powerful, hook-filled bombast has picked up a certain amount of intensity in the last few years, which is no doubt due to the addition of guitarist Bill Steer (of Carcass, Napalm Death, and Firebird fame), who joined the group in 2009 and has brought a ferocious emphasis to the Gentlemans’ twin guitar attack (bolstered on the other side by vocalist/guitarist James Atkinson), the likes of which I haven’t heard since I last listened to Pride Tiger or Tricky Woo. What I’m getting at here is that they slay it, plain and simple, and despite the fact that they leave behind a whole pile of incriminating evidence tying them to a conspiracy involving Cactus, Deep Purple, Captain Beyond, Thin Lizzy, and BANG (and, most certainly, booze, drugs, women, and Satan), they’re too good to get caught, and live to rock and flaunt the gaoler all night long.

Listen to “I Wouldn’t Let You” from At Her Majesty’s Pleasure!