When it comes to the mantra of “sex, drugs and rock & roll,” it’s not unfair to suggest that stoner-metal music seems most occupied with what’s wrapped up in the middle.
While weed has been celebrated in-song by anyone from Paul McCartney and the Beatles, to reggae icon Peter Tosh, to Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg, stoner-metal grew out of four Birmingham-based masters of reality singing about the sweetest sativa they ever smoked. It eventually became its own unique subsect in the heavy-music world — one informed by bong-rattling bass lines, slow-toked rhythms and doom riffs danker than a shag-lined basement. In other words, music made by — and for — full-blown dopesmokers.
But whose stoner-metal sound is the most potent? We asked our readers to blaze up our comments sections with their picks, and this was the yield.
Electric Wizard
While a healthy stash of stoner-metal bands got their start worshipping at the altar of Black Sabbath (more on them later), few have been as brazenly out-in-the-open with it as Electric Wizard — the Dorset, U.K. outfit’s band name is a portmanteau of Sab tracks “Electric Funeral” and “The Wizard.”
That’s not to say Electric Wizard haven’t put their own stamp on the genre. Indeed, they developed a unique vision, powered by copious amounts of THC, of course.
Stoner-metal royalty in their own right, Electric Wizard ascended to the top of the heap with genre classics like 2000’s Dopethrone, a potent haze of paranoid screams, gritty riffage and lyrics wreathed in weed and H.P. Lovecraft references.
Sleep
Sleep have never been shy about sharing their high times with the world.
The California trio put cannabis leaves on their album covers, sparked up an hour-plus opus called Dopesmoker, and, with their crimson-eyed Holy Mountain opener “Dragonaut,” officially supplanted Peter, Paul and Mary in having the greatest song about taking a wild-ass trip with your magical dragon.
True juggernauts of the game, the members of Sleep also smoked heavy with off-shoot projects Om (vocalist-bassist Al Cisneros) and High on Fire (founding, and now former, guitarist Matt Pike).
Down
Sometimes you stone the crow. Sometimes the crow stones you.
Down are NOLA’s premiere sludge-styled stoner supergroup, a veritable red-eyed Voltron made up of various metal heavyweights from Pantera (vocalist Philip Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown), Corrosion of Conformity (guitarist Pepper Keenan) and Crowbar (guitarist Kirk Windstein and bassists Todd Strange and Pat Bruders) across its history.
They’ve hailed the leaf together since the mid Nineties, burying their fandom in a mix of Southern-toasted riff-rock, crushing beats and a lead-lined billow of bud smoke.
Kyuss
If Kyuss’ brand of stoner rock seems to possess strong notes of sinsemilla and your nearest Shell station, that’s probably because the Palm Desert, California, outfit honed their hazy songcraft while performing outdoor shows with the help of gas-powered generators.
The war inside their heads sometimes came throttling our way as highway-speedin’ heaviness full of high-octane chuggery (“Green Machine”), though they likewise had an affinity for melodically fuzz-freaked anthems (“Demon Cleaner”) that showcased the bold exhalations of vocalist John Garcia and guitar hero Josh Homme.
Kyuss recorded four full-lengths before the circus left town, but its members blazed on through bands like Fu Manchu and Queens of the Stone Age.
Black Sabbath
The purest strain of stoner metal, cut straight from the source.
While Master of Reality’s “Sweet Leaf” famously starts off with a tape loop of Tony Iommi fitfully coughing after toking on a joint he was sharing with Ozzy Osbourne — a moment we’d previously called the most “epic smoke sesh in the history of epic metal smoke seshes” — the song, a loving ode to mind-expanding cannabinoids, is a stoned groove that goes down smooth.
True buds to the metal community, Black Sabbath’s most drug-induced anthems — this including the cocaine-crazed “Snowblind” — planted a seed in the imaginations of music fans for generations.