STONER DOUBLE BILL!

Well I have recently got some decent headphones for an mp3 player I bought months ago, when I first got it i didn't know if it was the cheap Taiwanese mp3 player i bought off ebay or the headphones that were shit however having just spent £12 on the player i was unwilling to risk another £10 - £15 for some half decent headphones in case it was the player so i stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it! Recently i was in a shop and some headphones caught my eye and i remembered the mp3 player and the fact that my hour journey to work was very tedious and decided to just bite the bullet and buy em! I got home and tested them and yup turns out it was the headphones not the player that sucked! I was chuffed to fuck to have music "on the move" again! Where am i going with all this you might be scratching your head and asking! Well having these long journeys to work with an mp3 player using headphones has given me a new appreciation for music and just last week i decided to have an all (ahem) "Stoner" playlist...INTERLUDE.... Right i use the word stoner a lot to describe certain styles/bands within rock music however as lame a genre term and as lame as many very weak sub par almost grunge type bands have made it i'm afraid in these multi genre times when bands are splicing together all sorts of music a quick easy genre term is a handy way to save time for you the reader and give you an idea about what I am talking about so for the uninitiated the term "Stoner" to me applies to bands who look to the sounds of heavy 70's rock specifically early Black Sabbath for their influence,in most cases smoke lots of weed and play fairly slow and damn heavy!.....END INTERLUDE..... So whilst enjoying my all Stoner playlist two bands stood out in particular these bands were Sigiriya and Thorr-Axe both of whom just utterly slayed my ears on the bus/train journeys to and from work and my exact thoughts were and I qoute "FUCK I Need to blog these bands!"

So lets start with Sigiriya These guys are from of all places Wales (I just found this out, I can fucking SEE Wales from the top of my road!!! for some reason i thought they were Swedish) and have members who have served time in such mighty bands as Iron Monkey, Black Eye Riot, Dukes Of Nothing (See my Post on them HERE), Acrimony and Helvis (See My Post On Them HERE) If you have heard of or heard any of these bands then you will know that the members of this bands know a fucking titanic riff slab when they hear one and their combined experience should say enough but I shall continue I present here their debut album from 2011 "Return To Earth" (their new album "Darkness Died Today" is out any day) and what i like about these guys is the fact they have worked hard to get a sound that is completely bottom end but the guitar sound is something a bit different to your usual bands of this style it's really thick and heavy but has a kinda sharp sorta fuzz to it so whilst it rumbles your bass bins the riffs do not get lost in the mud plus their vocalist has a really pleasant voice in the mid to high range which works really well against the mountainous riffs and makes for a great mix, the songs are memorable and apart from the 10 min plus closer "Death Trip To Eryi" all clock in around the 3 & 1/2 to 5 min mark so they avoid the pitfalls of this style of music by not running a riff into the ground till you're bored to death with it and believe me there are plenty of great riffs on here! There is nothing completely startling here and stoner is kind of a restricted genre however these guys do the style way better than the vast majority of their contemporaries and deserve the 35 mins of your time it takes to check this album out! Which you can do for free right here....

Sigiriya - Mediafire

So onto Thorr-Axe Hailing from Indiana in the American Midwest these guys are a different bongload of "stoner" altogether from their bandcamp page.....

"Thorr-Axe is a raiding party comprised of three men with a mutual love of heavy music. We belch forth tales of dragons, wizards, frost giants, and vikings putting axes through people's skulls."

Whilst that description alone would have me reaching for the download button immediately I feel i owe you a little more, whilst these guys do have the heavy riffage and pace of stoner for the majority of their sound these guys are more akin to the heavy muscular metal that the likes of High On Fire or Lord By Fire (see My post On them HERE) do, whilst there are plenty of groovy riffs in their that would have them sit nicely in the stoner camp they tend to up the pace more often than most bands of that style do, plus this time round this bands singer does not have a pleasant voice he spews forth his lyrics in a style that's not far from the more brutal metallic hardcore type bands and works brilliantly with their sludgy attack,I find their riffs to be utterly addictive and have me reaching for the volume button whilst my head involuntarily starts to nod! If you are seeking the sun baked stoner style of something like Kyuss or Fu Manchu then scroll back up and download Sigiriya if you like your stoner/metal with a bit more bite to it then go ahead and download this and feel the Thorr-Axe whistle past your head! In the file you will find their demo "Roots Of The Mountain" and also their debut album "Wall Of Spears" whilst 3 of the 4 songs from the demo are redone on the album it would seem a bit redundant but i just figured why not as there is a big difference between the demo and the sound of the album however both are utterly great and worth having even if just by comparison plus this file gives you everything they have recorded so far and by now you know what I am like for completion! Anyway here's your link go get it now as i think I hear a band of warriors wielding swords and shields coming over the hill!!!

Thorr Axe - Mediafire