January 2, 2023 by A.S. Van Dorston

Put a pin in your list fatigue and feast your eyes on two of the major polls that represent the international heavy stoner/psych/doom community.

The most wonderful time of the year (list season) can get to be a bit of a grind by the last week of the year, if you feel compelled to keep up with the dozens of year-end lists. While I eagerly anticipate certain ones early on, by then I’m like, WTF, why didn’t this list come out sooner! I still get a thrill when I stumble upon a late discovery album, but also curse under my breath that I didn’t catch it in time for my initial publishing of Fester’s Lucky 13 before Krampusnacht. And don’t get me started on AOTY (Album of the Year). While it’s a useful tool for tracking the major publications, and it includes lists from one-man shop The Needle Drop, Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot of Sound Opinions and other individuals, for the most part it rejects entries such as the most artful list, Raven Sings the Blues, my own site that I’ve done for over a quarter century and participated in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll for over a dozen years, and the entirety of the heavy stoner/psych/doom community.

While AOTY trickles out absolute bullshit top tens from publications that have no business being any kind of authority on music (The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, HuffPost, People, TIME, USA Today, Wired? Good Morning America? The Economist???), it is useful that two major lists from StonerHive and The Obelisk come out at the very end of the year. Clearly, for anyone who cares at all about heavy rock music, an obviously major release which topped both lists, and my own is Elder’s sixth album, Innate Passage. Partly because it was released on November 25, after many lists were wrapped up for publication, and mostly because the mainstream music community have their heads so far up their asses that were they operating back in 1972, they would have also completely ignored Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Of the 125 and counting lists on AOTY, the only one that included Elder was Sputnikmusic.

Thanks to the boundless energy of the gentlemen, scholars and sorcerers behind StonerHive and The Obelisk, Elder, along with King Buffalo, Wo Fat, Messa, Colour Haze and others got the attention they deserved.

StonerHive

Joop Konrad has been doing this since 2009 and continues to spotlight the cream of the stoner/psych/doom crop, with the help of 164 voters. Probably the most diverse sampling of the international heavy music community, not even Doom Charts (which Joop plays a key role in, and will publish it’s 2022 list soon) gets as many contributors. Given that exactly zero of these albums have crossed over to the mainstream, as tracked by the AOTY aggregate of year-end lists, one would think this community is so underground that they don’t matter. Hogwash. Year after year they sustain the growth of festivals like Roadburn, multiple Desert Fests, and Psycho Las Vegas among others, which proves the heavy underground is in rude health, and not going away.

Elder – Innate Passage
King Buffalo – Regenerator
Wo Fat – The Singularity
Sergeant Thunderhoof – This Sceptered Veil
Messa – Close
Clutch – Sunrise On Slaughter Beach
Freedom Hawk – Take All You Can
Steak – Acute Mania
Psychlona – Palo Verde
Gaupa – Myriad
Telekinetic Yeti – Primordial
Paralyzed – Heavy Road
Besvärjelsen – Atlas
Mammoth Volume – The Cursed Who Perform The Larvagod Rites
Cave In – Heavy Pendulum
Early Moods – Early Moods
Kryptograf – The Eldorado Spell
Valley Of The Sun – The Chariot
& The Otolith – Folium Limina & Sons Of Arrakis – Volume I
& Red Sun Atacama – Darwin
Samavayo – Payan & Somali Yacht Club – The Space
& Conan – Evidence of Immortality
Sasquatch – Fever Fantasy
& Sleepwulf – Sunbeams Curl

The Obelesk

The Obelesk is another one-man show (J.J. Koczan) that’s highly regarded in the community, and his poll actually got 420 participants, thanks partly to the handy form on his site. The end result is quite similar with the same top two entries, the most significant difference is Colour Haze, which didn’t even make the top 20 at StonerHive, is #7 here. No surprise, as J.J. is their #1 advocate (my own fandom I’d think would put me in the top five). I’m also stoked to see Vitskär Süden and My Sleeping Karma make the list.

1. Elder, Innate Passage (676 points)
2. King Buffalo, Regenerator (647)
3. Clutch, Sunrise on Slaughter Beach (274)
4. Wo Fat, The Singularity (260)
5. Messa, Close (228)
6. Cave In, Heavy Pendulum (201)
7. Colour Haze, Sacred (197)
8. The Otolith, Folium Limina (179)
9. Earthless, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (170)
9. Sergeant Thunderhoof, This Sceptred Veil (170)
10. Freedom Hawk, Take All You Can (163)
11. Psychlona, Palo Verde (155)
12. Sasquatch, Fever Fantasy (155)
13. Conan, Evidence of Immortality (144)
14. Telekinetic Yeti, Primordial (138)
15. Steak, Acute Mania (135)
16. Nebula, Transmission From Mothership Earth (131)
17. Vitskär Süden, The Faceless King (125)
18. My Sleeping Karma, Atma (118)
18. Samavayo, Pāyān (118)
18. Valley of the Sun, The Chariot (118)
19. Russian Circles, Gnosis (116)
20. Ruby the Hatchet, Fear is a Cruel Master (113)