Fuzzy has always had a hankering for desert rock, and now that I actually live in the Mojave Desert, my love for this style of stoner fuzz has only grown stronger. There's something about this heavy rock style that makes it easy to imagine the hot, dusty trails surrounded by cactus and red cliffs. (Not to mention that I don't live too far from Sky Valley.) So I'm excited about the new album from the deserts of Chile called "Weird Tales" by CORMANO which drops on January 1. 

"Weird Tales" is the LP follow-up to the trio's 2018 debut EP "EPXX18" and it keeps the same fuzzy desert rock sound with a dash of sinister spaghetti western overtones. 

The album kicks off in grand style, with an overture with a heavy, epic riff that seems to announce, "This album is going to kick your ass." And indeed, the next track, with its eponymous title, does indeed unleash the next level of fuzz with the addition of vocals. These three dudes bang out a lot of sound for a three-piece, while keeping things tight and energetic in the way that only a trio can do it. 

"Bury Me With My Money" wastes no time going political with its declaration of greed, but the real highlight is the guitar work and thundering drums in the middle of the song. 

"El Caleuche" slows things down a bit, and keeps the spaghetti western flair going with the church bells, but then kicks in with the fuzz before it heads into heavy psych territory with extended guitar licks and layered effects. 

"Urknall" brings back the vocals (this time in Spanish) and really gives the drums a chance to stand out, with extended drum solos and placing them near the top of the mix. 

"Rise From Your Grave" has more of the heavy psych guitar work that we heard on "El Caleuche" with the addition of vocals. 

"Futuere" is a flat-out rocker, and the finale "A Boy And His Dog" wraps up the album with a somewhat melancholy tale that ends with a bang. 

"Weird Tales" is non-stop heavy energy from start to finish, with a variety of sonic styles to keep things fresh, so check it out on January 1 and ring in the new year with some great desert fuzz. 

Fuzzy's Favorite: It's a tough choice, but I think the psychedelic vibes on "El Caleuche" make it stand out. 

From the band: 

"Weird Tales" is the first LP from Chilean Stoner 'N Roll band Cormano. The eight songs talk about ancient monsters, old western landscapes, and dystopian alternatives and other weird stories.

Cormano is from Santiago, Chile with members:

• Aaron Saavedra : Guitar/Vocals
• Claudio Bobadilla: Bass Guitar/Backing Vocals
• Rodrigo Jiménez: Drums/Backing Vocals 

FFO: 3Demons, Inferous, and Electric Cult. 

Follow the band on Bandcamp to find out when "Weird Tales" is released on January 1 at https://cormano.bandcamp.com

Listen to Dreams of Maya "I" on YouTube:

There's been so much great stoner metal from Mexico this year (check out The Swamp's CACTUS ROJO, ELECTRIC CULT, 3DEMONS, and VELJET) and released today is another album to add to the list: "Quanaxhuato" from SANTO FUZZ. This is nearly an hour of heavy psych with excellent guitar work, and especially the vocals stand out on this album. The vocals include singing, growls, background chants, and they are layered together to give support the heavy psych vibes. There is a slight lo-fi vibe to this recording, and that's a good thing. Listen to "Quanaxhuato" from Santo Fuzz on Bandcamp at:

Some of the highlights: heavy metal riffs on "El Truco," mind-bending vocals on "Usurero Del Baratillo", and simply satanic worship on the title track. 

Oh yea, you might have noticed all the vocals are in Spanish, which is perfect for this style of music.

Hey did I already mention this album clocks in at nearly an hour? What are you waiting for? Grab a copy and follow the band on Bandcamp at https://santofuzz.bandcamp.com/album/quanaxhuato

Listen to "Quanaxhuato" on YouTube: 

"Gluttoner" is the debut EP from MULE THROWER, a new solo band from Jeff Gallagher. Short, sweet, and to the point -- a handful of tracks with some very catchy riffs, excellent vocals, and a dose of appropriate samples. "Gluttoner" ends too quickly but hopefully this is a taste of more to come from Mule Thrower -- and hopefully soon! Listen on Bandcamp:

Psych rock fans have reason to celebrate with Friday's release of "Invisible Wormhole" from one of Fuzzy's favorite bands, MELLOW BEAST! Readers of my blog will remember my previous reviews of Mellow Beast's debut "Hyperion" and its coneptual follow-up "The Tale of Sir Gregory." Friday's release continues the with Mellow Beast's mastery of late 60s psychedelia, but begins a new story about what lurks in a wormhole behind the moon. And in terms of musical textures and variety, this has to be the band's best album yet (and that's saying something). Listen to "Invisible Wormhole" by Mellow Beast on Bandcamp (with the full album to be released October 29):  

Get ready for Halloween with the heavy doom riffs of the upcoming debut EP from FOG GIANT. This S/T delivers 5 songs which truly deserve to be called "sabbath worship" with their low & slow tones, fuzzed-out riffs, and pummeling drum lines. Listen to Fog Giant EP on Bandcamp:

"Sky Burial" is a strong opener, and fires a salvo of stoner doom across your brain as it fires off what Fog Giant has to offer. 

"Sesspool" takes it nearly instrumental, and the vocals don't kick in until the end. I'm digging the burning, chugging riffs on this one.

The eponymous track "Fog Giant" keeps the barge of destruction sailing towards its destruction. I gotta say, I love it when a band has a song using the name of the band as the title! This one is certified dark and sinister. 

"Riff Wizard" is the pre-release track which you can listen to right now on Bandcamp, and if you dig it, then you are going to want to hear the full album at its release on Halloween.

The album ends with a cover of Uriah Heep's "Rainbow Demon" that delivers vocals on par with the original. Well done!

Fog Giant EP delivers 5 tracks and nearly 30 minutes of sabbath worship, and that's more than enough to set the mood at your Halloween party. 

The album is available for pre-order now on Bandcamp at https://foggiant.bandcamp.com/ with the full release on Halloween. Be sure to check out the CD, too!

Fuzzy's Favorite: Toss-up between "Riff Wizard" and "Rainbow Demon" but this whole beast is excellent, so just hit PLAY at the start and let it play on repeat. 

Fog Giant band is from Erie, PA with members: 

• Andrew Vickery - vocals, guitar
• Steve Anthony - guitar
• Matt Barthelmes - bass
• Zach Hudock - drums

From the band: 

We're a stoner-doom quartet from Erie, Pennsylvania, and I feel like it's pretty solidly in your wheelhouse; heavy, smoke-filled riffs, walls of citrus-flavored amplifiers, cautionary tales of psychedelics and wizards.

Follow FOG GIANT on Bandcamp at https://foggiant.bandcamp.com and check out the CD, too.

SPACELORD drops their new album "False Dawn" on November 5, and you can catch a few of the tracks right now on Bandcamp. This duo from New York will blow your mind with their unique blend of desert rock and heavy psych. A lot of time and effort went into these songs, and the result is an album full of heavy riffs and mellow melodies. Listen to the pre-release tracks from Spacelord's "False Dawn" on Bandcamp:

Spacelord is a band that takes the best of my favorite bands and rolls them into one killer album. One track has me thinking, "Yea this would have been a killer Zeppelin tune" and then the next has me wishing Soundgarden had never broken up. Don't get me wrong -- I'm definitely NOT saying that there is anything derivative here. Spacelord's songs are inspired by the same music that all of us love, and the result is original and amazing. Some of the songs are heavier, some are slower, and all of them are killer stoner tunes. There have been a lot of great releases these past few months, and Spacelord's "False Dawn" is definitely among the best of them!

The full album release is on November 5 and is available for pre-order now at https://spacelordband.bandcamp.com/album/false-dawn

From the band: 

False Dawn draws together the band's many influences, from 70s acid rock like Zeppelin and Sabbath to the dark, heavy sound of Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. "Some of the music was written in the days and weeks that followed the death of my brother, while some others were concepts I had wanted to explore for a long while," said guitarist Rich Root. "We're taking the personal impressions of all of our influences and amalgamating them into something that makes us feel like the music we love makes us feel."

I asked the band to tell me about the cover art (which I find to be amazing!) and here's what they told me: 

We kicked around a bunch of art direction ideas, but we didn't have a clear vision, we were just looking for something that might inspire us. There were several artists we considered working with, and we found some amazing museum photography of ancient artifacts that might have worked. In the meantime, I was messing around with this program called Artbreeder. Artbreeder uses something called a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to "learn" what different types of images should look like, and which ones look best. Users then collaborate with the program by setting the parameters or mixing different images or types of images together. It has an album art setting, which is what gave me the idea to go in this direction. There were some promising images from our early experiments (I've attached an example here),

Early version of the album cover by Artbreeder

but the problem is, Artbreeder knows albums have word-like shapes on the covers. But it doesn't know what words actually are, so when it generates album art it creates these weird cryptoglyphs in place of the band name and album title. We'd have to either incorporate them into our concept or just put our text over them. In the end we weren't happy with what we got out of the program. Then I started playing with Artbreeder's landscape setting. By going through several iterations, it started to learn what kind of fantastical, surreal visions I liked best. When we got this one, it was instantly clear we had a winner. So this album cover is actually a crop of a wider landscape. There's also an alternate version of it that could serve as the back cover if we're ever able to do a vinyl run of False Dawn.

Spacelord is from New York with members 

• Vocals, guitar: Ed Grabianowski 
• Guitars, bass, drum conjuring: Rich Root

Follow SPACELORD on Bandcamp at https://spacelordband.bandcamp.com 

Fuzzy missed a great release from earlier this year, so let's catch up with KENTUCKY GREEN and their debut album "Galactic Acid". These guys sound straight out of 70s Alabama (or should I say, Kentucky?), despite actually be from Australia. Heavy riffs, killer vocals, epic drumming, and over 50 minutes of high octane music. Listen to Galactic Acid by Kentucky Green on Bandcamp:

Kentucky Green really grooves in a tight formation, so I'm guessing they've played together a lot since their formation in 2019.  When a band plays together this well, it's not really necessary to point out any member in particular, but I gotta say, some of the guitar solos are just epic, and the drumming on here is completely badass. 

Part of the success of this album lies in its recording. It was recorded live, and with great production quality, so we get the energy of a live performance without compromising the sound. 

Did I already mention is album clocks in at 50 minutes? And it's totally solid throughout. With this many songs, any band would be forgiven for having a few weaker tracks, but Kentucky Green deliver the goods every time. 

Fuzzy's Favorite: "Judas Goat" captures the band's heavy rocking sound, guitar solos, and inspired drum work. 

From the band: 

Kentucky Green are a Brisbane based three-piece rock band formed in 2019. Alternately described as "Stoner Blues" and "Doom Prog", we combine the de-tuned riffage of Kyuss and Sleep with the 70's rock of Sabbath, Budgie and Mountain and add a dash of Rush/Yes prog rock to create our own blistering musical stew. 

Album artwork by Jason T. Ward

HOPE HOLE lays down the heavy rock riffs and rough vocals with an undercurrent of joyful nihilism that Fuzzy really digs. Hope Hole isn't afraid to chuck around a little acoustic guitar, some keys, and epic solos as the mood fits them. "Anything to keep things ominous" seems to be the band's motto. Or as the band says, "Goth-infected doom metal from the heartland, USA." I'm surprised how catchy the riffs are on this album, and the start-to-finish quality means this will get a lot of repeated plays. Any fan of 70s rock anthems such as Meatloaf or Rocky Horror are going to absolutely love Hope Hole. And you get a cover of The Cure to top things off. Listen to "Death Can Change" from Hope Hole on Bandcamp: 

Fuzzy's Favorite: "Death Can Change" because I can't resist a good sample, and this song is just a catchy as the rest (and maybe "Hallucinating You" is the catchiest of them all). 

Hope Hole is the duo of Matt Snyder and Mike Mullholand from Toledo, Ohio. 

From the band: 

Hope Hole was created during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Matt wrote some songs, and Mike's leads and keys made them better

Follow the band's news and grab the CD on their Bandcamp page at https://hopehole.bandcamp.com/album/death-can-change 

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With nearly 300 albums, there is a lot of great music in The Swamp Record's catalog! So where to start listening?

Start with the LABEL SAMPLER. It's got one song from each band in The Swamp.

Looking for a particular style of music? Scroll down to find stoner, doom, metal, instrumental, psychedelic, rock, and more!

BEST SELLERS

COMPILATIONS

DOOM CHART WINNERS

• Bretus
• Froglord
• Grave Disgrace
• Lunar Swamp
• Professor Electric
• Sonic Demon
• Swamplord
• Willow Ash

STONER DOOM

• Deathgang
• Grave Disgrace
• Kadal
• Willow Ash

DOOM METAL

• 3Demons
• Electric Cult
• Froglord
• Green Hog
• Sonic Demon
• Titanosaur

DOOM BLUES

HEAVY ROCK / FUZZ ROCK

HORROR DOOM

PSYCH ROCK / PSYCHEDELIC

• Clyde Von Klaus
• Crow Ballard
• Fairyport Convent
• The Lancasters
• Murder Not Suicide
• Taubnernaut
• Thunder Volt
• Trahir

JAM BANDS

• Dos Brujos
• Speck

INSTRUMENTAL

• 3Demons
• Veljet

STONER PUNK

EXTREME PSYCH / DOOM JAZZ

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With a heavy alt rock sound that is more like UN-caged wolves, Austria's CAGED WOLVES have dropped their new album "Act Of Nature Beyond Control" with nearly an hour of riff-laden, fuzzed-out songs with intense vocals. Deep bass, chugging guitar, and driving drums -- Caged Wolves delivers a seriously heavy set of rockers. Listen to "Act Of Nature Beyond Control" EP by Caged Wolves on Bandcamp: 

If you're old school (like me), you will consider Caged Wolves to easily fit into the style of grunge, with their heavy riffs and style that takes them beyond your typical rock band. 

In a way, this is a double-EP. The 2nd set of 3 songs are the instrumental versions. I really dig having the option to hear the songs with- and with-out vocals, although overall its the versions with vocals which are strongest. 

Fuzzy's favorite: "Through The Rainbow Valley" hits the heavy riffs, extended guitar solos, and intense vocals that make Caged Wolves stand out. This is a really solid EP. 

Caged Wolves is from Vienna, Austria.

Follow Caged Wolves band and check out their merch on Bandcamp at https://cagedwolves.bandcamp.com/album/act-of-nature-beyond-control

Want more music from Austria? Check out SPECK and DOS BRUJOS. 

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Trying times call for trying music, and solo band Sodus drops an album's worth on September 24th with an excellent blend of instrumental doom, drone, noise, post-metal, and shoegaze. The end result is "We Only Want the Earth" with 36 minutes of angst and dread which is invigorating and chilling in its delivery. There are haunting guitar solos, samples, and enough energy to keep things riveting to the end. The album is on pre-order until September 24th and you can hear the lead single "Between The Hours" right now on Bandcamp:

5 songs and 36 minutes of fuzzy, doom-filled drone that you will want will want to check out if you like your shoegaze to have a dark edge. 

Fuzzy's Favorite: the title track "We Only Want the Earth" hits all the right highs (lows?) with fuzz, drone, and haunting effects, although all the songs carry their weight and the overall album is excellent. "Gutshot" is another highlight. 

Sodus is Ben Mitchell. From the band: 

We Only Want the Earth began as a collection of drum machine experiments inspired by early Godflesh albums. These quickly expanded to include full instrumentation, all performed by Mitchell. Currently, Mitchell is writing and tone chasing for his sophomore album, and putting together a live show to perform a We Only Want the Earth from start to finish.

"Between The Hours" was featured on Fuzzy's "Loud & Lonely Vol. 2" compilation on Bandcamp. 

Pre-order "We Only Want the Earth" and follow SODUS band on Bandcamp at https://sodus.bandcamp.com/album/we-only-want-the-earth

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Fuzzy ain't the only one who digs the high-energy yet groovy vibes of surf music, especially when it gets into punk territory or some other genre. ATOMIC DRAG is a solo musician with a debut EP that bends the surf riffs towards the horror side of things, with twangy riffs dripping with spooky synths. It's short but it's a total blood beach soundtrack! Listen to the debut EP by Atomic Drag on Bandcamp:

To add to the party, Atomic Drag adds in samples (always a hit with Fuzzy) and a cover of The Surftones. Crank up Atomic Drag at your next next beach party!

Atomic Drag band hails from Northern Ireland and is the solo band of Lee McDaid. From the band: 

Atomic Drag is Lee McDaid. Old enough to know better but dumb enough to do it anyway, his influences include, but are not limited to, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Big Black (Big Black at their very core were a surf band, a hill he's willing to die on) Dead Kennedys, Pixies and The Bomboras. The debut self-titled EP contains 3 original tracks of horror tinged, Lynchian dark surf punk rock and a gonzoid cover of The Surftones classic Cecilia Ann (famously covered by the Pixies, but you knew that).

RELATED MUSIC: 

• Fuzzy's "Swamp Punk" compilation on Bandcamp for 2 hours of free music.
• Check out GALLERY OF GHOULS and BRETUS for more horror-tinged tunes. 

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Bandcamp codes are simply the VERY BEST way to promote your band's music FOR FREE! I've already explained why HERE and also how to create & share digital codes HERE.  And now I'd like to share another way to share Bandcamp codes with your fans, and that is to print them as coupons. All the info after the jump break!

Fuzzy loves instrumental stoner music, and we are spoiled for choice with all the great bands and music in the Underground today. So right off, let me say what sets apart TUNGSINT's debut EP "The Drought". This duo from Sweden brings an edge of post-metal to their instrumental stoner, and puts the drums front and center as befits the metal genre. The driving beats and sharp sounds propel the riffs forward like a speeding train, while the guitar slows it down to give the tunes their stoner edge. Listen to The Drought by Tungsint on Bandcamp: 

This EP definitely rewards repeated listenings, as it gets better with each spin. Just put it on repeat and enjoy the desert vibes. 

Shout out to The Swamp Krewe! By the time I finished my review, I noticed two members of my Bandcamp subscription had already grabbed the album and left comments on the album page. Check them out and follow these dudes for more great album recommendations: 

• JUSTINUFF: "Epically majestic space psych that will have you searching the stars, your mind and your soul. Your dark void like soul!!" https://bandcamp.com/justinuff?from=fanthanks

• SINISTER EXAGGERATOR: "Perfectly balanced Stoner/Psych/Doom, a real journey through space and time !" https://bandcamp.com/sinister_exaggerator?from=fanthanks

Follow TUNGSINT and stream their music at https://tungsint.bandcamp.com/album/the-drought

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