Smoke Balm [Weekly Mixtape ?20]

Cypress Hill • Dopethrone • Bongzilla
Hashtronaut • Weedeater • Tons • Sleep
Stöner • Pink Floyd • Max Boogie Overdrive

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Seasons in the Cannabyss [Weekly Mixtape 4•20•2022]

Black Sabbath • Kyuss • Bongzilla • Old Grandad • Rollins Band • Brutal Truth
Inhalement • Cannabis Corpse • Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard • Sleep • Earth

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2018

Don't ask me what the best albums of 2018 were. I wouldn't know. I tried to find the time to listen to everything that came out this year, but there just wasn't any.

Mixtape: The bus back from MDF

MDF Mixtape by Dreams Of Consciousness on Mixcloud

On the bus ride back from Maryland Deathfest, the guy sitting next to me told me about the time he met Satan. I figured that was a good enough reason to interview him for a podcast.

Maryland Deathfest 2013, Sunday May 26

My last day at MDF. Getting out of bed and making my way to the Sonar at 1:00 pm would have been a great idea if everyone else hadn't had the exact same idea at the exact same time. By the time I reached the venue, the line had grown beyond belief, stretching across the parking lot and around the overpass. And it moved about as slowly as an Evoken song. To their credit, most in line showed amazing patience; even a statement issued through facebook that the line was flowing with no patdowns elicited more sarcasm than outright anger by people who could clearly see this was not the case (choice response: "As someone standing at the entrance, I call bullshit."). But as time began to drag through the first couple bands of the day, my irritation grew. What was the point of buying a three day pass if it meant being stuck in line for an hour? There had to have been a better way to handle re-entry for people who already had their wristbands than to force them to lineup all over again.

Earth's Doomiest Heroes

I just saw the documentary Such Hawks, Such Hounds after it was mentioned in a recent article on the AVClub; I described it on Facebook as "the Avengers of doom metal." In what may be my dorkiest moment ever, I've decided to run with that, partly because I'm still geeking out over how good the Avengers was, but mostly to prove there isn't a metaphor that I can't ride through the night until it collapses from exhaustion.

Follow the Smoke Toward the Riff-Filled Land

[Taking a break from the Arsonist Project post; annoyingly, herding my thoughts together about bands whose average song length runs less than a minute has taken close to two weeks.  Sometimes this writing shit is hard.]

Just saw the AVClub review of the new reissue of Sleep's Dopesmoker, the SMiLE of stoner/doom metal.  This is supposed to be the definitive version of the album, coming from the band's own master tapes.  Just as I couldn't really see a huge difference between the unauthorized 1999 release (Jerusalem) and the 2003 "corrected" edition, whatever nuanced differences exist between this latest version and the previous one will undoubtedly be lost on me.  I personally have never been able to follow the song all the way through, zoning out around the 8 minute mark, and content to nod meditatively for the rest of the song's hour-plus running time. The AVClub's John Semley sums the Jerusalem/Dopesmoker experience succinctly when he writes:

"This is an album of atmosphere. It works not only to fill space, but to shape it."

From the beginning, there was a great deal of rumour and conjecture about the album.  My favourite story is that the band, having just signed to a major label, spent all their advance money on vintage amps and weed, then proceeded to write and record one hour-long song.  Their label, London Records, was less than pleased, and dropped them immediately.  Though most of those stories have been debunked, they're part of the reason why the album has loomed so large in the metal world.  Like all legends, tales of its creation grew past the boundaries of truth; in size and reputation, it's a doom metal Paul Bunyan. Which isn't to say that its greatness is exaggerated... it remains, alongside Electric Wizard's Dopethrone and Kyuss' Sky Valley, the creative peak in an often lazy and unimaginative genre.  Hawkwind went In Search of Space; Sleep found it, dragged it back to Earth and then beat on it like apes for over an hour.

I'm glad that the band have finally released the version they intended way back in 1996; the sound at least is clearer than the 2003 version (though if I'm allowed an ounce of churlishness, I still prefer the guitar tone on the Jerusalem bootleg).  Fingers crossed that Southern Lord releases it in the green vinyl format that the band had hoped for from the start.