Heavy Metal Textbooks

OK, Here are my top ten Stoner Rock albums of 2016, in video form.  I picked one tune from each (made sure none are tunes I've posted here in the past), starting with #10 and finishing with #1.  I also think the video makes for a nice playlist, with decent transitions & variety.  Playing time is 50 minutes and eighteen seconds.  Hope you will have the time to put it on and give it a chance.  If you are short for time or impatient, you can see my #10 through #1 picks below.  In the video, track info is given for the first 20 seconds of each tune.  

#10: "Remind" by Captain Crimson            #9: "Dark All Day" by Eighteen Wheels Burning
Putting on a hard-rock clinic.  If you don't         18WB, I appreciate what you do.  Rock 
think it's heavy, you're not paying attention        genius, disguised as average

     

#8: "Fears Of The Dead" by Duel              #7: "Loyal To The Pack" by Planet of Zeus
A flawless album, reviewed here                     A different direction than the previous
                                                                    album, but just as good.

#6: "Sci-Fi Or Die" by Droids Attack.        #5: "Volume 4" by Looking Glass
They took everything I liked from their             Clearly influenced by Rush and Black 
last two albums, and made it better                 Sabbath.  Enough said.

#4: "Lord of Misrule" by                          #3: "Pagan Science" by The Well

       Blood Ceremony                                    Truly inspired band, with awesome

       Thoroughly addictive.                             attention to detail.  Classic album.

#2: "Plastic Surgery" by Heavy Traffic     #1: "And Then There Were None..."  by
came out less than 2 weeks ago and             Church Of Misery
was pretty much an early Christmas gift         For me, this is the Church Of Misery 
(made me re-do my whole video though)         album I was waiting for.  At no point 
                                                                   was this not my number one album this year
                                                                   once I heard it.

Yeah These Should Have Been On The List Too:  

-Wo Fat's "Midnight Cometh", Brutus' "Wandering Blind", Son Of A Witch's "Thrones In The Sky" and Sonora Ritual's "Dust Monument".  Also, Possessor's "Dead By Dawn" is one of my favorites for the year, just not a great fit for the "Stoner Rock" category.

Disappointments:  

-Witchcraft's "Nucleus": I really tried to like this one, but the album is proof that you can turn over band members just one too many times.  The magic of Witchcraft was more than just Magnus.  When this came out, I assumed it would compete for my pick as number one album of the year.  I gave it a respectable review, on faith assuming that the album was about to grow on me, but it never happened.  There are times when Magnus is "singing his brains out", putting all kinds of feeling into it, with all the right kinds of production and components, when I realize the songwriting is just kind of boring.  I like a couple of the tunes, but "Nucleus" changed my image of Witchcraft as being infallible.

-Black Willows' "Samasara".  Very similar to the way I can't quite put my finger on what went wrong with Witchcraft's "Nucleus", I can't quite tell why "Samasara" is so disappointing.  It sounds like a continuation of the debut album "Haze", which I love so much.  The production makes the sound a bit thin, but more importantly, the songwriting just doesn't seem quite as inspired as before.

-New Keepers Of The Water Tower's "Infernal Machine": Poop.
Explanation Here

So that will do it for this post.

Fork Tongue, I dug quite a few tunes on your playlist, hope you liked a few of mine too.  Looking forward to yours, Grownman.  Happy New Year, Over and Out 
-ULTRA