Baltimore’s annual Grim Reefer Fest has announced its full lineup for the upcoming event. Baltimore, MD on Saturday, April 29th, 2023. Heading up the bill are Bongzilla, with Ilsa, Borracho, Haze Mage, Wizard Rifle, False Gods, Sun Voyager, Faith in Jane, Holy Fingers, and Blightbeast! Tickets are $35 in adv and $50 at the door and can be purchased directly at the link below.
Poster by GhostBat
Here’s to genuinely hoping that 2023 would be a decent year for stoner rock releases – with the existence of records like The Lord Knows (Ripple Music) by the Swedish newcomers Tidal Wave. The Swedish stoner scene has always been all-around fascinating to me, with big names I admire such as Besvärjelsen and Skraeckoedlan, or even the all-time legendary Truckfighters. It’s always refreshing to see up-and-coming names coming right in, too.
For more than a decade, music fans have gathered at the Junebug Boogie Ranch in Cookeville, Tennessee for the Muddy Roots Festival. The fest celebrates Punk, Roots, Metal, Folk, and just about everything in between. We reviewed the 2022 fest here. Weekend passes are on sale now, with the first bands to be announced for next year soon!
Press on, intrepid reader, to find out our top albums of 2022, as voted for by the cast, crew and hangers-on of the good ship Ghost Cult. Over 275 albums were nominated (including one stray and errant vote for Stryper… we’ve had words), some people lauded albums as the greatest of all time that no one else noticed, other albums picked up a steady stream of votes across the board without tickling the top of anyone’s charts, but through it all, we’ve been able to compile our team list of the best 75 albums of the year. And there are some absolute corkers, here. 75 of them, to be exact…
As we move into the meaty part of the Ghost Cult albums of the year for 2022 (as chosen solely by the team that dedicate their time to promote, analyse and share the love for the great alternative music that we exist to talk about), we find a mix of old favourites and a sprinkling of new rising and shining stars…Continue reading
After a false start, someone (naming no names) got rather over-excited about a new Power Metal band that promptly disappeared out of the collective consciousness, it wasn’t until mid-January, and a new 40 Watt Sun album, that alternative, rock and metal really got out of the starting blocks for 2022.Continue reading
Grinding away in the sludge metal fringes for over thirty years, Los Angeles, California’s -16– are one of those “how have I missed them?” bands that seem to fly below the radar for many, but once detected are unlikely to be forgotten. On Into Dust (Relapse Records) the band drop their ninth album, the follow up to 2020’s Dream Squasher, sounding as amped-up, powerful and determined as ever to charge head-first through the nearest wall.
The journey of Elder through their releases has been quite an experience. Starting off stoner doom and later incorporating a more psychedelic feel with heavier synth work, their sixth full-length, entitled Innate Passage (Stickman Records), has been released to the world. This adventure of an album spans over fifty-three minutes across five tracks that are adventures on their own.
The Chernobyl disaster rocked the then-Soviet Union in 1986. Ronald Reagan was the president. Gas was just over a dollar a gallon (Editor’s note, gas was $2.14 per gallon nationwide in 1984). Times were much different so many decades ago, which makes it all the more remarkable that epic doom metal pioneers Candlemass – who formed in 1984 – continue to wield the torch of the scene, guiding the masses and collecting newcomers along the way.
We caught up with COC co-founder and bassist Mike Dean recently, as the band heads out on tour to end the year with Spirit Adrift and The Native Howl. We chatted about the tour, their last album No Cross, No Crown, a change at the drum throne for both the tour and the next album, Mike’s other bands, and more.