The Great Doom

I like Kyuss a lot. Their style of groovy rock and roll has been growing on me ever since I first listened to the mother of all stoner/rock/doom/desert albums “Welcome to the Sky Valley”. It is a collection of 10 mammoth tracks which are driven by a relentless rhythm section comprised of Brant Bjork on the skins and the mighty Scott Reeder on the bass. The guitarist Josh Homme is a god of desert-blues guitar playing, always walking the line of groove and craziness. John Garcia, the vocalist, achieves what I call one of the best vocal performances in the history of rock and roll. Listen to the tracks “Supa Scoopa & Mighty Scoop” and “Odyssey” and wander off into the burning desert. Naturally I began searching for all things doom. This led me to a bluesy land of music called The Great Doom, where I found other bands like Sleep, The Obsessed, Greenleaf, Earth, Eyehategod, Goatsnake, Unida, Acrimony, Electric Wizard, Melvins, Neurosis, Old Man Gloom, Wolf Eyes and many more. “Tumuli Shroomaroom” by Acrimony has to be one of the greatest stoner/desert albums released after Kyuss disbanded. The Melvins is an other three member mad clown carnival. It will take forever to listen to their entire discography and their music is noisy doom rock which is essential for anyone interested in the said genre. The ambient/noise/sludge/doom band Wolf Eyes introduced me to a few noise freak Japanese bands like The Boredoms and Acid Mothers Temple. I discovered post-punk or whatever people want to call it. Steve Albini’s genius projects like Big Black, Shellac, Rapeman are about raw, garage punk.