HASHTRONAUT Lists Their Top Four Stoner Metal Masterworks

The following list was written by Hashtronaut. Hashtronaut will release their debut album No Return on March 22, with pre-orders available right here (and here on Bandcamp).

Windhand – Grief’s Infernal Flower

Sometimes the best songs are just a really solid riff. Windhand introduced me to the idea that a slow, heavy, and simple doom progression can put you in a trance. While I love all of their albums, Grief’s Infernal Flower is the perfect Windhand album in my opinion. It heavily inspires our outside-the-box brand of power chord riffing. – Daniel, bassist and vocalist

Black Sabbath – Master Of Reality

Heavy metal was so young at this stage that it was years ahead of the web of subgenres that we have now. Into the Void is a perfect riff, and one of the riffs that made me NEED to play guitar. ‘Sweet Leaf’ is almost the reason I started smoking weed too. Anything that could influence that sort of magic was something I needed to be part of. – Kellen, guitarist

Electric Wizard – Dopethrone

It began as a sick fascination. I loved Sabbath and Kyuss… but why was this so slow? Why was the artwork simultaneously threatening AND comical? I kept returning to it before I had the vocabulary to describe it. Electric Wizard‘s Dopethrone delivers heavy riffs that stay stuck in your head, with deep stoner grooves, perfect to hypnotize you, and it opened my eyes to the world of doom metal. – Mikey, drummer

Sleep – Dopesmoker

I was introduced to Sleep in the mid to late 90’s via the Gummo soundtrack and an Earache Records sampler, but wasn’t truly caught in the lung ruining gravity of the band until years later when a friend told me a mythical tale about a band who’d spent their entire advance on weed and custom amplifiers and then delivered a single hour long song to their label.

I was intrigued but also frustrated when I couldn’t find a copy of the this mystic weed-fueled album. It wasn’t until a few years later that the Jerusalem version was released that I was able to melt my brain with the pummeling sonic journey that is Dopesmoker. It’s a truly inspiring work of art and has inspired not only Hashtronaut but bands around the world to “Drop out of life with bong in hand, and Follow the smoke to the riff filled land.” – Robb, guitarist