~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Now here’s a band that’s taking it back to the nuts and bolts of doom. Determined beats, plaintive riffs, groundshaking downtuned soundwaves, poignant lyrics, and vocals that guide us through the surreal landscape of the age in which we live.

This is France’s BRÜLE and the burly three-piece doom act today brings us their latest single and music video ahead of next week’s big release, the 7-track stomper, ‘Beltane’ (2026).

“The War Machine” is a fitting closer to the band’s second studio album, a powerful commentary on the nature of war and how we are irresistibly drawn to it – almost as a “sacred force.”

This whole album gets better every time I listen. I recommend you not miss it! Out May 1st (get it here).

Stick it on a playlist with Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus, Castle Rat, Witchskull, Early Man, and High Reeper.

Give ear…

SOME BUZZ

French heavy doom powerhouse BRÜLE announce the second phase of their Grand Work entitled ‘Beltane,’ whose ritual release ceremony will take place on May 1st 2026.

In Celtic mythology, Beltane follows the winter festivities of Samhain and Imbolc and marks the arrival of the light season. It is associated with a rite of passage from darkness to light, towards better days.

BRÜLE’s new album ‘Beltane’ - which will be celebrated on May 1st 2026 - also appears as a rite of passage, an artistic quest.

Occult doom and flamboyant heavy rock ripple over a burning pyre of references such as Cathedral, Green Lung or Dead Witches. The album mentions ancient forgotten religions, the death of gods, the fascination for the hidden, the vast cold spaces of the cosmos…the occult.

French trio BRÜLE emerged in early 2023. With tortured, slow and dark melodies and sharp heavy riffs, these wizards of a new era invoke pagan traditions and Jung’s interpretation of alchemy; namely, a process that reconciles opposites such as light and shadow to create a new harmony. This is about sabbaths, fire and cult.

Created by Arno Bechet (vocals, guitar) and J.M. Prats (bass), the project was quickly joined by Carla Boccand on drums. After a few performances on local stages, the band set to work on the first stage of their Great Alchemical Work. Debut album ‘L'Œuvre Au Noir,’ was released on June 21st 2024 (S/R) with tracks in both English and French. The album was mastered by Esben Willems (Monolord) at Bersek Studio, Sweden.

Beltane by Brüle

BRÜLE’s new album ‘Beltane’ was recorded by Mathieu Lesieur at Record It studio in Perpignan, France. Mixing and mastering by Arno Bechet. Artwork: J.J. Paterson. Press pictures: Léna Filliastre.

BRÜLE’s new album ‘Beltane’ is set to be released on May 1st 2026.

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King In Yellow Lore Explored by UK Multi-instrumentalist Joel H. Bulsaraa

By Billy Goate

Grungy stoner grooves rule the day in the debut solo project by Yorkshire, England multi-instrumentalist Joel H. Bulsara. A Bloodstock veteran, Joel has been vocalist of doom heavyweights Sound of Origin and the gritty prog metal juggernaut IREOSIS – both of which deserve a hearing if those bands are new to you. Grandiose, imaginative, and brimming with passion, ‘Hastur The King’ (2026) was quite evidently a labor of love.

You all know how I love a good concept album. When this project was sent to me out of the blue, it just so happened to coincide with my foray into the 1895 novel 'The King In Yellow’ by Robert W. Chambers, which in turn grew out of a deep dive into the lore of True Detective (Season 1).

Hastur, for the uninitiated, first appears in a short story 'Haïta the Shepherd’ by Ambros Bierce in 1891, as an ancient deity encountered in the fields by a sheep herder. Vague and mysterious, he was incorporated into the weird fiction of authors for the next 100 years (including H.P. Lovecraft). Robert W. Chambers identifies Hastur as The King in Yellow, for in his day yellow was the adopted color of self-proclaimed decadents in Paris and London who pursued beauty, pleasure, and art to extremes. Within this collection of interlocking short stories, people encounter a play so unimaginably corrupting that they become insane.

Like other insightful authors, Chambers tries his hand at prediction, drawing clues from the emerging cultural, social, and economic developments of his own time. He wondered how easily the relative stability of society might be unhinged by modernity. His imagined a dystopian 1920s with rapid industrialization, a bureaucratic state run-amock, and a breakdown in shared values, leading to government sponsored suicide clinics. These lethal chambers, as he called them, were afforded as a mercy to those driven cray cray by reading The King in Yellow, a fictional play within the novel. I’ll leave it to you to find parallels with our own age.

Musically, Joel H. Bulsara has succeeded for me in translating the dread, mystery, and horror of the novel into musical form. I don’t know that any genre of music is as well-suited to the job as doom metal. I suppose he could brand this as HASHTUR as a full-fledged band for touring and it would fit well into stoner motifs of the scene.

Joel H. Bulsara’s album Hastur The King comes out May 29th (pre-order here) and this is its first single, “The Yellow Signed Paper.”

The song is haunting and melancholic, thick with the atmospheric might of slow dragging, downtuned rhythms and sweet NOLA inspired riffs. Passionate and inventive, this is by far one of my top albums of the year and a stand-out of the decade so far. The guitar tone, fuzz, and overall vibe of tracks like this one, “Moon Witch Blessing,” “The Taro,” and “Madelbrot Madness” hit a real sweet spot for me.

Stick it on a playlist with Alice in Chains, Monster Magnet, Aleph Null, Kryptograf, Chrome Ghost, Erronaut, Foster Mother, and Goodeye. A must-listen for fans of the heavy rock scene!

Give ear…

……………………………….

ABOUT THE SONG

From Joel H. Bulsara:

Chamber’s work is so good. I related to it when I was younger, because I come from a musical theatre background and my mother used to write play scripts as well as run an amateur dramatics group.

We’re all a little mad. But mate, I developed some big issues later in my life that, luckily, aren’t as bad now as they were. Put them together, and I could easily fictionalise and correlate a story around my life using Chamber’s lore.

This song in particular is the ‘curse’ being presented as a gift to the protagonist by Hastur. A lullaby of promise. The musical composition expresses the spirit of that lullaby in that it moves into what seems like an uneasy happiness, a dream-like state. Perfect to set the tone for a hypnotic message. “Join him”.

The references mentioned here are Hastur’s brother (being lore-wise Cthulu, where Hastur wishes to remove him from the ultimate rule over humanity, so that he may do so himself). You are to join him to do so, at the end of the song where you are in a lull.

The Great Forest is The Forest in Brittany, in which a secret is held, where Hastur can provide you it. All you need to do is enter the pact by taking his hand, and he can take you there. Seeing primarily yellow in the description of the forest, presents a focus on yellow, Hastur, rather than the rest of the forest - hinting to the old idiom ‘Can’t see the forest for the trees’. What you’ve been searching for was in front of you all along, and you accept it as normality…the madness that is!

The sign is significant to The King in Yellow, as you might already know. It is the physical world link that could be metaphorically taken as a sign, or a call to action. Curiosity might kill the cat, but in this case, it only leads to madness.

The piper is related to the old art trope, using the pied piper story to be relatable to the story. Hastur is lulling us into his musical (the play; almost as if Cassilda’s Song was the whole play). As such, Hastur is the piper, and this is the “sign of the piper”.

After, what seemingly was, an innocent and benevolent offer to the protagonist (or listener, if you like), Hastur has control. This is where the second verse begins. Now there seems to be a trap described but, you enjoy it. And I write that in the lyrics as a tongue-in-cheek snark; you could say that once you’re under his command, you do enjoy it, and if anyone said anything about it, you wouldn’t care. Like a junkie to a needle.

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~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

In an age of fakeness, doubt, and lies MONSTERNAUT are keeping it real AF.

Down to earth in every respect, the Finnish band’s new album ‘Approaching Doom’ (2026) is back-to-basics garage metal that don’t need no fancy dancy digital tricks and back room splicing and dicing to bring it to life. WYSIWYG, period. Pure and utter heavy annihilation. Matter of fact and in your face.

Recorded last year over a 10-day period “on and mixed to RTM SM900 magnetic tape using analogue equipment and VOVOX sound conductors,” the band shares. “No editing, no autotune, no amp emulations and no drum samples were used on this album. This human-made music is genuine and pure!”

Ten granite tracks are what you’re in for, with stark titles like “Black Blizzard,” “Human Stew,” and “Final Pain,” featuring sweeping wave-run riffs and heroic shredding from guitarist and vocalist Tuomas Heiskanen, motorific rhythms from bassist Perttu Härkönen, and big, brash drumming care of Patrik Kuitunen.

The rawness, honesty, and brutality of this collection of songs takes me all the way back to Metallica’s St. Anger for a point of comparison. Many fans were shocked by the harshness and bare bones production (a disenchanted coworker of mine gifted me with the CD), preferring the magic mirror illusions of high studio production. Yet something about it really drew me in as I listened to it on long I-5 back and forth commutes to work.

While I might get myself into trouble for comparing Monsternaut fare with Metallica’s most controversial album, I mean it as a high compliment. Authenticity will always win over parlor tricks, especially in this disappointing age of AI slop. A band should, in this writer’s opinion, be able to reproduce it live as it sounds on the record or GTFO of Dodge.

Come witness the future soundtrack of the Mad Max generation. This is Monsternaut’s Approaching Doom, out Friday on Heavy Psych Sounds (get it here or here). Stick it on a playlist with Megadeth, High on Fire, The Watchers, Rifflord, and Bone Church.

Give ear…

SOME BUZZ

'Approaching Doom’ is the third album by Monsternaut, a darker and heavier representation of the band’s established devotion to groovy riffs and to the point compositions. The songs took shape over several years, during which the arrival of a new drummer opened the door to more adventurous rhythms and riff ideas, pushing the band into new territory while staying true to their roots.

Drifting away from the fuzzy stoner rock of the early days, 'Approaching Doom’ showcases a darker, more metallic and uncompromisingly stomp-inducing sound. Sonically, the album leans toward the grit and weight of early 90s metal rather than polished modern production, giving it a raw and immediate edge. Its lyrics and atmosphere follow a naturally darker direction as well, adding an extra layer of tension beneath the grooves.

MONSTERNAUT - Approaching Doom by HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS Records

Recorded entirely the old fashioned way, straight to analog tape with no digital editing, it captures the band playing as they are, relying on performance, chemistry, and feel rather than correction. The result is a record that hits harder, feels more focused, and marks a confident new chapter in Monsternaut’s evolution.

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~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Cursed Monk Records from Waterford, Ireland has brought us such notables over the years as Coroza, Torpor, Nomadic Rituals, Sloth Hammer, The Red Widows, OLDD WVRMS, and Burn Ritual – many of which have been featured in these pages or on The Doomed & Stoned Show over the past 11 years.

Now we welcome UNBELIEVABLE LAKE from Mid-Ulster, a three-piece heavy psych trio made up of Doc, Pat, and Trev. All of their releases since 2017 have been on a grander scale, trending between 30 and 45 minutes in length. And their latest, ‘I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream’ (2025), is no exception.

The tendency toward expression in longer forms, beyond 3-5 minute song structures, is something that heavy bands have experimented with over the decades, Sleep’s Dopesmoker making the most ubiquitous mention in our scene. But several UK bands in recent years have taken a stab at expansive, high-concept compositions, Orme and Ungraven coming most readily to my memory. The atmospherics on this record also call to mind the strange evocations of Trent Reznor’s now 26-year old NIN album The Fragile. Of course the history of psychedelia and progressive rock has long been a launching pad for such longer compositions.

There is no program to the Unbelievable Lake piece, per se, apart from its title. And it may or may not have some deliberate tie-ins with the Harlan Ellison short story of the same name from 1967 (or the subsequent game circa 1995). With that said, there are elements to the music (dronings, hums, electric sounds, screeches, rhythmic niches) that certainly hint at the vast, God-like supercomputer that is the antagonist of Ellison’s work (which, if you haven’t read it, deserves to be heard for the first time in the author’s own crazed audiobook narration).

Unbelievable Lake plot a steady hand on these sonic waters to begin, playing with distorted and emotive guitar chords that have a vaguely new wave flair. The beat is steady, plodding, but with the feeling of ever building intensity, like a great threatening swell of dark clouds mounting in the skies. There are vocals throughout that cry out, sometimes competing with the crescendo of the band itself, but this somehow compliments the sensation of grandiosity.

There is ebb and flow to the piece, as well, so it is not all one wall of sound. When things reach unbearable heights, there is a sudden shift to quiet (as after the first 11 minutes). A calm in the midst of a storm. Might this represent the slow insanity of the characters represented in Ellison’s novel? Or perhaps it is a meditation on the inevitable rise of The Machine itself, which is overtaking all of human existence.

13-minutes in, the bass gently signals a second theme, with a period of psychedelic blissfulness. The riffs spurt and tussle in ways that border between sweet and disturbing. Surely I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is as much a trip for the mind as its literary inspiration.

Elements of it reminded me of the Blade Runner soundtrack, too, namely those plucking, glistening string-like sounds 18-minutes in. This is contrasted with a persistent, emphatic four-note heart beat that becomes more pronounced as the piece rolls closer and closer toward its pre-destined end.

Things get crunchy around the 25-minute mark, taking a decidedly heavier direction, as the machinations of AM grind away, ultimately leaving us in hair-pulling psychological terror. It’s certainly an experiment you will not soon forget.

Look for Unbelievable Lake’s newest contemplation on Cursed Monk Records this Friday, June 13th (pre-order here).

Give ear…

SOME BUZZ

Belfast/South Derry heavy experimental psych trio Unbelievable Lake’s second LP, ‘I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream’. The follow up to 2020’s Forgive, is a single 41-minute piece, its repetition drives focus on the liminality, identity and the suffocating paralysis of Northern Ireland society.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Unbelievable Lake

The band writes: “Our music is psychedelic doom, characterised by heavy repetition, layers of tension, and heavy passages broken up with drones. We are inspired musically by early Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Om, Sleep, Neurosis, Swans, Camera and Can. Thematically, we draw inspiration from our history of conflict and beautiful surroundings, rural isolation, urban decay, anxiety and paranoia.”

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Doomed & Stoned Debuts

By Billy Goate

Austin, Texas rockers DUEL can always be counted on for one hell of a good time. They made an appearance on Doomed & Stoned in Texas awhile back and are pushing ten years as a firestarting act.

Now the band reveals fresh sounds from their upcoming studio album, ‘Breakfast with Death’ (2024), with a new song: “Satan’s Invention.” Rumbling rhythms meet commanding vocals, with addictive riffs and Sabbath overtones on this ripper of a single. The album promises to flex a “heavier and faster side of Duel” with every song “a beer soaked banger.” If this doesn’t get your heart pumping, nothing will!

Reached for comment, the band says:

“I don’t believe in the devil! Hell is a place here on earth!” Satan’s Invention is a four-minute Thin Lizzy-sequel rocker exploring the evils of man and the illusions of life. The countless lies we are fed from birth to death. All at a beat you can dance to!

Look for Duel’s Breakfast with Death, releasing July 5th on Heavy Psych Sounds (pre-order here). Make sure to catch them live!

Give ear…

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Doomed & Stoned Debuts | By Billy Goate

Meet Ontario heavy rock trio IVY GARDENS, a band that’s swapped out a bassist for a keyboardist but manages to get crowds moshing anyway. Among the credits to their name is the “Loudest band in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia,” when a tiny restaurant “was not prepared for the volume and intensity we brought there on our recent East Coast tour,” the band relates. “But the audiences were.”

Today, following up on their raucous 2021 eponymous EP, we herald Ivy Garden’s forthcoming full-length debut, ‘Goon’ (2024), with a new single and music video. “Boner” has got a really cool groove, too, showing you what can happen when you’ve got a band that is truly possessed by the power of The Riff. It’s one of those grinding, motoriffic jobs in the spirit of Kyuss’ “Green Machine.” And it doesn’t take long before we, too, are caught under its sway.

The retro organ sound from the keys provides a spooky touch to the chorus, which comes like a sigh of relief after the tense build-up of those guitar-driven verses. The drumming is swarmy and frenetic, and strikes with power at pivotal moments. The breakdown at 4 minutes is a headbanging oasis, made even cooler with the synthesizer’s late-'60s garage twist.

The band had this to tell us about the new track:

“Boner” is our very own feel-good hit of the summer. Opening with a relaxed groove that builds and builds to the heaviest possible climax, Boner has been a major highlight of our live set since it was introduced. Following the more relaxed pacing of the song, the softer vocal performance less seen in our music tells of a (seemingly) simple disagreement between two bitter individuals. Its bridge, the “101010” dirge, is by far the heaviest composition we have achieved to date, and we are so excited to finally send it out into the world.

Look for Ivy Gardens’ Goon on Paper Cut Recordings, out April 19th.

Give ear…

SOME BUZZ

DOG ASS MUSIC. The only way to describe the vulgar, belligerent, punk, sludge & sweat of Ivy Gardens, from Niagara, Ontario. Birthed from a primal desire for physical volume and violent catharsis, Ivy has been hitting the road hard since their inception in 2021. Vibrating in the bones of audiences across Ontario, Quebec and the east coast of Canada.

The Ivy Gardens experience is a nearly endless stream of beaten-to-hell drums, searing organ, throbbing bass synths, and a liquid wall of guitar sludge. The volume is crushing. There is no room to breathe. The sonic equivalent of a panic attack. Never breaking the groove, never killing the energy, never stopping the mosh pit. The audience earns a brief moment of quiet melodic respite before a thundering finale, and the endless phantom ring in your ears serves as the band’s only encore.

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DOOMED & STONED IN FRANCE (Vol. 2)

Just in time for Doomed & Stoned’s 10th Anniversary, it’s a new volume in our ground-breaking compilation series, taking a deep-dive into stoner-doom scenes in the US and around the world. 43 bands, 43 tracks encompassing a wealth of musical strains from the heavy underground, curated by Steph Le Saux of Barabbas.

Download your free copy and check out the entire series at doomedandstoned.bandcamp.com.

AN INTRODUCTION

Sorry if you were not aware yet, but France is not only the country of culture, champagne, tasty gastronomy, social rights and impetuosity (I made it short, you can complete the list…hahaha), for quite some years now it’s also a growing source of heavy and doomy sounds!

I hope, Volume 1 already proved to most of your ears this new solid trait ! Now I tried to push this volume 2 even further in terms of quality, diversity and with some nice surprises for the occasion (like a special comeback, songs in avant-premiere).

From doom/death to harsh sludge, while not forgetting stonerized or psychedelized stuff and naturally more traditional Doom spheres, you’ll get here a pretty dense and diversified inventory of the underground scene I’m succumbing for.

Now enjoy your journey in our tortured yet beautiful soundscapes and please SUPPORT our bands!

– Steph Le Saux