STONED FROM THE UNDERGROUND 2024

In the Wikipedia article about centres in Germany, you can find out that 5 of 8 centres are in Thuringia. It's similar with the stoner festivals; Stoned is THE meeting point and centre of all festivals. This starts with the location, the traditionally wide range of music styles, the delicious food, the relaxed and friendly manner of all the people in charge, the sound and the spaciousness of the site. What was annoying was either blue or red light, as some of the bands were not visible.

The weather also played along, so only the Wolfbird Twins played in the tent and not on the beach. The camping area was also very spacious. Next year the farmer should mow his oats before camping on the area.

The integration of the camping site and the beach bar also worked very well, the cocktails there were very tasty. So we are already looking forward to next year.

A very good choice, both as an opener and as a venue. Deep guitars with touches of grunge, punk, hardcore and a foot firmly on the accelerator, an arm casually out the window, and all of this at the beach bar with a view of the sea. It couldn't have been better.

At the Berlin Desertfest, the band played in the courtyard on a small stage and an even smaller PA. What the Kiel band delivered in the tent with an official system was top notch. A constantly moving cocktail of Kraut, Psych, Space, a fat leading bass, vocoder-distorted vocals and a few spacey loops made the concert absolutely bangable and danceable.

Ryr's music is somewhere between doom, shoegaze, post-rock and ambient black metal, spiced up with a pinch of noise. The initially delicate structures of melodies and single notes were destroyed over the course of the songs by brutal riffs and volume, only to be carefully put back together again. For me, it was too exhausting in the long run, but if you let yourself go on a trip like that through different dynamics, it was the best kind of mental cinema.

A band that reminded me a lot of Primitive Man; unbearably slow drumming, mountains of riffs, long instrumental parts that were then torn apart by wild screams. The slowness and aggression were hard to bear.

The guitar harmonies and vocal lines were far more accessible and stuck in the ear canals more than the band name and the Swedish lyrics. The band needed around 20 minutes to get into their mid-70's boogie hard rock and get the audience banging and rocking along. The final spark didn't quite fly, as the band was mostly in their own world and, due to a lack of announcements, didn't make any contact with the audience.

The three Israelis have been playing the same setlist for two years now, so no major musical innovations were to be expected. The same goes for the legendary show in the audience, which then captivates and convinces even the last doubters of the band's anarchistic power. And when the new stage is in the audience, and Omr plays guitar on the audience's hands, Michael beats the snare and bass drum like a berserker, and Avi shouts slogans into the microphone as a crowd surfer, it's a damn amazing show.

The Norwegian band was not only the highlight of the first evening, but also the best concert of the festival. It was a concert where you could see beaming and smiling faces in the audience. Not only did the audience sing along to the lyrics, but also the hooks and riffs, showing that the band has now become a headliner. Slomosa manage to blow the audience away with their hard, grooving mix of stoner, grunge and punk, while spreading hope and optimism with Benjamin Berdous' youthful voice. Marie Moe joins them as a congenial second voice and as a powerhouse on bass and posing. The leap from a small club band in 2023 to a band that fills big stages with its presence and power in 2024.

The Hamburg band is musically somewhere between Mad Sin and Peter Pan Speedrock and their big block full throttle attitude caught on during the concert and the audience went wild after a relaxed day. After the Misfits cover "Last Careers" the first mosh pit was in the tent. I had to listen to too many "shit", motherfuckers and other swear words up until then and then left. Ultimately the final musical consequence was missing. If I have a drummer who can play ZEKE's Polka Punk at 210bpm without any effort, then I'll strap on a Les Paul instead of a semi-acoustic Gibson and blow the audience away.

The duo packed a lot of anger and annoyance into their sludge, which despite all its hardness had an extreme groove. A rare mixture, which is a testament to the quality of the drummer, who took away any static from the brutal riffs and packed them into flowing rhythms.

The Dortmund band lived off Eddie Vedder's voice, a stylistic range that stretched from 1989 to 1995, in which garage, punk, grunge and stoner merged organically. And Eddie Vedder sang on top of that, making the whole thing a swinging and rocking throwback to the 90s. Oh, that wasn't Eddie Vedder at all? Never mind, it was a great concert, also because the octopus on the drums contributed his part.

Hall played jittery, high-speed grage punk that pushed aside all the slow-moving people in the fast lane with their headlights flashing. Furious downstrokes on the guitar and some speed freak from Detroit on the drums provided gentle early morning pogo attempts and violent headbanging in the sleepy audience. And everything had to happen quickly, otherwise the nervous, whipped-up vocals wouldn't have suited an American car on the run.

The morning's good mood was over for a while, as Earthbong buried any joy in life with their thick lava flow of noise, doom and roar.

The band from Sardinia spiced up the sluggish doom with fast stoner and tribal drumming, using tried and tested riffs from stoner and doom. Ultimately, it was a fairly static, at times quite down-to-earth affair.

The Bismuts didn't really know any contradictions between the individual styles, which they packaged in a groovy, complicated rhythm. Thanks to their outstanding bassist, who held this jam of drums and guitar together, the band never lost their lightness and joy of playing, which then automatically spread to the audience. We as spectators witnessed an absolutely effortless jam by a fantastic band. And for both the band and the audience, the concert passed in two minutes.

The band Eremit is actually a total work of art that encompasses a very progressive form of sludge or black metal and its lyrical design, as well as the aesthetically high-quality merchandise that is harmonious down to the smallest detail. The musical rollercoaster ride of moods, dynamics and breaks meshed perfectly with the lyrics, something I only noticed later when I listened to them at home. The Osnabrück band presented no easy or everyday material, which clearly moved them towards art and the avant-garde.

The Californian trio grooved and rocked through late 60's jams, doom and psychedelic, and occasionally it got a bit faster. However, front woman Laura Philipps was no longer hitting the right notes towards the end of the concert, which sounded pretty weird overall.

Gussie (guitar, vocals) and Ezra (dr, vocals) made the New Zealand duo sound like there were more members than there actually were on stage. At first, a few recorded loops and playback passages helped to make the band sound fuller. Then the two-part vocal parts and the amp switcher turned a duo into a quartet or more. The whole package rocked, doomed, grunged and rolled through an overall very progressive musical spectrum. The fans quickly bought up all the merch afterwards.

Ghost Woman celebrated atmosphere rather than structured songs. The songs consisted of text fragments, sparse chords and drumming that could be described as tribal. The light, consisting of two red spots, added to the intimate concert that set a melancholic road trip to music. We as the audience were allowed to take part in it. A very intense concert that pushed the personal imagination to its limits.

Instrumentally, Weedeater would be one of my absolute favorite bands. What the trio delivers on their respective instruments is pure power and pushing aggression. As soon as so-called singing comes on, the joy of it is gone again. On top of that, there was the light, which reminded me of the Desertfest in Berlin, which then drove me away from the concert.

Tom and Andy address the worries and problems of Generation Y in a humorous, critical and pointed way like no other band currently. A duo with bass and drums is actually rather restricted and limited in terms of musical range, but there is plenty of room for the lyrics and the singing of the two. And then a duo is enough to get you out of the tent late at night.

And then there's the traditional guerrilla gig at the campsite. This time by Space Raptor. They rocked instrumentally, stole a few K2B-esque riffs, always had their foot on the gas and got the numerous fans headbanging. Great gig!

The concert was almost symptomatic of the stoner scene. The force, groove and power that the band builds up on the 12 was destroyed by the singer because he couldn't hit a note properly. There's no doubt that the band had fun on stage and the audience went along with it. But only for a quarter of an hour.

If Clutch are too expensive or too bluesy, then the promoter hires the family-run company Hy Desert Queen from Texas. They are harder, more rooted in heavy metal without losing touch with psychedelic or stoner music, and in Ryan Garney they have a fantastic frontman with a voice that is just as good. Everything was perfect: stage acting, contact with the audience and humorous announcements. The audience celebrated this mercilessly.

The trio from Frankfurt am Main, consisting of the brothers Marek and Piotr Kowalski, impressed with tight and groovy post-rock that rocked so hard and got you dancing straight away. The individual songs had an enormous range of dynamics and tempo changes, for which Lala Adamovicz was responsible on the drums, as he is now used to calibrate metronomes. An enrichment of our private playlist and a great concert.

The Berlin band delivered jittery, nervous punk rock with German lyrics, in between there was the doomy quota break, everyone was allowed to say something. It wasn't really appropriate after the previous concert.

Kraftwerk minimal electronics meets stoner, Florian Schneider meets Jason Newsted on bass, vocoder vocals round off the whole space rock spectacle, heads bob in front of and behind the stage, the band is stylishly dressed and puts on a full-throttle show on stage. What worked perfectly at Desertfest in the Columbia Theater worked even better here and the audience was completely enthralled.

In addition to the desert in Tabernas, there seems to be another one in northern England near Bradford, because Psychlona breathed in and out the desert vibe deeply and pushed the audience ahead of them with a pressure wave of dust-dry, doom-stoner, constantly slightly boogie-heavy sound. The sound was absolutely perfect, the rhythm section perfectly oiled, and in between there were a few twin solos from Phil and Martin on the guitars. So, what more could you want.

Well, I can only repeat my impression of Desertfest. I can't stand Pardis' voice, it's wavering around the correct note and the bass is blaring and the drums are silent. Absolutely not my thing.

Lowrider's performance at Hellfest 2014 was very impressive and that's why we were excited about the new line-up, new songs and a band that has been playing concerts very regularly since 2017. Unfortunately we met Marco Popako and you know what it's like when you meet Marco. Very funny and funny for a very long time. Lowrider played a new song "And the horse you ride in on", which made us very curious about the new album, especially since the band added a keyboard, which gave the brutal sound a previously unknown breadth and epicness. Here again, a lot of red light and little to see, but what there was to hear was fantastic. Oh yes, and Marco knows my first girlfriend, who I was with in Reutlingen in 1984 and much more...

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for the invitation. It was actually a great festival as always, the weather was great, the organization was perfect, the security was cool, the whole stoner family was great, and the prices were right. We are already looking forward to 2025.