Stoner rock
[9] Stoner rock is typically slow-to-mid tempo and features a heavily distorted, groove-laden bass-heavy sound,[10] melodic vocals, and "retro" production.
"[24] According to critic Mark Deming, Blue Cheer's first album, Vincebus Eruptum, "is a glorious celebration of rock & roll primitivism run through enough Marshall amps to deafen an army," not unlike the heaviness of MC5's Kick Out the Jams and the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat.
[25] Rolling Stone claims, "What stoner rock delivers, slowed down and magnified, is the riff, the persistent legacy of Mississippi blues.
[27] James Manning of Time Out London recognises The Beatles' I Want You (She's So Heavy) as "laying the foundations for stoner rock with the relentlessly spiralling outro".
[34] Black Sabbath's Master of Reality is often cited as the first album of the genre,[35][36] and Martin Popoff states: "When 'Sweet Leaf' kicks in, one witnesses simultaneously the invention of stoner rock".
[37] Allmusic summarizes this unique fusion as follows: "Stoner metal bands updated the long, mind-bending jams and ultra-heavy riffs of bands like Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Blue Öyster Cult, and Hawkwind by filtering their psychedelia-tinged metal and acid rock through the buzzing sound of early Sub Pop–style grunge.
[38] The doom metal band Trouble introduced acid rock elements on their 1990 self-titled album, which became even more prominent on 1992's Manic Frustration.
Similarly, the British doom metal band Cathedral increasingly moved toward a psychedelic/stoner sound over the course of their first three releases, culminating in the critically acclaimed 1993 album The Ethereal Mirror.
[42] A year earlier, New Jersey's Monster Magnet released their debut album Spine of God, which displayed fewer metal influences but was psychedelic and sludgy, in the vein of their California peers.
[44] In 1994, San Francisco's Acid King and Britain's Acrimony released their debut albums, both of which adopted this psychedelic approach to doom metal.
In August 1997, Kyuss' Josh Homme founded The Desert Sessions at the now-famous Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, California.
[18] In September 1997 Jadd Shickler (of stoner band Spiritu) and Aaron Emmel founded an online store based in Albuquerque, New Mexico called All That's Heavy, which began selling hard-to-find releases of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, and Fu Manchu.
[51] The album was the first time that the new stoner rock bands Sixty Watt Shaman, Lowrider, The Atomic Bitchwax, Dozer, Goatsnake, and Los Natas were featured on record.
In June 2000, Josh Homme's new project Queens of the Stone Age released their breakthrough album Rated R, which helped bring the stoner rock sound into the mainstream, despite the band themselves rejecting both the genre and being labeled as such.
[57] In 2002, the Orquesta del Desierto was formed featuring key members of the major desert rock bands and released two albums.
The sound has been continued on by directly descendant bands Unida, Slo Burn, Hermano, Mondo Generator, Fu Manchu, Brant Bjork and the Bros, and at times by Queens of the Stone Age, who have since largely departed from Kyuss' stoner rock sound, and reject the label, preferring the term "desert rock".
