Well, you all knew it was coming, and the fact remains: if you’d told me five years ago that I’d spend much of 2014 engrossed in a record named ‘Stoner Rock’ by a band named ‘Bong’, I’d frankly have been a little concerned. The Newcastle group’s sly humour vis-à-vis their chosen nomenclature is easy to miss alongside the venerable seriousness with which they approach their music itself, so, before we move on, I will fall back on the words of bassist/intoner Dave Terry, as quoted in this album’s press release:

“It is a tongue-in-cheek dig at our usual classification as stoner rock and what the term has come to represent. The idea is to create our own definition of ‘stoner rock’ by creating an album so utterly stoned and repetitive to be a million miles away from the usual definition. Those who know Bong already will get both the humour and the philosophical redefinition… those who don’t know us will either get it when they listen or will never understand Bong at all.”

So there ya go. 2011’s incredible ‘Beyond Ancient Space’ and 2012’s sublime ‘Mana Yood Sushai’ may have been mammoth enough achievements for Bong, or so you’d think, but, fittingly given it’s emblematic title and scale (two tracks spread across over 70 minutes), ‘Stoner Rock’ sees the band striving for a whole new peak of sonic magnitude, seemingly setting out with a deliberate intent to make this one the ultimate, definitive Bong statement.

And do they succeed? Well… kind of. To bring in a totally out-of-leftfield comparison for no other reason than that I feel like it, you could say that if ‘..Ancient Space’ and ‘Mana Yood..’ collectively formed Bong’s ‘Electric Warrior’, then ‘Stoner Rock’ represents their equivalent of ‘The Slider’; pushing beyond their previous triumphs to create a record that is bigger, bolder and more ambitious in every sense, to the extent that it eventually finds itself staggering just over the edge into excess and exhaustion. Like ‘The Slider’, ‘Stoner Rock’ might not be the one that history will record as everyone’s favourite, but also like ‘The Slider’, that doesn’t stop it from being a bloody magnificent listen.

As far as uncompromising, glacially-paced drone-metal goes, I’ve always appreciated the way that Bong are a pretty listener-friendly proposition. By that, I mean that on most of their previous recordings, they like to get straight to the point and hit you with the good stuff (a result, one supposes, of their parallel antecedents in psychedelia and space-rock). The monumentally drawn out opening to ‘Polaris’ however signals a rather different ambition for this particular outing: ten solid minutes of distantly rumbling, Sunn 0)))-esque sub-bass drift, with percussion entirely absent and variation limited to near inaudible trickles of more crystalline overtones from Benjamin Freeth’s amplified Shahi Baaja. As the monolithic amp walls pulse and growl, Terry’s grandiose recitations from the Lovecraft story of same name almost dares you to either lose consciousness of the outside world entirely, to else call it out for the preposterous nonsense it is.

All this is mere build-up of course, atmos-building meditational stasis, bringing us gradually to the moment when the first, hesitant bits of hi-hat and kick drum filter in, falteringly gaining ground over the next ten minutes, as the guitars gain more mid/high-end and the drone twists into baleful, raga-like webs until finally, at about the 18 minute mark, the kick and snare start to coalesce, the beat gradually takes shape and, finally, we’re away! Think of a massive, vertical take-off Chris Foss spaceship; it’s already floating god knows how high up in the void, and now it is ready to MOVE FORWARD, commencing an epic, diesel-fuelled grind that spreads across a further 18 minutes of ‘Polaris’ and continues throughout the duration of disc 2,‘Out of the Aeons’, which forms perhaps the single greatest, most monumental stretch of slo-mo cosmic devotion that Bong have yet laid down (no small boast, that), the journey eventually taking us…. where?

Hopefully not to the Bong equivalents of ‘Tanx’ and ‘Bolan’s Zip Gun’, but hopefully you take my point. Wherever we end up, there’s no turning back at this stage. As a soundtrack to watching the solar system and milky way receding in the rear screens as your rusty craft sets forth towards glittering unknown vistas of Weird Tales pulp splendour, ‘Stoner Rock’ remains unequalled.

Listen and buy via Bandcamp, or get the vinyl from Ritual Productions.


(In other Bong news, it’s worth noting that 2014 also proved a great year for reissues of their work. New editions of early sets ‘Idle Days on the Yann’ (on Blackest Rainbow Records) and ‘Bethamoora’ (on Visual Volume) both provide a wonderful glimpse at the more overtly psychedelic side of the band, and the new vinyl edition of ‘Beyond Ancient Space’ on Ritual Productions is absolutely IMMENSE – all are recommended about as highly as it is possible to recommend anything. With the sheer amount of vinyl I end up buying off these guys each year, I’m probably putting their kids through college, but what can I say? The quality never slips an inch. One of the best bands on earth, no question.)

Labels: best of 2014, Bong