Rocking since 2017, Stonebourne is a quartet from Germany in the thick of their mission to "make grunge great again". Their soulful sound features memorable hooks, heartfelt vocal expression, and the very essence of 90s rock. In the band's own (very accurate) words, their music contains "a little bit of Drop D, a little bit of teenage angst, world-weariness, and lots of anthemic, energetic rock". Naturally, Stonebourne's sound is ideal for fans of Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Stone Temple Pilots as it draws inspiration from both the height of grunge as well as the more polished post grunge movement. 

Stonebourne has released one EP (a self-titled work in 2018), and two full-length albums: Squirrels on a Plane (2020) and Play This Record Backwards (2025). Hot off the heels of last year's album, the band returns with a lyric video for their emotive single Hope is for Believers:

Beginning with soothing, warm tones and introspective moods, Hope is for Believers triumphantly swells in emotive intensity as infectious choruses keep you hooked and relatable lyrics clench at your heart. 

While Stonebourne pours a tremendous amount of passion into everything they do, this song feels especially meaningful, conjured from deep within a weary soul. 

Give this track a spin for yourself and be sure to show Stonebourne some much-deserved love! 

I cover so much stoner/doom on my social media accounts that I sometimes forget that this little blog of mine was also designed to highlight alternative music as well. The twenty-first anniversary of Billy Corgan's solo album The Future Embrace seems like a good opportunity for such a post, specifically one that strolls down memory lane a bit in my case. If this topic isn't for you, I totally understand...thanks for stopping by anyway! Otherwise, read on and you'll learn a few random facts about me in the process :) 

As I'm sure a few of you know (or have deduced), The Smashing Pumpkins are one of my favorite bands on Earth, and Billy Corgan, contentious figure that he is, remains one of my favorite musicians. My devotion began just before I started college...while my peers were listening to bands like The Killers and Jimmy Eat World, I was walking around campus with Gish spinning endlessly in my Sony Walkman. I had every Smashing Pumpkins album released up until that point, ending with Machina/The Machines of God. I also bought Billy Corgan's book of poetry, Blinking with Fists, which I found to be rather silly at the time (perhaps my young adult mind hadn't yet acquired the patience and wisdom required to clear the lens that aids in decoding simile, metaphor, and wordplay). D'Arcy Wretzky and Melissa Auf der Maur (who both played bass for the 'Pumpkins) were two of the women in rock who inspired me to pick up a bass guitar (that didn't work out...I still have the bass, though). Within my sketchbooks, I had doodled various tattoo ideas related to the band including stanzas of lyrics that I ached to have permanently etched upon my body (that never happened, as I came to the conclusion that ghastly pale, heavily freckled skin such as mine isn't suited for the harshness of ink). Ah, youth... 

In 2005, Billy Corgan released his first solo album: The Future Embrace (which was released exactly twenty-one years ago on the day of this writing). Naturally, I had to get my paws on it and, since I had just begun working in a record store, it was the first album I used my employee discount to purchase (fun fact: I was the only person who bought the album from that store during my stint there). 

If you don't know, The Future Embrace is essentially an electronic album, with elements of shoegaze and synth pop, starkly different from the guitar-driven sounds of The Smashing Pumpkins. Critics mostly hated it, and I was fully prepared to hate it...but I didn't. In fact, this controversial little album became one of my favorite Smashing Pumpkins-associated things. 

No one can deny that Billy Corgan has a distinguishable voice...an admittedly grating voice at times as it peaks in intensity, but we all recognize that's part of the appeal. Interestingly, this style of singing is naturally quite adaptable. When paired with dream pop/shoegaze instrumentals while crooning in hushed, melodic tones, it has a calming effect (By Starlight from the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album is an example). Conversely, when placed over heavier guitars, the voice becomes a bit of a character; something fittingly dark, evil, or deranged as the situation calls for (as heard in X.Y.U., another track from Mellon Collie). I found that, when coupled with the crisp, often impersonal tones of electronica, the soothing qualities of Billy Corgan's voice became more pronounced, adding enough humanness to relay emotion but remaining "unearthly" enough to fit inconspicuously into the automation-like atmosphere. The style of electronic music present on The Future Embrace isn't the type to encourage you to dance...whether a song is fast-paced or more relaxed in tempo, the music here has more of a hypnotic effect. However, and perhaps the best part, is there are an adequate amount of swells of intensity that rouse you from your trance and make you feel giddy and alive (as goofy as that might sound). 

I'd implore you to listen for yourself if you haven't already, but this album can't be found on streaming services (some live performances and a few tracks can be found on YouTube). Luckily for me, I still have my trusty decades-old CD, with me both physically and abstractly as just one of the many pieces that helped broaden my musical tastes.  

Do you remember hearing this album when it was released? What were your impressions? Feel free to share them with me in the comments. 

While it's not often that I take the time to write an entire blog post about a new single these days, I'm inspired by the amount of heart, creativity, and passion that Daily Thompson (one of my favorite bands in the German underground scene) is showing ahead of their upcoming album Glue, so I think some special recognition is more than appropriate. 

The talented trio released the first glimpse into their seventh full-length album via the song Heart of Bones in late April. This track delivers buoyant, upbeat grooves that I like to think of as the sonic version of the happy and free feeling that's generated when you put the windows down on the first warm day of Spring, wind in your hair and golden sun kissing your skin. However, like many grungy songs of this nature, the music and vocals can be deceptively sugary in comparison to the lyrics. In this case:

That last line is particularly poignant and relatable, as I think it's easy to recall a time when your heart felt that spent and unfeeling - devoid of the humanness of flesh and surviving as a dry cluster of bones. 

Arcane Desert Rituals Vol. 2, the culmination of a two-album series from beloved Italian doom trio King Potenaz, is "doom" in every sense of the word. By that, I don't simply mean this release embodies a Sabbath-worshipping, fuzzed-out, low and slow sound, though there's certainly plenty of that going on as well. When it comes to the current incarnation of King Potenaz's music, it's more fitting to think of the literal definition of the word "doom" - "death or ruin" according to the reliable Merriam Webster - rife with despair, hopelessness, and torment. 

King Potenaz began diving deeply into a more atmospheric, evocative version of doom on the first volume of the Arcane Desert Rituals series, taking their already well-honed drone and storytelling chops and expanding upon them both literally and figuratively. On these two albums, the band's songs tend to take on long-form, cinematic manifestations, and that's especially the case on the final installment of the tale at hand.