It is amazing to see how the pandemic carried several artists to great heights. Progressive psychedelic rock band King Buffalo is one of them with its breathlessly expansive soundscapes full of riff music and swelling outbursts. Suddenly the genie of King Buffalo’s musical creativity was completely out of the bottle and their heavy, yet very accessible sound has flowed unbridled with three fantastic albums as a result. Extended songwriting with shimmering reverb, psychedelic soundscapes, and occasional sudden walls of sound. King Buffalo’s music is consistent and compelling, using warmth and optimism to channel friendly vibes before pulling you back into the churning, heavy soundscapes they’ve grown so skilled at developing. No wonder their fanbase is growing every day. We are thrilled to have them on the 2023 line-up!

SLIFT, from Toulouse in France, have made quite a name for themselves in recent years with their rock-hard fuzzing space rock, which has been considerably infused with elements of garage, stoner rock and a touch of doom. ‘UMMON’, their third full-length is a beast of a record. It’s a ravaging, colourful journey that pushes and breaks through boundaries without production tricks of any kind, relying on a fantastic live performance to bring to life one of the best psychedelic rockmusic in recent times. SLIFT constantly proves itself as a master of controlled chaos, with the transition from turbulent to tenuous passages sounding just as captivating as the other way around. We’re stoked to welcome SLIFT to Sonic Whip as one of the headliners.

Without a doubt the biggest band to emerge from Eastern Europe’s psychedelic scene, Stoned Jesus started their European expansion with 2012’s now-legendary ‘Seven Thunders Roar’ album and the stoned cold classic ‘I’m the Mountain’, generating millions of streams on YouTube alone. Not content to rest on their laurels, the band kept honing their sound into more experimental directions, without ever losing that classic touch which makes them crowd favourites on every one of their frequent and intensive tours around the world and back.

“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig” reasoned George Bernard Shaw. “You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”  True to form, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have left the wiser of us aware that they are no band to be messed with. In the nine years since this band’s inception, the powerful primal charge at their heart has been amplified far beyond the realms of their original imagination. The band’s upward trajectory has done nothing to make the Newcastle-based quintet complacent however, as they’ve used the cumulative force behind them as fuel for their most ambitious and hard-hitting record yet. ‘Viscerals’, their third proper (released on Rocket Recordings) is an enormous leap forward in confidence, adventure and sheer intensity even from their 2018 breakthrough ‘King Of Cowards’. Incisive in its riff-driven attack, infectiously catchy in its songcraft and more adventurous than ever in its experimental approach, ‘Viscerals’ is the sound of a leaner, more vicious Pigs, and one with their controls set way beyond the pulverising one-riff workouts of their early days.

They’ve been on our wishlist for a while, so it’s goes without saying that we are stoked to have Causa Sui on the line-up for Sonic Whip! The Danish collective, led by Jonas Munk, is the figurehead of the Danish psych and stoner movement. The band excels in extended and well-thought-out songs that rise up into the stratosphere. Even though they’re a highly productive band in the studio (just look at the high number of releases on their own El Paraiso label), they hardly ever play live. But on those rare occasions that they do you’re immediately reminded of the fact that they’re just as good in the studio as they are live on stage. Just listen to the record “Live in Copenhagen”. That recording alone should inspire you to move right to the front early may.

Back in 2000, four Swedish teenagers decided to unleash ‘Ode to IO’ to the world, which opened the path to a whole generation of fuzz lovers in Europe after Kyuss quit. And then, nothing. So little. Just a few liveshows was all that remained. Until 2020 when suddenly a new monster of an album appeared; ‘Refractions’. Contrasting with the impetuosity and sense of urgency of  the early days, the songs on this record are marked with nostalgia yet they embrace their history without being backward-looking. From fierce, dust-kicking rhythms to vertiginous heights taking us for psychedelic takeoffs, not to mention Peder Bergstrand’s sublime performance on vocals, everything on this album is perfectly thought-out and played, creating a feeling of plenitude just like when you reach the highest peak and contemplate the beauty of the surrounding landscapes. Stoner rock that is meant to be played live and that is just what is going to happen.

As their name would suggest, The Psychotic Monks have always been a little out-there. Their 2017 debut ‘Silence Slowly & Madly Shines’ saw the Paris collective establish a trademark blend of stark experimentalism and swaggering psych post-punk that was boldly built upon by claustrophobic 2020 follow-up ‘Private Meaning First’. And if fans were expecting the end of lockdown to precipitate a swerve into sunnier territory, they’ve got another thing coming. Because the new and third album ‘Pink Colour Surgery’ is the their coldest, weirdest, most unhinged offering to date. Yet radical, the record is truly accessible to those who immerse themselves in it in depth. One is unceasingly hypnotised, shaken, because its soul flirts dangerously with a furious and oppressive psychedelic trance. How then the journey becomes addictive, letting yourself slide from one track to another, sometimes struck, sometimes set ablaze with an unexpected epiphany, because its light irradiates us. Live their music is an intimate, sensory experience, whose deflagration is still received long after.

The Swedish superband Les Big Byrd mix their wayward concoction of psychedelic rock, kraut, swirling synths with irresistible pop hooks to create something that breathes true freedom. Monotonous, hypnotic and driving but never for a moment dull, Les Big Byrd’s mind-expanding space rock is a perfect vehicle for anyone who wants to travel to the cosmos in a space rocket scribbled with forlorn romance. On their latest release ‘Eternal Light Brigade, Les Big Byrd supply everything they have come to be loved for — repetitive beats edged by fuzzy guitars, swirling synths, mind-expanding reverb and Åhlund’s unique ability to combine the melancholic beautiful with the unexpected messy.

Named after the real-life pirates who attack vessels off the Somalian coast and the peaceful leisure of those with time to kill and money to burn, Somali Yacht Club musically embodies the boundless, wide-open, quiet/loud spaces that atmospheric post-stoner-psychedelic rock occupy. The Ukrainian band released an outstanding album this year to bring some light to the smoke-filled and dark skies in their home country. The music is layered with delay, reverb, fuzz, spacey vocals, and have an underlying heaviness creating a soundscape that could bring hope into a hopeless era. Even through years of struggle and now more recent tragedy, music prevails and that needs to be praised, a lot!

Since their inception, Gnod’s musical trajectory has been one of constant fluctuation borne out of an incessant need to discover new sonic worlds. The current live incarnation of the band is characterised by a crushing, cataclysmic new protest music whose call to arms gravitas offers a meaningful defiance to Britain’s austerity. Gnod have taken their very namesake and charged it with bludgeoning new edge that is as euphoric as it is nihilistic. Gnod offer a gateway to an aural black hole and along with firm guiding hand, the opportunity to dive head and body first into a powerfully new psychedelic maelstrom full of possibilities. The guitars slash like knives, and the drums batter on remorselessly, and everything sounds as intense as possible.

Samavayo deals a lot with ‘the end’ in terms of content on their new album. The end of the bad, of the good, the end of humanity, end of the way we treat our planet. It’s about the destruction of our planet, division, racism, greed, exploitation, war, isolation, loneliness. But every end means at the same time a beginning, a new start and beginning. ‘Payan’ is the seventh album of the German band in the 22nd year of its existence is fresh and full of energy and power! Musically, the record is different from its predecessors: more heavy, more prog, lots of anger and a pinch of punk. An extraordinary album and a special band that has not stopped for more than two decades and always has new goals. More than remarkable and no end seems in sight.

The Dutch collective Radar Men Fro The Moon have expanded to a six-piece on their latest full-length, ‘The Bestial light’. Ushering in an explosive new sonic direction on the back of duel-drummers and an industrial-strength bravado that even their record label calls “borderline-depraved”. It sees also a band move on from the electronic experimentations of the Subversive album trilogy. The repetitive opening clang, strangulated screaming vocals, and tribal dual drumming nods towards other experimental noise mongers like Public Image Ltd., The Fall, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Faust with doomy, gloomy overtones, while some of the new material is razor-sharp punk on steroids. And that i just the way like i tand make RMFTM a perfect addition to the 2023 line-up of Sonic Whip.

Ecstatic Vision introduced their brand of heavy primal psych influenced by groups like Hawkwind, Aphrodites Child, Can and early Amon Duul ll in late 2013. Formed in Philadelphia to primarily “play what they wanted to hear”, the band quickly rose to those in the know as a force to be reckoned with. Their records are showcasing a tripped out raucous mix of troglodyte Detroit rock grooves, soothing motoric kraut sounds, filthy Beefheartian blues and Hawkwindian world of heavy psych. Prepare for one of the dirtiest sounding shows you have witnessed during Sonic Whip.

Somewhere between the devastated wasteland of the American underground, in the desert where wasted youths search for something different to a spoon-fed mainstream. Swapping their psych swirl for abrasive danger, The Gluts from Italy are mining that US underground sound of the early ’80s. And they do it well. Twisted, dense and clanging sounds crash and warp in unison; provocative and unadulterated, turned up so loud that the hypnotic mesmerizing fuzzy guitars suck you deep into a deep kaleidoscopic hole, only for Nicolo’s vocals to rip you open before you do.

If you’re into psychedelic proto-rock, with all sorts of other spices added in, then Deathchant, hailing from Los Angeles, is definitely something for you. Their latest record ‘Waste’ is bursting at the seams with catchy riffs, Lizzy-esque leads, driving rhythms, and all the twists and turns any proto-rocker could ask for. The seven-track album rips by you faster than a drag strip car, barely coming in over half an hour in length. These guys don’t fool around or waste time. Take your medicine and strap yourself in. You won’t know where you’re going and you’ll have no clue where you’ve been, but you’ll know you were on one hell of a ride.

When Shaman Elephant’s debut album ‘Crystals’ hit the streets in late 2016, psychedelic prog fans sat up and took notice of a band that was able to demonstrate an uncanny skill in the art of blending 60’s and 70’s psychedelica with progressive rock, and who sounded impressive not just in the studio, but also on stage – as fans who witnessed their shows in Norway and Europe are able to attest. An irrepressible energy fills nearly every minute of Bergen-based Shaman Elephant’s second album ‘Wide Awake but Still Asleep’, released in 2020. There’s no shortage of strident anthems, head-shaking riffs and that ragged abandonment of the moment that seems to be present in the fertile soil of the Norwegian alt-psych scene.

USA Nails are nothing if not prolific. With every release, they have proven themselves a raucous, abrasive, and scathing band difficult to pigeonhole into a single genre. Formed in early 2013 through a mutual love for noise rock, punk and krautrock, the Birtish band are gleefully complicit in the resurgent post-punk-noise scene in London. The ethos of not over-thinking the song-writing process is carried through into all of their recordings. The snotty spoke-sung vocals deliver an often menacing and uncomfortable tone across an array of unpolished, sonical garage-noise riffs and drums. Be sure to check them out!

The problem with artists who lean heavily on the past for musical influence is that it can sometimes sound overly reverential or derivative. It’s hard for a band to be taken seriously if they sound so much like their idols that it verges on self-parody. Fortunately, that’s never really been the case with the L.A.-based trio Dommengang. Their latest effort ‘No Keys’ emphasizes a sound that combines the doom-laden metal of Black Sabbath with the blues-rock rawness of the Black Keys. Guitars are front and center, along with an innate yet understated nod to psychedelica. It is a soundtrack to a personal journey or to your next road trip. It speaks to the explorer, and to the abandon of those willing to go all in. It is for the rocker giving it all, living out of a van, without a key to a permanent home. Perfect material for Sonic Whip.

The debut full length of the Dutch psych band Iron Jinn on Stickman Records is a frantic album that follows the logic of a dream; none. The nine songs on the album are the result of a chaotic accumulation of modern world impressions, information and conversations that are forcefully pushed through a human funnel: the minds of Oeds Beydals and Wout Kemkens. The album took shape against the background noise of shifting paradigms, universal cramps, massages of the primal brain, plays full of mad lines, and it hesitantly kisses the underbelly that got fed oh so well. The band and the music itself sounds downright exciting. The voices of Wout and Oeds reverberate passionately over mesmerizing grooves and pure melodies and harmonies, a rare combination in contemporary
(rock) music.

Catchy melodies, huge riffs and those monumental grooves it’s no wonder Psychlona were picked up by Psycho Waxx, who are the in house label for one of the biggest stoner festivals in the United States. Hailing from Bradford, UK, the band draws inspiration not from its maritime home, but from the dust and bones of the Palm Desert scene of the 60s and 70s along with some punk and psychedelic sounds. Traversing the sonic cosmos in a riff-fuelled time machine, the band’s third and new album ‘Palo Verde’ is their most electrifying effort yet. Kicking up the dust across the desert as they cruise in their Cadillac under the sun, the album is a luxuriously rich kaleidoscope of heatwave hallucinogenic colour.

Vinnum Sabbathi from Mexico City merges loud, slow and distorted riffs with samples from science & sci-fi to create their own unique sonic experience. Fully instrumental, heavily dependent on samples and rich in mystery, their music is a worthwhile plunge into realms of sonic science fiction. It’s time to suit up and head for the orbit…

Spaced-out doom, and eerie psychedelic vibrations that can take you as far as the eye can see. The music of the Portuguese trio Madmess can make your skin crawl. It is a knock-out voyage to unbelievable worlds. Their latest album ‘Rebirth’ released on the UK label Hassle Records is a sonic force with magnificent arrangements. Five towering songs of stoner jams and psychedelic freak outs that paint many colours in the mind. Madmess are masters at driving the energy of the song through different stories in place of lyrics as the next distorted section glides between stoner rock and the earlier krautrock. You can feel the passion oozing out of the songs at every juncture. ‘Rebirth’ is a piece of beauty and a brilliant delight full of heaviness, spaced out experiments, glory and sheer joy. No wonder we’ve invited Madmess to play at Sonic Whip 2023.