Remember when Swedish bands held reign over the stoner rock underground? That super-heavy riff-rock sound that Sweden was heavily exporting at the beginning of the decade used to rule my stereo back around 2001, and even though the once-hyped stoner rock scene has long since burrowed back into the underground, I've been pulling out some of my favorite albums from that era and revisiting them lately, and in the process have been rediscovering how heavy and cool some of these discs still are. Many of these Swedish stoner rock albums came out on the esteemed MeteorCity label, and we've just picked up a handful of older Swedish stoner albums from those guys for Crucial Blast that some of you boogie-obsessed metallers and heavy psych rock freaks will want to check out if you haven't heard them yet.

One of the quirkier bands that MeteorCity released during the Swedish stoner boom was Blind Dog, a band from Halmsteed, Sweden that formed in 1996 and played a mix of 70's proto-metal, psychedelia, and the chunky downtuned blooze-crush that Entombed were doing on their late 90's albums like To Ride, Shoot Straight And Speak The Truth. It was a cool mix that kind of stood out from the rest of the Swedish scene, and from alot of the other albums that were coming out on MeteroCity at the time, for that matter. 2003's Captain Dog Rides Again is the second album from Blind Dog, full of trippy stoner rock raveups, crunchy metallic riffage, and a woozy stoned vibe brought on by Blind Dog's use of Hammond keyboards, spacey fx, and film samples. Hammonds, especially. There are Hammond organs all over the place on ...Rides Again, and those vintage organ sounds make this sound even more like a 70's timewarp than usual. Vocals might be a sticking point with fans of more extreme forms; bassist/frontman Tobias Nilsson belts out a gruff, gravelly shout that is total "rawk", but he's also able to genuinely sing as well, delivering some deep Alice In Chains-esque croon on a couple of these joints. His vocals definitely fit the music though, and if you dig that Swedish stoner sound, this is top shelf shit. Songs like "There Must Be Better Ways Of Losing Your Mind" and "Iron Cage" match fuzzbomb riffage with relentless rocking grooves, and "Would I Make You Believe" is the obligatory nod to Kyuss, as well as delivering one of the catchiest hooks on the album. The album also has the band going into more proggy territory too, on songs like "Follow The Fools" and "Back Off", channeling both Deep Purple and Captain Beyond in their keyboard-backed fuzzrock freakouts, and at other points on Captain Dog... the band even works in subtle influences from Queens Of The Stone Age, 60's psych-pop, and hints of British Invasion into their sound, nothing too overt though. Spiritual Beggars and Mushroom River Band fans would undoutedly love these guys, as would fans of Soundgarden, Monster Magnet and other brands of heavy hippie metal. Interesting stuff for sure, and way more adventurous than most of the MeteorCity stoner rock bands I listen to, making this one of my favorite releases from the label!