Five "Dope" Albums That Changed the World

It’s unclear exactly when the word “dope” jumped from its negative noun form (as a euphemism for idiot or dummy) to its positive adjective form (as in, “so-and-so’s new record is dope!”) We here at Crustcake suspect it was right around the time illegal drugs and rock n’ roll reached an equal foothold in youth culture. As an unsurprising result, the word in its current form stands out significantly in the glossary of rock and metal’s gruesome grimoire.

Take, as proof, these five “dope” albums that changed the world.



Eyehategod
Dopesick
[Century Media; Released April 2, 1996]



By beatmasterspeech (LA)

Eyehategod's appropriately titled album Dopesick sounds exactly what it feels like when you've just pushed the last of your stash up your crusty, infected vein. The walls of feedback displayed on album opener "My Name Is God (I Hate You)" pair up quite nicely with the physical feeling of being dopesick. Imagine your bones becoming brittle, eyes dried and crispy, skin so itchy you want to rip out of it. Dopesick is the audio version of that feeling.

Now you might be saying to yourself, "Man! This review does not give me the desire to listen to this record." Well, EHG certainly create sick tension but they definitely get their fix on as well. At the moment of your most tortured listening experience, Jimmy Bower and Co. break out the bottom end and let the swamp stomp flow back through your veins. All is good. Like, really good... until you run out. Then it's back to dopesick. This record may be the only way to experience the highs and lows of extreme addiction without actually having to draw back red blood and release.

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Sleep
Dopesmoker
[Tee Pee; Officially released April 22, 2003]



By theseseans (NYC)

The first time I ever hit a bong, it didn't go well. There was a lot of coughing, hacking and peer pressure to do it again. Not to mention one of my friends went into an asthma attack and totally freaked out. Fast-forward three years. My Czech friend Aika and I have built a motherfucking igloo on his front lawn (we lived in Maine at the time so this was very possible; it had a chimney/vent and everything) completely dedicated to smoking. We used to sit in there with a gas mask and just fucking blaze.

And that's really what Sleep's Dopesmoker is. It's a fucking igloo. It's gas-mask hits. It's the entire essence of pot smoking's musical culture pushed well past normal limits. Dopesmoker is one hour-long song that really, really, doesn't need to be an hour long. But that's what makes it the ultimate piece of stoner metal; because let's be honest, you don't need to smoke pot out of a gas mask sitting in your own igloo to get high, but fuck me if it isn’t awesome.

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Monster Magnet
Dopes to Infinity
[A&M; Released March 21, 1995]



By The WZA'd (Philadelphia)

At a little over an hour, Dopes to Infinity, Monster Magnet’s third album, is one "monster" of an album; an experience made up completely of stoner epic after poppy stoner epic. In the beginning, echoing guitar effects and radio chitchat turn quickly into a foreboding sludge riff, later switching gears into a psychedelic jam for the stars. Immediately after that is Monster Magnet’s foray into the mainstream with “Negasonic Teenage Warhead,” a song with a catchy “wow now now” guitar hook and a ‘90s era MTV-friendly video.

With the trippy album art involving a planet, some sort of machine and a naked girl in space, funny song titles like “Ego the Living Planet” (based on a comic book character), and extra-spacey lyrics, it’s obvious that these guys just wanted to have fun, smoke nug, and not take themselves too seriously. Dopes to Infinity is arguably our most accessible “Dope” album, sharing attributes of both the Stoner Rock movement and Alterna-‘90s grunge. Monolithic, psychedelic fun.

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Electric Wizard
Dopethrone
[Rise Above; Released September 25, 2000]



By crustcake gerf (NYC)

Dopethrone is probably Electric Wizard's most important album and arguably their best. This is pure unadulterated Doom with a Capital D; drugged, doped, blown out, and heavy-as-fuck. With the proper listening environment and at the proper volume, this is one of the heaviest albums ever recorded, by any band in any genre -- this is absolutely not a headphones album and the effect is lost at lower volumes. Turn it up loud enough, though, and it will crush your soul. Standout tracks include the opening pair of "Vinum Sabbathi" and "Funeralopolis," which play out like a single musical statement and the despairingly heavy "I, the Witchfinder."

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Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope
[Relapse; Released June 11, 2002]



By Van Damned (ATX)

We’ll assume Scott Hull wasn’t briefed about the quote Nasum skinsman Anders Jakobson gave Decibel editor Albert Mudrian for his 2004 book, Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore (Feral House). Though the big-and-burly Hull is famously congenial, we can’t help but imagine Hull prickling a little at Jakobson’s assertion that “drum machines are not grindcore.” Hull, after all, has been one of grind’s most visible experimenters, adding Iommi-tinged grooves to a Heartwork-era framework of skin-flaying guitar riffs, backed by brain-breaking blastbeats which are often programmed on his own home computer. That Hull is inclined to throw in everything from shotgun blasts and cocaine snorts to random voicemails, Tibetan throat singing and even dance-inflected drum’n’bass is enough to give the “one-vision” purists nightmares for weeks.

Hull’s kitchen-sink approach scaled its first cohesive peak on Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope. The 2002 album is a demanding listen to be sure, but among the 38, lightning-fast digiblasts of spasmodic grind lay some caustic, acid-etched gems. Sure the lyrical content broaches some pretty un-PC subject matter (misogyny, religious blasphemy, drug use) but guitarist/programmer Hull and his triple-pronged, vocal-chord-shredding co-conspirators could (frankly) give two shits. After Frozen Corpse, Hull would go on to perfect an artier, more-meta grind, both with his traditional-grindcore-leaning side band Pig Destroyer (2007’s Phantom Limb, Relapse) and on this year’s ANb release, Agorapocalypse (Relapse), which finds Hull and Co. discovering songcraft -- and enjoying it. As it is, Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope stands as a turning point between Hull’s earlier, juvenile approach to grind (he’s buddies with Seth Putnam, after all) and his later, more cerebral releases.