ninehertz

There’s a strong case to be made that Dozer were the best of the first wave of European stoner rock - for me back then it was between them, Beaver and Lowrider, with Dozer winning out in my eyes through consistency - song to song, album to album - and ultimately longevity. Their recent return on Blues Funeral was triumphant and now we have this, a collection of rarities as the title alludes.

These can often be damp squibs, each track confirming why they never made it front and centre on to an album. But this is Dozer, and that alone held hope. It exceeds that. There are fifteen tracks here, all acting as a reminder should it be needed of how good this band were, a healthy majority of tracks that it is bewildering to think didn’t make the grade for their primary outputs.

It’s there from the off – Tanglefoot’s chunky production, with a fuzz guitar sound accompanying, vocals that quickly join, all combining to transport you straight to the late 90s and the fertile times of discovery in stoner rock, when the songs were simple but all solid, built primarily around the fuzz tone, weighty guitars and melodic vocals. By only the second track I'm reaching for my Unida/Dozer Man's Ruin split to line up next as I'm already in full on reminiscing, smiling mood.

There are gems to find, more than I can fit in here, but the extra special highlights would include the swaying fuzz excellence of Rings of Saturn - bold stoner and all the better for it; the Eatin’ Dust degree-heavier Fu Manchu era sounding Mammoth Mountain; or the strange, woozy psychedelic stagger to 2 Ton Butterfly, a bit like an old Desert Sessions track, before it crumbles under a beautifully powerful riff that is aggressively approached, by stoner rock standards; just wonderful.

There’s a moment which encapsulates the joy of this album – as Silverball kicks in, my first thoughts were that this is core Dozer. The longer it goes on, the more you realise the fact that a song as good as this is merely “core Dozer” says more about the band than the song, and how good they have always been.

It is worth reinstating and remembering - this was their B-side level material from back in the day. It holds up as a top tier stoner album nowadays, and as most of these tracks are new to me, I treat it as such. Dozer’s legacy is long set in stone, but somehow, through their new guise and this unearthing of near lost material, their importance, and our love for them still grows.