Acid King: 30 Years Of Not Being Stoner

It’s been a long 30 years for ACID KING and in particular sole long-term member Lori S, 30 years that she never expected to hit, in her own words.

“Happy anniversary to me… and the band!” Laughs Lori, her sense of humour shining out often through our chat, when discussing quite how long they’ve been going and being one of the progenitors of what has since become a huge stoner/doom scene. She admits to being proud and happy to now being seen as both one of the progenitors of the stoner scene and an inspiration for so many other bands that have looked to their output since for their own search for a muse, even while acknowledging that she doesn’t feel they fully fit into any of the pigeon holes.

Celebrating it with their latest album Beyond Vision, they’ve taken a bit of a departure from their fairly even sound to date to create something that sounds more inspired by the likes of HAWKWIND or even GARY NUMAN. This is slightly less of a shock when you hear that they are two of the bands that inspired Lori to create music herself when growing up. While still holding true to their core values of slow, drop-D heavy riffing, the sound definitely has more of a psychedelic aspect than the bulk of their previous work. This is, she admits, a deliberate effort, given that the album actually started off as an experimental entity, separate to the ACID KING releases, before snowballing into something that both Lori and incoming bassist Jason Landrian realised was something more than what they had initially intended.

It’s also been a different experience for the actual creation stage of the album, with duties this time split between Lori and incoming bassist Landrian. As Lori explains, “he learned to do it on Garage Band. The songs were more constructed in advance, it’s usually more like a jam session,” as she has always been the person responsible for the bulk of the output to date. Throw into the mix the awkward time of trying to create music while only allowed to have two people in a rehearsal space during Covid, masks and being six feet apart, too, and Lori adjusting to taking input and direction more directly from someone else for the first time in a writing sense and it has been quite the tumultuous creation.

It’s been a long way through those 30 years though, from the promotional sides of the business, through the growth of the doom and stoner scene, to the point it’s at today. “At least now I don’t have to type out my answers, YOU DO!” Lori laughs while explaining the difference in handling interviews now compared to the early days to us, that same sense of humour that pervades throughout the conversation sparkling through once more. A lot has changed though, through those years, with the advent of the internet to the position it holds in society today changing so much, as well as changes in technology and many other things, ACID KING still focus on their sound, despite never feeling so comfortable being lumped in with the ‘stoner sound’. Even on the first EP, where the influences were more metal, the likes of Lead Paint has heavy elements of both drone and shoegaze, while there have definitely been more and more hints of their other influences as time and further releases have progressed.

Looking at the formation of the band, meeting former band members by posting a classified ad in a newspaper and a drummer by – quite literally – shouting out when at a party with founding bassist Peter Lucas, ‘Does anybody know any drummers?’, which Joey (Osbourne) replied to, is a very different manner than a lot of bands first getting together. While there have been many line-up changes over the years when it comes to ACID KING, there only seem to be two constants – Lori S and, to directly quote the previously mentioned song Lead Paint, from the debut, eponymous EP, ‘Slow… that’s the only way to go…’. Even with the more psychedelic output of their latest offering, those same, heavy riffs have always been a monolithic part of what made them the name they grew into and are still a major part of what gave birth to the stoner sound, alongside luminaries such as BLACK SABBATH, MONSTER MAGNET and SAINT VITUS.

Lori still handles all of the behind-the-scenes things, too, such as the website, merchandise and the bulk of the songwriting duties – the latest effort apart. Is there anything she would change about where they are now and how they operate? “I’d love for someone else to pack up the merchandise and send it out,” she laughs again. While that may be, their DIY aspect, despite being held in such high esteem, shows just how grounded and humble they have remained, even thirty years in now. Here’s to many, many more.

Beyond Vision is out now via Blues Funeral Recordings.

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