Perhaps the first stoner rock band (and the one featuring possibly the world's most stoned rockers) was England's legendary Hawkwind. The extended space jams, heavy detuned riffs, and astrological sensibilities they pioneered in the late '60s became the template for the stoner generation almost 30 years later. Stoner rock as we now know it began developing in the early 1990s, when doom metal took the sludgy riffs of Black Sabbath and Spirit Caravan into the outer depths of heaviness. However, it wasn't until bands like California's Kyuss and New Jersey's Monster Magnet added a psychedelic flavor that the genre reached its mature state and became palatable to millions of alienated teenagers around the world. Stoner rockers exchanged the morbid depression of doom metal for effects-heavy '60s-inspired guitar jams and a feeling of opiated drowsiness that was more about long strange trips than shadows and gloom. Some bands, such as Sleep, moved at prehistoric speeds, keeping one hand on the guitar and the other on the bong. The rise and fall of grunge had little effect on this small, cultish subculture. Ironically though, both Monster Magnet and Kyuss went on to greater mainstream success, the former by toning down the drug references and the latter by reforming as the hugely popular Queens of the Stone Age.

Notable Artists: Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Acid King, Nebula, Dead Meadow