Phew… Halfway through second track A Million Beers, just as Brant Bjork‘s sleekly multitracked axes take to the wing for one of a number of captivating wigouts to be found over the course of new album Totally…, your ears hone in on the bone-rattling funk being played by drummer Ryan Gut; Y’see, for all their smirk-laden Cheech & Chong wittiness, at the root of Stöner‘s latest bout of reefer madness is staggeringly good musicianship…

You probably knew that if you’re already a fan of course, but seriously, this is power-trio panache not heard ’round these parts since ZZ Top spunked all their royalties on a shiny red car; Strawberry Creek (Dirty Feet), with it’s cheeky vocal interplay between Bjork and partner in crime Nick Oliveri, is the sort of good-time naughtiness Gibbons, Hill and Beard were churning out circa Deguello, which of course is massive praise by Sentinel Daily‘s standards… and it’ s this unexpected blues-rock exuberance that powers this album forward into album of the year contendership on tracks like the glorious Space Dude & The Burn and Great American Sage, which, like it or not, also both carry the indelible whiff of The Nuge in full-on seventies mania within their grooves…

Elsewhere Stöner Theme is packed with a Primus-styled quirkiness that’ll have you giggling into your munchies with it’s Claypool-meets-Buscemi mirth inducement policy, whilst the groove-laden Turn It Around Now even remembers Brit rock heroes UFO in it’s fuzzed-out intro; but the bottom line is that for every moment of goofy silliness there are ten of diamond-hard musical brilliance, making Totally… absolutely one of the must-hear straight-up hard rock records of the year, bar none.

Totally… releases on May 6th.