The Beard Cult is a heavy stoner band from Asheville, North Carolina. Upon seeing their band name and album cover for the first time, I immediately knew that this was going to be an album for the ages. This hunch was confirmed when I listened to the album and marked them down as a contender for the best new band of 2024.

The musical style is slow, sludgy, and fuzzed out. There are no “Cookie Monster” vocals to be found here, as the voices are clean, stoney, and often hilarious. There are several well-placed and tasteful skits that occur throughout the journey that are entertaining enough to make you not want to skip them.

The album is called Pogonaphilia which means “having a deep affinity for beards”. The opposite would be fear or disgust of beards, which would be pogonophobia.

Every track on the album is incredible, but my top picks are Like Dreaming, Electric Snowman, Reflections and Four Twenty (which has a runtime of exactly four minutes and twenty seconds). Nothing on the album is weak. Everything is extremely heavy and mid-tempo. You’re not going to find anything too technical or overly complicated on this album, which is perfectly fine with me.

The production is crisp and clean. Nothing is muffled or budget-sounding. There is a noticeable amount of post-production effort and thought put into the album pacing. For a debut album I think this is a very impressive effort. I hope that this band gets big enough to begin touring so I can see them live.

The Beard Cult – Pogonaphilia (April 2024)
Number of tracks: 8
Runtime: 40 minutes

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