10 Best Psychedelic Rock Albums
Have you ever been jamming out to a particularly groovy album, when the thought struck you as sharp as the crash of a drum cymbal: Wouldn’t this music go great with a little psychedelic trip?! For many avid music listeners, consuming psychoactive substances like cannabis, magic mushrooms or LSD is synonymous with the complete music experience.
For ages, we’ve rocked out under the subtle (or not so subtle) influences of psychedelics to the tunes of musical pioneers like Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, the Doors and Bob Marley. Psychedelics have had such an impact on music that it’s almost impossible to conjure up iconic bands and musical artists without thinking of the “groovy 60’s & 70’s” where humanity explored, experimented and set their minds free.
Whether it’s “flower power” or the great “love & peace” movements of the mid-late 1900’s, rock music is intrinsically linked with psychedelics. Some of the greatest minds and talents in the world of rock music were heavily influenced by psychedelics. Trippy sounds, bizarre sounds, and fascinating developments in the musical world have come about thanks to shrooms, LSD, DMT and mescaline – just to name a few. Although many people associate psychedelics with “partying” and view it strictly as a “drug” that many artists used for escapism, the truth of these substances’ impact on art & culture is more about health, happiness and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.
If you’ve never tried psychedelics for yourself, it’s understandably hard to reconcile the consumption of psychedelics with having benefits for professionals and artists alike. However, if you look closely at the influences of psychedelics on rock music and popular culture, it becomes clear that these psychotropic experiences are predominantly positive. It’s our privilege to have the chance to lead you on a journey through the years of psychedelic rock and introduce you to whole new perspectives on music, psychedelics and their budding relationship.
Strap yourself in for a trippy ride down memory lane. You might want to throw on your favorite rock band T-shirt, pull-out your comfiest lawn chair outside and have a lighter at-the-ready – because we’re about to perform for you live: the story of psychedelic rock bands and the best psychedelic rock albums of all time.
PSYCHEDELIC ROCK MUSIC
Before we start air-guitaring and singing along with our favorite trippy albums through the decades, it’s important to understand the many different kinds of “psychedelic rock music” that have developed over the years. Whenever you ask someone “who is your favorite psych rock band?”, you’ll typically get thousands of unique answers. This variability highlights a very critical concept to grasp: music is very personal, and it can be as unique as a fingerprint. Everyone’s musical identity is novel, multitudinous and even a bit quirky. One of the greatest qualities of music is its ability to connect people – music brings us together in our shared love for dancing, jamming, singing or just plain fun. Think of your most fond memories, and we’d be willing to bet that at least one of your top 10 involves music in some way, shape or form. Live concerts, or finding a new artist/song during an important time in your life, and even those silly moments when you rock out to a groovy tune with those closest to you. Music is truly one of the most positive influences in our lives, and it continues to evolve with us as we continue our journey down the river of time (that’s a lyric of a song, actually).
Now, we can already hear some of you mouthing the words to this question: “What IS psychedelic rock, exactly?”. Defining something as ethereal as ‘psychedelic rock” can be difficult as it takes so many shapes, colors, sounds and experiences. Nevertheless, if we had to hammer down one catch-all term for psychedelic rock music, we’d say it can be defined in a few ways:
- Music inspired by, or paralleling the influences of psychedelic substances;
- A style of music that makes its listeners feel intense emotions, experiences;
- Almost trance-like, and having an ability to enhance one’s perceptions of reality, time, emotions and self-awareness
- Being representative of psychedelic culture – epitomizing the values of exploration, discovery, enlightenment and love
It can be tough to categorize music, and some would argue that putting songs, artists and certain styles into categorical boxes kind of defeats the purpose. That being said, psychedelic rock has gone through several iterations of style, impact and substance that are important to understand. For instance, the era that gave us The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Doors, Deep Purple and many other iconic rock musicians is definitely distinct from the age of semi-modern heavy rock, such as Tool, Nirvana, Ayreon and so on. What kinds of psychedelic rock are there? If we had to label these epochs of psychedelic rock bands, we’d divide them into the following groups:
Groovy Tunes
Formative genre artists like The Doors, Jimi Hendrix & The Hendrix Experience, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Jefferson Airplane, Blue Öyster Cult, Rainbow, Janis Joplin, The Doobie Brothers, Iron Butterfly, Uriah Heep, The Zombies and many more of the golden age of the 60’s & 70’s pioneered these kinds of rock sounds we’ve come to know & love.
Jamrock The Block
Many of our favorite music to jam to and air-band are also trippy and exploratory for their time. Psych rock bands like Santana, Rush, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Jimi Hendrix (again), The Rolling Stones, Funkadelic, The Who, Grateful Dead, Steppenwolf, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Steve Miller Band, Queen and Fleetwood Mac have us all tapping our feet, whistling along and reaching out into the cosmos whenever we hear their sonorous tunes.
Transcendental Essential
These kinds of psychedelic rock are truly mind-altering and take you on a trip (as if you just ingested a handful of shrooms). Like any good psychedelic substance, artists like Tool, Hendrix (yes, he pretty much fits every profile of ‘psychedelic rock’), Pink Floyd (another cross-category bunch of geniuses), Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton & Cream, Jim Morrison & The Doors, Hawkwind, Deftones, Alice In Chains, Blind Melon, and Ayreon can pick you up, transport you to other dimensions, and drop you off a different person than you were before.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Cage The Elephant, Buckethead, Tame Impala, Sleep, Devin Townsend Project, Dream Theater, Steven Wilson, Boris, Oysterhead, The Psychic Paramount, Meshuggah, Deafheaven, Blut Aus Nord, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Pond, MGMT, Mushroomhead and similarly heavy, modern, and exploratory sounds have taken up the mantle of the psychedelic rock crusade.
There are so many bands that fit the bill for ‘psych rock bands’, but we’ve highlighted some of the most influential artists that we felt captured the essence of what it means to be psychedelic. You could argue that artists like Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors or The Beatles could inhabit any/all of these categories – and you wouldn’t be wrong suggesting so. Bands and the music they create are much like rivers: they are constantly shifting, changing course and it can seem trivial to try and track their progress because they’re fluid by their very nature. Nonetheless, we tried to encapsulate the broad brush strokes of each band and which theme their music fit(s).
BEST PSYCHEDELIC ALBUMS
Humankind is very fortunate to have so much music to choose from, especially in today’s age of Spotify, iTunes and similar music streaming libraries which contain millions of songs, just a click away. If you’re looking for some of the best psychedelic albums and best psychedelic rock bands, we’ve compiled a list of some essential listening. If you’re a psychonaut whose music collection spans from 60’s rock to metallic-psychedelia of the 2000’s, you might find a lot of your familiar favorites on this list. On the flip side, maybe your music tastes are like a ball of clay – you’re just looking for someone or something to shape it for you. If so, these iconic psychedelic rock albums are a great place to start.
For each of these psychedelic rock gems, we’ll give each one a “trippiness rating” – based on how psychedelic the sound may be – and try to provide some notes on the style, class or experience.
Universal Migrator (Part I & II) (2000)
Ayreon
Trippiness Rating: Interdimensional Space-Age Operatic
Musical Notes: From the start of “Dream Sequencer” to the last track of the second disc, “New Migrator”, Ayreon takes us on an epic journey through space, time and the innermost facets of our imaginations. Anything by Arjen Anthony Lucassen is worth listening to on repeat, but this album was truly one of his most psychedelic and spacey experiences to this day.
Lateralus (2001)
Tool
Trippiness Rating: Hearing Shapes & Tasting Colors
Musical Notes: Tool is one of the penultimate psych rock bands of the modern era. It’s hard to believe that there was a time before genre-defining tracks like “Schism”, “Parabola”, and “Ticks & Leeches” were among the staples of trippy, heavy rock that many of us have enjoyed today. Tool is more in-line with modern standards of psychedelic rock, but they’re also a major player in defining what you might call “new classic psychedelic rock”.
Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
The Beatles
Trippiness Rating: A Rainbow of Sounds & Experiences
Musical Notes: The psychedelic rock movement wouldn’t be what it is today without the existence of The Beatles, but most proponents of psych rock point to this album as one of the most formative experiences in modern music history. “I Am the Walrus”, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “All You Need Is Love” need no qualifying, and really neither do Lennon, McCartney, Harrison or Starr.
The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (1966)
The 13th Floor Elevators
Trippiness Rating: We’re Not In Kansas Anymore
Musical Notes: One of the most iconic experimental albums of its time (and probably still is today), The 13th Floor Elevators’ blend of harmonious-chaos is tough to define but in a positive way. Nobody was doing what these San Fanciscoans were putting on tracks like “Splash 1”, “Roller Coaster” and “Kingdom of Heaven (Is Within You)”. The 13th Floor Elevators will always be remembered as some of the most influential forefathers of the psychedelic rock genre.
Fire of Unknown Origin (1981)
Blue Öyster Cult
Trippiness Rating: What Year Is It?!
Musical Notes: BOC, better known as Blue Öyster Cult to the common person, is famous for many of its alter-ego rock tunes, but their album ‘Fire of Unknown Origin’ is still one of the most transformative for music as a whole. Any record that has a track named “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” has got to be on this list, right?! “Vengeance”, “Burnin’ for You” and “Heavy Metal: The Black and Silver” filled out this work of art as one of the best psychedelic rock albums that hearkens to a darker, psychedelic future awaiting all of humanity.
II (2011)
The Psychic Paramount
Trippiness Rating: $%^&@#$!*%^#^
Musical Notes: The Psychic Paramount are truly on a plain of existence unto their own. Trying to define their sound is like counting grains of sand on a beach – you could make the attempt, but you’ll lose track before you ever figure it out. Their genre redefining album ‘II’ continues to perplex listeners and take them on a psychedelic journey through each and every crash of drums & flood of guitar riffs. Prepare yourself for a trip whenever you play Psychic Paramount.
Vol. 4 (1972)
Black Sabbath
Trippiness Rating: Been Jamming for 48 Hours Straight
Musical Notes: It’s tough to pick just one album from the magnanimous works of Sabbath, but we went with ‘Vol. 4’ because of tracks like “Supernaut”, “Snowblind”, and the eternally groovy “Wheels of Confusion/The Straightener”. Where The Beatles are thought of as creators of psychedelic rock in general, Black Sabbath can be considered the perfectors of what is jam-worthy, rock-out, rock psychedelia. If you disagree with us on this, we’re willing to see you in a mosh pit to ‘work out our differences’ – we’re THAT sure about Sabbath’s status as one of the best psychedelic rock bands.
L.A. Woman (1971)
The Doors
Trippiness Rating: So Smooth You Could Spread It On Toast
Musical Notes: Anytime you listen to “The Changeling” and that dulcet piano-organ comes on, or Morrison’s gravelly powerhouse of a voice rings into your ears, you’ll feel like you should already be tripping on shrooms at a live show. The Doors are undoubtedly one of the smoothest, grooviest and best psychedelic rock bands of all time, and it’s thanks to songs like the title track “L.A. Woman” and “Riders on the Storm” that this album is ingrained in our psychonautic brains.
Dopesmoker (2003)
Sleep
Trippiness Rating: I AM AWAKENED!
Musical Notes: It’s only 2… TWO!… songs long?! Well, the title track “Dopesmoker” by grunge-rocker-psych artists Sleep clocks in at just under 64 minutes long – so you could say that the album is as much an experiment in heavy psychedelic tones as it is an iconic, rockin’ triumph of noise. We dare anyone to listen to “Dopesmoker” or “Holy Mountain” without raising the devil-horn fingers and losing yourself in the jam session that is Sleep’s sound.
Moonflower (1977)
Santana
Trippiness Rating: Ay Dios Mio!
Musical Notes: Carlos Santana, the ‘lord of latin guitar’ himself, is one of the great musical talents of the century. Without a doubt, his contributions to the psychedelic latin-rock fusion that he has pioneered is legendary. For us, the album “Moonflower” still stands out among his impressive resume of groovy, fast-paced and mind-melting sounds. Songs like “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen” need no introduction, and “Transcendence” and “Soul Sacrifice/Head, Hands & Feet” are so jaw-dropping that you’ll find yourself dancing to them for days after your ears feasted on their elaborate rhythms & beats. All in all, Santana demands your full attention, and they’re as alluring as a good trip on a hot, sunny day.
Electric Ladyland (1968)
Jimi Hendrix
Trippiness Rating: Trippin’ On Some of That Spanish Castle Magic
Musical Notes: What kind of self-respecting psychedelic rock nerds would we be if we didn’t have Mr. Trips himself on this list?! You didn’t think we were going to wrap up without gushing over Jimi Hendrix’s genius, did you?! Hendrix is well-renowned and we feel like there’s no words to describe how talented he is- you can understand that within 25 seconds of any of his tunes as soon as he starts making his guitar speak its own musical language. It was tough to pick just one of his many performances, but we landed on “Electric Ladyland” because of the incomparable tracks of “Voodoo Child”, “All Along the Watchtower” and the uber-trippy “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)”. Also, the ofttimes mistaken spelling error “Voodoo Chile” is a fifteen minute long epic of psychedelic musical brilliance. Unfortunately none of us can see Mr. Hendrix shred live today – may he R.I.P. – but any of his live performances can induce their own psychedelic trance, with or without help from shrooms, LSD or ayahuasca.
ROCK OUT, GROOVE ON, MAN!
These psychedelic rock albums are just a taste of the flavorful genre that is psychedelic rock. There’s so much good music available to us these days that this list could go on longer than a Hendrix guitar solo – for instance, we just realized we forgot to write about Led Zeppelin’s “Mothership”!!! Wherever your psychedelic musical journey takes you, remember to keep sharing your favorites with others – there’s no greater gift than experiencing the joyful exuberance of music together.
Psychedelics are a truly unique experience for each and every one of us, and although you can’t “trip together” exactly, you can enhance your experience and include others by putting on some inspiring tunes while you explore the depths of your consciousness. If peanut butter and jam were meant to be together, then you may as well call psychedelics and rock music the tastiest sandwich your mind has ever had. Get out there, rock on, and enjoy the trippy tunes of the best psychedelic rock bands this world has to offer!
