17.

Orange Goblin

Science, Not Fiction

The stoner rock legends hit their 30-year anniversary in 2024, and they’ve celebrated in style with the excellent Science, Not Fiction. In a similar way to Therapy?’s Hard Cold Fire from last year, this album represents a long-term favourite band of mine producing their best work for a very long time, while still falling some distance short of their top tier early material. This is album 10 for Orange Goblin, and it delivers consistently. The band are now so comfortable in their own skins that everything feels effortless: banger after banger with no fuss. There are, admittedly, few surprises on Science, Not Fiction: the Goblin long ago abandoned their early experimentation with elements of psychedelia, punk, and blues, to settle on a more straightforward stoner rock template. That said, the introduction of Harry Armstrong on bass (their first new member in 20-odd years) has importantly refreshed things a little. Ultimately, Science, Not Fiction is only mid-ranking Orange Goblin when considered against their back catalogue as a whole. It’s the best collection of songs they’ve produced for over a decade, though, which is probably the most that could reasonably be asked of them 30 years in, not to mention being comfortably enough for the record to make this List.