Desert spirituality and desert rock

By Audrey Herrin

Image from “Queens of the Stone Age - The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret (Official Music Video)” (https://youtu.be/0l0nzPpvbFs)

“My god is the sun”,

claims the title of one of the tracks on Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA)’s 2013 album ...Like Clockwork. In a voice directly invoking the desert sun as if it were a higher power, the lyrics call upon this god to “heal them, with fire from above”, creating an image of the desert as a place of spiritual cleansing and transformation. The origin behind the image evoked in the lyrics of this stoner rock song might run deeper than a mere drug trip (despite the reputation of the genre). There are many ways in which the desert landscape has been long associated with spirituality, and stoner rock frequently echoes this same spiritual conception of the desert in its sound and lyrics.

Stoner rock is unequivocally the sound of the American desert: a mix of psychedelic rock, metal, and alt rock. Imagine Pink Floyd, but with a shot of pure adrenaline right in the jugular. Like all genres, its origin and development are difficult to pin down, but its unique sound is largely attributed to the California Palm Desert scene; specifically the band Kyuss and their 1992 album Blues for the Red Sun. Stoner rock is unique in that it is inseparably associated with its geographic origin. Spotify’s official “Stoner Rock” playlist even claims in its description that the listener will be able to “practically taste the desert dirt in (their) mouth”.

Stoner rock succeeds in evoking the desert environment because of the stripped-dry, bluntness of its sound which conveys the vastness of the landscape through leaping, epic guitars and soaring vocals. Some songs even deploy sound motifs that recall sounds associated with the desert such as a rattlesnake, the hum of a mosquito, or a dry wind. More than anything else, however, it is the sense of desolation and barrenness of the desert that  echoes in the sound of stoner rock.

The desert environment has loomed in the human imagination as a place of desolation, suffering, and struggle since biblical times. In literature, a desert is often the ultimate hardship the protagonists must overcome before reaching their goal (think Mordor from The Lord of the Rings). Simultaneously, it has been conceived as a place of purification and liberation as a result of the experience of suffering and hardship. When applied to religion, this concept translates to the practice of asceticism: the avoidance of all forms of indulgence and engagement in self-denial for spiritual purposes.

 The “Desert Fathers” in Christianity were monks who exiled themselves to lives of hardship in the Egyptian desert in order to escape the corruption of civilization. In the desolate desert environment the monks were free from the confines of the superficial and contradictory rules of civilization. Through the practice of asceticism, they sought to find a mystical communion with a higher power by detaching themselves from the non-spiritual comforts of the material world. They believed suffering was necessary to achieve spiritual liberation, a belief that is not confined to Christianity. Asceticism has also been practiced in Buddhism, Islam, and many other world religions. The Desert Fathers found the desert to be a naturally ascetic place because of the harshness of its environment. Their beliefs are still relevant, as The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Christian Monks is a Penguin Classic and still widely read today. 

The sound of the rock music of the desert corroborates the association of the desert with asceticism and suffering. A stoner rock song is heavy and relentless; it beats down on the listener as mercilessly as the sweltering desert sun, but the songs are often long and multi-faceted (“I’m the Mountain” by Stoned Jesus is 16 minutes long). This portrays the experience of suffering by causing the listener to feel that time has slowed down to a tortorous crawl. Often, the song will come to a lull and deceptively seem to be ending before suddenly returning with full force, denying the listener any relief. 

The lyrics support the instrumentation of the songs in conveying a sense of purification through suffering. There is no place for sappy sentimentality, flowery metaphors, or romanticism in stoner rock. Unsurprisingly, the lyrics are often about drug consumption or describe feverish hallucinations such as in Sleep’s “Holy Mountain”. They also frequently detail experiences of raw anger or lust. Overall, artists across the genre share a self-indulgent tendency to convey base animalistic behaviors and desires. These songs come from a place outside the civilized world of morality, and some, such as QOTSA's “Mosquito Song” deal with the inescapability of death and the amorality of the wilderness. They depict the desert as a place that owes its purity to the replacement of civilization and morality with the simple, indiscriminate experience of suffering.

Asceticism, however, is not the only way that the desert is associated with spiritual transformation. Painter Agnes Pelton found the California desert to be an ideal place to look for spiritual inspiration because of its barrenness. She was one of the original ‘transcendentalist’ painters who attempted to depict spiritual perceptions of their surroundings. Her paintings are abstract interpretations of the desert terrain showing the impact the environment has on her imagination instead of just the landscape itself. As a follower of Theosophy (the belief that one can come to know God through spiritual intuition), Pelton held beliefs similar to those of the Desert Fathers, such as finding spiritual knowledge by avoiding the distractions of the material world and focusing on the natural environment. Devoid of wordly complications, the barren emptiness of the desert represents anti-materiality. With a lack of outer, material stimulation, individuals in the desert are prompted to look inwards instead.

If the desert landscape represents anti-materiality, it makes sense that stoner rock is also anti-materialistic. Many stoner rock lyrics express disdain for human attachment to material things, such as in Kyuss’s “Green Machine” and QOTSA’s “If I Had a Tail”. In their song “Riding the Dunes”, Valley of the Sun encourages listeners to relinquish materiality by “giv(ing) away all that we own” and turning instead to the desert environment, where “tranquility awaits within the dunes”. The narrator of “My God is the Sun” is grateful for the “empty space” of the desert environment and the liberating “mental erase” that it allows. The sound of stoner rock also conveys self-discovery. Its frequent transitions and riffing sound experimental and searching. It also uses hypnotic repetition with sudden variation to replicate a sense of realization and sudden revelation.

Stoner rock is the rock music of the desert, and as such it is shaped by the mythos of the desert that exists in the human imagination. It presents a conception of the desert as a place of pure suffering. The desert of stoner rock is a simpler place where basic instincts overrule the laws of morality. Still, the music occasionally hints at the promise of liberation waiting for those who make it through to the other side.  

Songs referenced in this article:

“My God is the Sun” by Queens of the Stone Age

“I’m the Mountain” by Stoned Jesus

“Holy Mountain” by Sleep

“Mosquito Song” by Queens of the Stone Age

“Green Machine” by Kyuss

“If I Had a Tail” by Queens of the Stone Age 

“Riding the Dunes” by Valley of the Sun