Giant Lungs Explores the Nuances of Time with "Praise the Laze"
Giant Lungs is a stoner rock quartet from Augsburg, Germany that has a very special place both here on the blog and in my heart. I first heard the band via their stunning self-titled debut album back in October 2023, a love-at-first-listen experience that's still just as meaningful to me over two years later. That album instantly secured the number one spot on my best albums of the month list and ultimately took seventeenth place on the Doom Charts. (That was only my second time ever contributing to the Doom Charts and it feels like a lifetime ago in many ways). In addition, Giant Lungs' debut went on to become my first ever Album of the Year, as well as my first review here on Screaming from the Heavy Underground. So, yeah...this band is just a tiny bit special.
Since then, I've been more than a little vocal in my support of Giant Lungs (something you're well aware of if you follow me on Instagram), never missing a good opportunity to gush over their soaring stoner/desert tones, as rich with emotive intensity as they are fuzzy riffs.
Back in October 2024, the band hinted that they were working on the mixing phase of their sophomore album, and then things got a bit...quiet. Although the band stayed busy playing some live gigs in 2025, news about the new album had quieted to radio silence. I have to admit, I started to get worried after a while, wondering if this sophomore release was still in the works and, frankly, if Giant Lungs was still a band. Well, good things come to those who wait, and Giant Lungs is rewarding our patience in a big way with Praise the Laze, released on December 19, 2025.
If you're at all familiar with the band, you'll immediately take note of the addition of some dark, trippy psychedelic tones throughout Praise the Laze, adding an abundance of dimension and kaleidoscopic tempers to Giant Lungs' already multifaceted sound. There are actually a few unexpected surprises on the album, but these never detract from those deliciously fuzzy vibes we know and love from the band. In fact, they complement them perfectly.
And you know I'm going to talk about this one track-by-track...
Giant Lungs - Praise the Laze
1.) Resonora
Praise the Laze opens in a powerful way with Resonora, adding a massive dose of dark psychedelia to Giant Lungs' trademark stoner/desert tones.
Resonora maintains a spiraling, churning intensity amid the coarseness of fuzz and pounding, frenetic drums. This whirlwind pulls you down as a mind-bending account unfolds, filled with as many fragments of truth as lysergic fantasy. The 3:38 mark sees the track slowing to a trudge and giving way to my favorite part of the song, a trippy interlude filled with chaotic distortion and those levitating, voice-in-a-fever-dream vocals that initially hooked me on Giant Lungs' debut album. You can almost physically feel the disconnect from reality during this deceptively soothing reprieve.
I first heard Resonora while watching a Giant Lungs gig on YouTube, and I was instantly drawn to it like a magnet, enamored with its palpably intense, nearly crazed emotive intensity. For this reason, it doesn't surprise me that it ultimately became by favorite song on the Praise the Laze album. This is one of those songs that I like to listen to without distraction - consciously allowing it to infiltrate my soul while mentally flying away.
"Seeking for the sake to seek
A little break I need my weed
Don't I dare to flee
Awakening is on the run
In former days it was more fun
Will she free me, maybe."
2.) Aces
Aces is soulful, sensual, and hazy, with the band's fuzzy stoner sounds complimented by an infusion of heavy psych, grunge, and a dash of heavy blues. The taunting lilt and falsetto pre-chorus croons from the vocals really add to the sultry nature of the song, along with the slinking cadence of the instrumentals.
Admittedly, this is the song on Praise the Laze that initially perplexed me most, as its attitude is much more brazen and its lyrics much more overt than the typical Giant Lungs approach, and that's certainly not a bad thing. Aces explores the senseless back and forth social game of romantic pursuit and, to my ears and to a lesser extent, the knowledge that you should care when you don't.
"I am tired of our pose
My bones are getting old
I am so tired
Tired of our magic
Tired of our magic
Fuck magic."
3.) Dead Space Balloon
Dead Space Balloon begins its descent slowly, a leaden and listless ride against a tempestuous current of foreboding stoner/psych with a hint of doom. It passes through an eerie eye of the storm at the midway point before being launched into lively and gritty (albeit still trepidatious and murky) grooves. This is another song that gripped me instantly for both its poetic meter ("In a void / We make 'em happy/ A relief / In low... In a void / We make them happy / Like a mole in blue") and darkly hypnotic quality.
"Now we know it's time to waste our time
We're wasting time
We're wasting time
These little bastards
Forever try to fly to Mars
While we hide our moon
We hide our stars."
4.) Crabriders
Crabriders is FUN - a feel-good track marked by appropriately soaring guitar tones, infectious energy, colorful grooves, and a killer interlude of coarse and intense stoner rock turbulence in the middle. My favorite thing about Crabriders is its unique combination of psychedelic hippie soul and sci fi-esque subject matter:
"Now reborn to fly
We are riding high
Bone by bone
We build our dome
...
Crab riders in the sky
Are we? Yes, we are!
Crab riders for a while
We are who we are."
I got quite blissfully lost in the imagery of people piloting what must certainly be grossly oversized crabs over their post-apocalyptic dome villages. Would the crabs require saddles? How many people were decapitated by the crabs' monstrous crustacean claws before they were effectively domesticated? I have many questions. Either way, I bet this song is amazing live.
5.) Until the Sky Falls
Until the Sky Falls is a gorgeous mind flight filled with some of my favorite lyrics on the album.
The dreamlike journey begins in a soothing manner, "on my couch in a diamond's high", marked by soft and tender vocals and the soulful notes of a blues rock ballad.
After the first chorus, the instrumental energy picks up exponentially, taking off into some pulsing, fuzzy stoner atmospheres. However, the vocals remain mostly unphased, maintaining their hushed, serene demeanor as the lyrics lapse into a placating stream of consciousness: "Are you into celebrities? Into their way to seek? Are you into Billie E? Who are they to disagree?"
The song ends in the same place it began as the instrumentals quiet and return to their stirring but gentle notes as the vocals recount: "On my couch, I become a pillow. There's no place like home".
Based upon the thoughts I've shared about the song so far, it probably doesn't come as a surprise that Until the Sky Falls is brimming with enchanting imagery. My favorite visual comes from this stanza:
"You're gonna stir it up now
Into the latency
You're gonna stir it up now
There ain't no way to be."
"Into the latency" is a very clever play on words, naturally leading the listener to hear the line as "into the latent sea." I think this is a particularly vivid and meaningful picture that reveals the core of the album's theme (more on that later). I visualize a vast, tranquil body of water in which lies hidden potential, lost memories, and a labyrinth of hidden meaning - all of which can be accessed by completing the daunting task of breaking through the surface.
Finally, Until the Sky Falls feels a bit like a reprise of the song I Want You from the band's debut album, and of course I mean that as a total compliment. Both songs adopt a similar blueprint: soulful, hushed tones and the loveliest falsetto vocal garnishes that frame a storm of Giant Lungs' emotively intense, ultra fuzzy stoner rock. Comparatively, Until the Sky Falls is darker and more mind-bending while still delivering similarly heart-wrenching, bittersweet vibes.
Can you tell this song is another one of my favorites?
6.) Death by Delay
Death by Delay is a bit more in line with the sound Giant Lungs debuted on their first album, a bright and glistening but undoubtedly wistful alternative rock tone through which pockets of stoner/desert breakdowns pass through. Something about the bittersweet tone of the instrumentals on this song gripped my heart right away, before I'd heard any of the lyrics. If Resonora is my favorite track on the album overall, then Death by Delay is my favorite on an emotional level. And this is a deeply palpable kind of emotion that's heard in the vocals as well, particularly as they naturally lapse into an impassioned growl on the line "and I know I'm gonna hurt you."
"In this sand
Our wicked shoes
Made a trail
For postponers on the loose
On and on and on we dream
Down the alley
Down the stream
We have escaped into the sun."
7.) Tourists
Tourists is the real surprise that wraps up the album, an almost twelve-minute juggernaut that fluidly shapeshifts among several moods and genres.
This is another one that I initially heard on the aforementioned live gig on YouTube, and, upon hearing the first few notes, it's possible that I leapt from my seat and shouted (in a very un-ladylike manner) "Holy shit! Giant Lungs DOOMS!" before cackling maniacally.
Although the band's heavy psych-laced doom skills are first teased on Dead Space Balloon, on Tourists, they're in it for the long haul, hanging out and sporting a sinister grin for the majority of the song. Some well-placed pace changeups launch the track back into groovy stoner/psych territory for the middle portion of the song, but the weighty darkness still presses heavily upon it, and it's delicious.
In part, the song explores the idea that we are all tourists throughout life (as in Iggi Pop's The Passenger, a little bird tells me), Tourists switches gears around the midway point to address the artificiality of social media, its revered personalities, and their sycophants.
"Cathy you're too beautiful
Please dim down the lights
These are the queuing girls
These are the queuing boys
Grabbing, grabbing, grabbing for your light."
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, when I first heard about the prospect of a sophomore album from Giant Lungs, I had no idea what to expect. Would it be something completely different? Would the band release another solid slab of stoner/desert rock, rich with fuzz and swathed in figurative lyrics? While they could have easily played it safe in doing the latter, Giant Lungs ambitiously decided to let creativity take the wheel while allowing a palpable darkness (and even a little doom!) to bleed in. The result is a noticeably more intense sound, one that brazenly confronts the deepest recesses of the mind and embraces what lurks there (more about that in a second). One of the first things you'll notice on Praise the Laze is a much more psych-laden sound, adding even more dimension to the already brilliant stoner/desert tones. This influence alternates between the lysergic sounds of a more modern interpretation of psychedelia and a blues-inspired, 70s heavy rock vibe. Giant Lungs also dials up the grunge factor on this release, adding a grit-infused murkiness to the hallucinogenic haze. This results in an album that moves between gripping and clear grooves to utterly trance-including, dreamlike blurs that have a way of snapping the listener in and out of fantastical reverie in a powerful way. Also, the more malleable, free-form nature of psychedelic rock lead the band to compose several much longer form songs this time around, an adjustment that feels incredibly natural. Most importantly, Giant Lungs ensures that they stay true to their signature sound on Praise the Laze, and I primarily hear this in the form of cyclones of intense and fuzzy stoner rock breakdowns that blow through the album with distinguishable force. The soaring guitar tones, standout bass groove, energetic and adaptive drums, and poetic lyricism we know and love from the band are ever-present throughout the album, trademark Giant Lungs qualities that I don't think I could live without.
The darkened intensity and psychedelic influence on Praise the Laze also leads to a much deeper emotional expression, more complex metaphors, and swift fluctuations between fantasy and reality. These qualities themselves have a tendency to ebb and flow throughout the album, with some songs being significantly more enigmatic and/or emotively raw than others. Nestled between what I would call the three "single worthy" songs on the album (Aces, Crabriders, and Death by Delay), you'll find what I affectionately call the "mind fuck" stuff that will make you question whether you're in the midst of some bewitching dream, are viewing a particularly harsh picture of reality through a crystal clear lens, or are free-falling helplessly through a nightmarish chasm of your darkest subconscious thoughts. No matter which dimension you find yourself in as you listen, the sounds, voices, and images that wash over you are unfiltered and often delightfully trippy. Perhaps best of all, many of these scenarios are laid out in a cryptic manner, leaving them up for listener interpretation. There's at least one moment, line, or feeling expressed on Praise the Laze that each individual will immediately recognize themselves in in a vastly different way.
Speaking of symbolism, it's abundantly clear that Praise the Laze utilizes time a central theme, with many examples present throughout the album's lyrics:
"Now we know it's time to waste our time
We're wasting time
We're wasting time."
"In this sand
Our wicked shoes
Made a trail
for postponers on the loose."
"I am tired of our pose
My bones are getting old
I'm so tired."
"These men are cold and old
Their lives are passing by..."
Of course, even the album's title itself hints at embracing time-wasting to some degree, while some of the lyrics seem a bit disquieted as to just how quickly the years are passing. This is a relatable phenomenon...one's old, aching bones spur a sudden realization that time is limited, awakening an anxious urgency to do all of the things you still want to do while you can. Even so, sometimes that hulking procrastination monster, summoned by the daily challenges of life that never seem to let up no matter how gung-ho we are to improve, overpowers our lofty ambitions. Success lies in finding a balance, a world in which one makes peace with the aforementioned beast, hanging out together from time to time and praising the laze.
In a Nutshell
So, is Praise the Laze a successful endeavor for Giant Lungs? Absolutely, unequivocally yes. By venturing out of their comfort zone, experimenting with different musical styles, and allowing darker and more complex ideas to inspire them, the band proves that they're more than capable of exponential creative growth while expanding their musical repertoire. This is an album that digs deeper and pushes harder, simultaneously challenging and captivating the listener in a meaningful way.
More About Giant Lungs
You can follow Giant Lungs and listen to their music at the following links:
The most heartfelt gratitude I can muster goes out to the band for the promo, as well as the warmest of virtual hugs for being a lovely group of dudes. Giant Lungs, you are the best, and for what it's worth, you'll always have the Queen of Doom standing steadfastly in your corner. <3
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