Review by Vinny for Lo-Pan - Get Well Soon (2025)

In all honesty, I have never really gotten along with stoner. The concept of stoner rock vs stoner metal still confuses me as I never find the (limited) stoner that I have listened to venture far enough into metal to justify the tag. Accepting that I am formulating this opinion on a minority listening experience, I chose to look at stoner releases in my 2025 summary of The Fallen just as I would sludge, trad doom or death doom (drone can fuck off). Still, I approached Get Well Soon with a “get this over with” mentality. What began as a mere exercise to trim down the to do list of ever-growing releases this year, soon became a much cooler undertaking than I first imagined.

Clearly, there is a very virulent strain of hard rock running through the hazy, stoner vibes of Lo-Pan’s sound. It is not delivered in a mainstream manner though, which makes it an interesting style of rock to listen to. Whilst the stoner elements assist in that, the driving rhythms don’t follow a particularly linear or predictable narrative. This is on occasion detrimental to my enjoyment of the record. ‘Rogue Wave’ seems disjointed as opposed to oddly entertaining and the following track ‘Harpers Ferry’ develops a laboured edge to the music as it appears to slow to allow the vocals to catch up; it is almost as if they wrote too many words on the lyric sheet at times.

I have little in the way of genuine stoner influences to be able to call them out here, but I do hear elements of Chevelle in the rolling riffs. At the same time, the structure of the tracks, with their bounding yet still balanced nature gives me Helmet vibes. The tuneful yet edgy vocals belie perhaps the fact that they are singing about topical and confrontational themes. Lo-Pan sings about real world issues, talking about them against a backdrop of seemingly benign hard rock tunes. This tempering process works well; it negates the sense that the messaging is overtly preachy but still lets the grown up have the necessary focus. You can nod along and tap your foot in time to the music whilst contemplating the message behind the lyrics, all done without the need for rampant or juvenile incitement of violence as a response to the ills of the world. In short, Lo-Pan lets the music do the talking.

Percussively powerful without ever becoming overbearing, the solid drums complement the rest of the instrumentation well. Perhaps except for the bass, the repertoire of instruments all gets good representation in the mix. Whilst I cannot go as far as to call the album catchy, it lingers on the brain after the event. I find bits of it playing distantly in my head in the hours or days after the last listen and this makes me understand that there is perhaps still some growth to happen with Get Well Soon. For now, the record sits in my solid score range. A side note has been made for a review of the review in the coming weeks and months though.