Priestess are easily my favorite band on the Tee Pee Records roster, most of which is firmly planted on the psychedelic rock side of the stoner spectrum (although, as I learned a couple of months back, Earthless are pretty fucking rad too). Priestess, however, have serious balls of steel; the easy analogy would be to say they’re a less weird / more consistently rocking version of Queens of the Stone Age, but like most musical band-to-band analogies that description falls shorts of capturing the band’s true essence. Where Queens come from a background rooted in punk as much as metal, Priestess are straight up metal dudes influenced by equal parts by traditional heavy metal and NWOBHM; witness Mikey Heppner’s scorching guitar solos juxtaposed with the band’s Sabbath-esque grooves.

The Canadian quartet’s new album Prior to the Fire has been out in their homeland since October but is only coming to US, UK and European shores February 2nd (unless, of course, you live in 2010 and have the rendering-international-release-dates-useless Internet… but that’s a topic for another day). The entire album is currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page; you best check it out now because it probably won’t be up there for long and that shit is the bomb, I promise.

-VN