Stories of the Queen of Doom Metal

An interview with Lori S., founder and frontwoman of Acid King

Acid King wields  an undeniable power in their live performances. Their huge sound, led by massive fuzzed heavy guitar riffs, is like a worship service for the Gods of doom metal. You cannot go to an Acid King show without being forever changed.

The founder and frontwoman of Acid King, is Lori S., a San Francisco doom stoner rock icon, who started the band over thirty years ago and has been the sole force leading the band through decades of incredible music since. Sprung from the loins of the forefathers of doom metal, Black Sabbath, and influenced by contemporaries of heavy music such as Mudhoney and Soundgarden, Acid King has a place in the current doom stoner rock genre of great importance and the promise of legendary impact.  

Queen of stoner rock, Lori S., has many stories to tell. I was lucky to have her share some of these stories, following her performance at the first Mojave Experience Festival in Joshua Tree, California, on March 24, 2026.

Acid King plays at the first Mojave Experience Festival March 21st, 2026 in Joshua Tree, CA.

You’ve been out here [to the Mojave Desert] before. My friends saw Acid King at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace a few years ago.

Lori: We’ve played at Pappy’s a couple of times, three times in Joshua Tree actually. One was at Stoned and Dusted. I honestly don’t know where it was, we had to be bussed in. It was really cool actually. It was in this man-made amphitheater of rocks, somewhere in Joshua Tree. Stoned and Dusted, it was called. That was in 2019. We were at Pappy and Harriet’s in 2023 I think. With Mondo Drag. 2023 or 2024 I can’t remember.

So, you’re from San Francisco, right?

Lori: Yup

That’s a great city.

I have a couple questions about your creative life, your life’s work and live shows and what ever you want to tell me about, what’s going on next.

(I’m a freelance music writer, musician and heavy music fan for thirty years.)

Your live performances, I just…don’t know of any that parallel yours.

Lori: Wow! Thank you!

And I’ve been to hundreds of concerts, I’ve seen Tool, Metallica…

It’s hard to even describe…the power is just immense. This show you did at Mojave Experience, I was very moved by “Two Wheel Nation”, emotionally.

Lori: That was a popular song that day, cuz there was a lot of videos that people posted on Instagram and it was mostly that song.

Yeah, I think you reached a lot of people emotionally through that song.

Acid King’s  songs celebrate and commemorate the triumphs of the human experience. It is easy to feel the emotions that may have driven the expression, in Lori S’s life’s work. The hunger for freedom, the pain of growth, the joy in unexpected twists of fate.

I was thinking, your life’s work…I feel like, as a human, as an artist, you are your work as much as your work is you. Does that make sense?

Lori: Yeah, I guess you could say that. I don’t write a lot of songs, for as long as I’ve been doing this. You know, I write a record every five to seven years or so. I don’t like to just bust out a record just to bust it out, because people want to hear new music. I don’t want to write something that’s generic and meaningless. I put a lot of effort into, you know, caring about what I write. I’ll write songs that I don’t even like and I’ll kick em to the curb. I really think a lot about what I’m putting out into the universe. It’s a rare occasion, it does happen every now and again where I’ll write something that I don’t necessarily love so that I’ll have an extra song to make the record long enough. I think, for me, it’s more about the songwriting and what I want to put out into the universe and not about how many records I can write, how many songs I can write and how fast. That’s why Acid King doesn’t have a big record label, because I don’t want to be beholden to someone where I have to have three records in…ya know three years. I have been offered a lot of money to write a record in a year and I was like, you know, I can’t guarantee I can do that. I mean sure I can do that but I don’t know if the songs will be good enough. Maybe? I don’t like that kind of pressure. That’s not my thing.

Yeah, you really want to express your soul and what is important to you, would you say that is true?

Lori: Yeah. I mean, you know, exactly. I’m not saying someone can’t write a good record in a short amount of time. I think Black Sabbath wrote Black Sabbath in like a day. I mean, it can be done, right, for sure, but it’s like, I also have other things going on in my life. I’m not a full time musician that just sits around and plays. I have other things going on in my life and I just can’t dedicate a ton of time as it really takes to really write stuff.

That’s kind of amazing because you’re , as far as I see, you’re the Queen of Stoner Doom. It’s like, whenever you want it, it’s there.

Lori: I might be one of the longest standing, I don’t know if I’m the queen. (amused) But, I’ve definitely been doing it the longest. Still doing it.

Yeah, I mean, you’re a legend. I’m interested in how deliberate your song writing is. I’m noticing this, too, with your guitar tone and all of the choices you’ve made for that sound and for each riff, it feels very focused. Very directed, like, you got every sound you wanted out of your guitar, out of your amp, because you dialed it in. That’s something I am very impressed by in your work, too.

Lori S: Yeah, well that takes time. When I first started playing, I didn’t really have a tone. I didn’t know what my tone was. How do you know what your tone is? You’re just, like, playing. Little by little, people that I knew, other musicians, were like, “Hey you should try that, you might like this”. It was just a series of…I always joke around that all of my ex boyfriends are really what got me to where I am at today. I started out playing in a punk band. My punk rock boyfriend taught me how to play the guitar. He had a Fender, so I bought a Fender. He had a Marshall amp, so I played on his Marshall amp. And then, I started going out with this metal guy and he was like “Fenders suck! You need to play a Gibson” and I went out and bought a Gibson. And I thought, this guitar is actually a lot better than the Fender. A guy in his band had a Marshall amplifier for sale, a half stack, and so I bought it and then the head blew. I had to get a lender. The place that fixed my amp gave me one to borrow, and it was this hot rodded Marshall and it just sounded fuckin amazing. I was like holy shit, man. This thing sounds so good, it sounds way better than mine. I had to give it back and I was trying to figure out how to get that tone, out of that particular head. That’s when I discovered effects pedals and distortion pedals. So, you just kind of meander…

Right now, in this day and age, there’s so many people making pedals. You can buy the “stoner rock pedal”, the “heavy metal pedal”, the “fuzz warm pedal”, there’s pedals for everything, but that never used to be. You had different distortion pedals by different companies. Right? And, you would have to play around with them to see what came out of it. It was a little different back then, but I finally, through that and getting the Lil Big Muff that I have, which is a vintage Electro-Harmonix, and just trial and error, experimenting with different things, and, of course, my Les Paul, the combination of all three, is how you get it. But also, it’s the way you play. Someone could have the same guitar, the same amp, the same pedal , and not sound the same, depending on the way they play. You know?

Yeah. You have a big sound. Looking at the emotional aspect of it, you fill a big space. I’m thinking back to when you started, and that self-expression, I’m guessing, is like freedom.

Lori: Yeah, when you’re not beholden to anybody, and you just kind of write what you write, you do whatever you want. And if people like it and they’re into it, well that’s even better. But, that’s not ever guaranteed.

Yeah, no, I know. Ha ha

Lori: [laughs]

I am wondering about your writing process. Listening back to your first full length album, Zoroaster, to this newest album…I feel like there’s a whole journey in time, but also in yourself. The newest album, I feel like, has so much space that you created sonically and even…outer space elements like I think you were using a synth in there a little bit…

Lori: Yeah, you’re right. I’m not the same person I was thirty years ago, right? I mean that record was written in 1995, and it’s 2026. So, it’s like, you have to move on. I guess you don’t have to. I mean, I do. I feel like Acid King still sounds like Acid King, just a grown up version that has taken the music to a different place and maybe took a slight left turn. For the last record, I had a total vision of what I wanted, like it was a soundtrack, and then we ended up putting some vocals in there. We ended up putting some songs with some vocal in there, but it wasn’t ever really supposed to be that way. That record was very purposeful. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to have a record that sort of sounded like a soundtrack, with no beginning and no end, with a lot of transitions, through the synthesizer, keyboard stuff. Yeah, I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to rewrite anything that I’d already done. So, I really had a vision, and I wrote that during the pandemic, too, so I had a lot of time on my hands. And, I wrote it with Jason Landrian, from Black Cobra, so I had like a partner in crime, to kind of help me do some of the things I hadn’t done before, synthesizers, stuff like that.

I think if you listen to the last record, Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere, you could probably hear the transformation, not the transformation necessarily, but the direction the band has been going, because that record Middle of Nowhere Center of Everywhere was kind of a stepping stone of where Acid King was going. More atmospheric, not like a voice that sounds like Joan Jett, you know, singing from your throat, kind of a thing.

Yeah, you’re like, expanding. Is it true that you write mostly alone? Before now, that’s how you’ve written?

Lori: Yeah I mean, in the past, it’s been very jammy. I’ll come in with a riff, we’ll jam on that and if the bass player has something to add to that…It’s really up to me to come in with the main riffs. But I work with the band to help organize. If somebody has an idea, you know, they can toss it in, for sure. I don’t sit at home and write the whole song and go in and be like “Here’s my whole entire song”. I don’t do that.

This record that I wrote with Jason is a little different, cuz he and I wrote it together. It was my idea and mostly my riffs. But together we kind of came up with all of the little parts and transitions and so forth. The bass player was last to come in after most of the stuff was already written.

I don’t know how it’s going to go this time around because I have two new members. Well, Bryce isn’t new, but I’ve never written a record [with him]. He played on the last record, but the record was already pretty much written. He definitely added his influence into it, but the writing part was already done. So, we’ll see what happens this year, this time.

The ideas are mine, the riffs are usually all mine, then together with the other bandmembers who organize and craft, they can throw in whatever they want and if I like it, it stays. If I don’t like it, it gets kicked to the curb. (laughs)

So, what’s next for Acid King?

Lori: Well, we’ve got not much going on this year. I’ve got to spend the back half of this year starting to write new music. Beyond Vision came out in 2023, it’s already 2026. We’re going to Europe in May and we’ve got a couple of shows lined up. We won’t be going on any other bigger tours the rest of the year, just one-off shows that pop up that sound interesting. So, I want to hunker down and concentrate on starting the writing process. I don’t really want to spend five to seven years writing another record. I might be dead by then. [laughs]

The world is a very unstable place so who knows if any of us will be here? Not to be doomy.

Do you have any sort of rituals for writing, something you like to do or eat or drink or a place you like to be, anything in particular?

Lori: No, I pretty much go to the studio. I actually have a different studio than I did last time, so that will be interesting. I like to go to the studio. I don’t have any rituals, but usually what I do is I go by myself. I just plug my guitar in and I start to play whatever. You know what I mean? I’ll just start to play whatever and see what comes out. Sometimes I’ll have a riff in my head. I can have a whole song in my head and then I forget it, by the time I hit the studio.

I can relate [laughs]

Lori: Yeah it’s hard to keep it in your head, right? You try to hum it in your phone and then you’re like “what was that?” it doesn’t sound the same when you hear it back.

I don’t necessarily have a ritual but I do need to get out of my house, otherwise there’s too many distractions. Between the cat, and you have to hide your phone so you don’t go on your social media. It’s so easy to get distracted these days, now with everything, that you really just need to focus. You just need to go to the studio and start it. Just, start doing it. It’s kind of like exercising or dieting, something that you want to do, that you’re like ah god I need to do this but you know… Writing can be hard, you’re not always creative. Sometimes you had a hard day or a long day. Sometimes you just don’t have anything. Sometimes it’s just like Nope, there’s no riffs. And sometimes a riff comes out. It’s just, putting the work into it, it’s almost like a job. It’s like you have to say to yourself, I’m going to spend an hour in the studio today and see what happens, see what I can put down. I record a bunch of stuff. I start making a riff compilation and once I feel like I have enough, I’ll start to jam with the band. Like, here’s this riff I got, here’s this idea I have and then kind of see where it goes from there.

The last question I’d like to ask is about fun tour stories, what is one of your favorite or most memorable,  best or worst shows?

Lori: One of the worst shows, I’m trying to think, it wasn’t with Acid King, it was with another band. I guess you could say this was the worst show. We never even played. It was Little Rock Arkansas, it was like Vinny’s or something, it was a pizza place and a club. We showed up and we did a soundcheck and like, nobody showed up. Like, completely empty. The show promoter was like “I’ll give you $50 for some pizza and gas, to leave, to not play, because it’ll save me money to let the bartender and the sound guy go home, rather than stay open and let you play” [laughs] This was in the nineties so, yeah we took the money and we left, went to a hotel and went swimming. That was our show. That was not our show. [laughs]

I feel like any real musician, with the exception maybe of some of these young YouTube sensations, has a handful of stories like this one.

Lori: Oh totally. You have to remember too, this was before social media, so there was a lot more effort you had to put into getting people to go to your show. You had to call the college radio station to promote your show.

And flyers

Lori: Getting the local newspaper to write something about it, it wasn’t easy. It was easy for a band like ours to just go somewhere and play like without any…you had to really rely on the promoter to get an opening band that’s got some draw, and flyer. And if they didn’t, which they obviously didn’t, nobody came.  Now it’s so much easier to promote right, cuz all you have to do is go on your social media, so it’s a lot easier to get the word out.

Well, let’s counter balance that with a really good experience you’ve had.

Lori: Let’s see, a really good experience was, well, there’s been many, but one memorable one was our first, well it might have been our first time playing Roadburn, you know that big festival in Tilburg, Netherlands? It’s called Roadburn, check it out.

It used to be a lot of bands like ours. It started out as a stoner rock, it used to be more eclectic but it started out as a lot of bands like ours and Fu Manchu and stuff like that. Now, if you look it up, you’ll see it’s a lot more obscure bands. They kind of took a left hand turn on the original concept. I think they just ran out of bands and thought, you know, we can’t just have the same bands over and over, so they kind of changed it.

So, we played it. There’s several different stages. It’s one venue, it’s expanded now, but back then it was one venue that had like three different stages. Like the three bears, the big stage, the medium stage and the small stage. We were supposed to play the medium stage. And when we got there the guy was like “Great news! We’ve decided to put you first on the big stage”. And we were kind of bummed. We were like “Oh, man. Who’s going to be there at 5?” You know what I mean, when the whole thing starts, playing the first out of five bands playing the main stage. So, we were actually a little bummed. Thinking ok cool, yeah whatever. You know, of course we’re excited to be here.  So, we did our sound check and went away and came back. It was the bigger place had like 2200 capacity or something like that. It was kind of like a decent sized venue.

And so, we get on stage and they open up the curtains…PACKED. Totally packed. And everyone was like “YEAH!!!” you know? And we were like “Oh my god, fuck yeah!” It was just like completely unexpected. It was really fun! And just the energy, like BA BAM, right out of the gate, you know? And it was just really fun. It’s always good to have low expectations. [laughs heartily] No disappointments. Yeah, so that was pretty awesome. I think we were all just laughing because, we didn’t really know what to expect but for some reason we had written a story, to ourselves, that people weren’t going to be there that early to see us, since we were the first band and that completely wasn’t true. The festival people were there at all times to see everybody. It’s not like a regular show when there’s four bands on the bill and you’re not going until band number three. Band number one gets a hand full of people. That’s my fun positive story. Surprise Roadburnawesome crowd.

That’s rad! Well, this was really fun talking with you! Thanks so much for taking the time. I’m really looking forward to…I am going to keep listening to you and come see you live again, for sure.

Lori: Thank you so much.