Doom Metal

Origin: Early 1970’s UK; took off early 1980’s USA

Characteristics: Generally slow tempos; emphasis on dark and gloomy atmosphere; riff-driven guitar playing

Typical Live Hand Gesture: 🤘

What is the appeal?: Immersive, dark and chilling atmospheres; gnarly, heavy riffs

The history of doom metal is directly connected to the history of metal itself, as both the subgenre and the whole family of music owe their existence to Black Sabbath and their first few studio albums. While metal as a whole would take influence from Sabbath’s riffs and overall heaviness, doom metal would take particular influence from their dark and gloomy atmosphere, as well as from Tony Iommi’s bluesy riffing.

While Black Sabbath and Paranoid were influential on doom metal in their own rights, the Black Sabbath album that would become absolutely crucial to the creation of doom metal, and its own subgenres, was 1971’s Master of Reality. Master of Reality may be the one album that popularized down-tuning guitars the most. In Tony Iommi’s autobiography, Iron Man, he recalls:

“We did some stuff that we had never done before. On ‘Children of the Grave’, ‘Lord Of This World’ and ‘Into The Void’ we tuned down three semitones. It was part of an experiment: tuning down together for a bigger, heavier sound. Back then all the other bands had rhythm guitarists or keyboards, but we made do with guitar, bass guitar and drums, so we tried to make them sound as fat as possible. Tuning down just seemed to give more depth to it. I think I was the first one to do that.

Iommi, p. 94
Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality was as influential to doom metal as their debut album was to metal as a whole. Guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler downtuned their instruments three semitones, giving the riffing a darker, heavier sound.

While some early doom metal bands such as Virginia’s Pentagram were putting out singles throughout the 1970’s, the subgenre didn’t totally take off until the 1980’s, when Pentagram would release their first album, and would be joined in the style by the likes of L.A.’s Saint Vitus and Sweden’s Candlemass.

Sweden’s Candlemass had a melancholic atmosphere and crushing, sinister riffs.
Bands like Saint Vitus utilized heavy bluesy riffing, similarly to Black Sabbath.

The 1990’s saw doom metal’s place in the metal underground persist, and several new subgenres of doom metal were created. Bands like California’s Sleep played stoner doom metal, essentially expanding on everything Black Sabbath did on Master of Reality, from the down-tuning, to the fuzzy guitar tones, to the lyrics about marijuana, to the fat, blues-influenced riffs.

Leave it to stoners to create a subgenre of metal based on huge blues riffs.

Elsewhere in doom metal, bands like Skepticism, Esoteric, and Thergothon created the foundation for funeral doom metal, slowing down the genre’s tempos even more, and mostly utilizing harsh vocals. As the name would imply, funeral doom metal is mournful, grim, and melancholic.

On tracks like “Pouring,” Skepticism create a foreboding, mournful atmosphere. The live performance on Ordeal sounds absolutely massive compared to the original studio recording.
Slow tempos and long songs are typical of funeral doom metal. Germany’s Ahab conjure imagery of haunted seas at night.
One of the most highly-regarded funeral doom metal albums of the past few years was Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper. The album – consisting of one, 83-minute funeral doom metal song – was recorded as a tribute to the group’s late drummer, Adrien Guerra. Bell Witch do not have a guitarist; Dylan Desmond’s bass guitar does the lead-work instead.

Later in the 90’s, several European artists would merge doom metal with death metal in a different fashion than funeral doom. The early music of bands like Katatonia, Paradise Lost, Anathema, and My Dying Bride would instead be called death-doom metal, and it was sincerely melancholic music, taking on a more midtempo, melodic approach than funeral doom did.

Katatonia’s earliest work used relatively minimalist instrumental performances, and a beautiful sense of melody, to create a depressive atmosphere.
Early Anathema was melancholic and beautifully atmospheric.
My Dying Bride’s music was mournful, yet more melodic than most funeral doom metal.

Sludge Metal

Origin: 1990’s USA

Characteristics: Doom metal tempos; aggression and typically-shouted vocals of hardcore punk; thick, muddy distortion

What is the appeal?: Raw, intense aggression and empowering, cathartic heaviness

Sludge metal is one of several genres of metal influenced by hardcore punk, bringing the aggression from that genre into a style that otherwise utilized doom metal-influenced tempos and atmospheres. Sludge came about in the late 1980’s as bands like Melvins slowed down hardcore riffs in their music to create enormous, heavy atmospheres, distinct from doom metal in their aggressive punk attitude.

Melvins came to define the core sludge metal sound, playing hardcore riffs at doom metal tempos to create a grimy and aggressive style.
While Isis would later become known as a definitive post-metal band, their early work such as the Mosquito Control EP was raw and angry sludge metal.
Mastodon are one of the most commercially successful sludge metal bands, frequently touring with progressive metal giants such as Gojira and Opeth. Mastodon themselves would dabble in progressive songwriting later in their career, but the early material such as Remission and Leviathan was crushing, modernized sludge.

Works Cited

Joseph, Schafer. “Bell Witch’s New LP Is a Loving Tribute to Former Drummer Adrien Guerra.” VICE, Vice Media Group, 16 Oct. 2017, http://www.vice.com/en/article/9k3xea/bell-witchs-new-lp-is-a-loving-tribute-to-former-drummer-adrien-guerra.

Revolver Staff. “How Melvins Invented Sludge: ‘Ugly Spawn of Punk and Metal.’” Revolver, Project M Group LLC, 31 Oct. 2019, http://www.revolvermag.com/music/how-melvins-invented-sludge-ugly-spawn-punk-and-metal.

Stone, Adam. “Roots Of Sludge.” The Sleeping Shaman, The Sleeping Shaman, 16 Aug. 2008, http://www.thesleepingshaman.com/articles/roots-of-sludge/.

Wiederhorn, Jon. “Doom Metal: A Brief Timeline.” Bandcamp Daily, Bandcamp, 2 Feb. 2017, daily.bandcamp.com/lists/doom-metal-a-brief-timeline.