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JJ's Bizarre Blog #41 - Descent into the Depths of Despair
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Greetings, everyone! November is finally upon us and autumn is now in full swing! I’m personally a fan of the crimson season and all it represents, dunno about you. In the meantime, it’s time for the next Bizarre outing from yours truly. Tell me, do you like to party? Do you like to have fun? Are you ready to have a good time? Well TOO BAD! Today, we are gathered here to be miserable, immerse ourselves in deep melancholy and drown in utter darkness. OK, OK, I’m kidding. Or am I? Well, both, kind of. For you see, autumn is a time of dying, the beautiful colours of the leaves are the sign of struggle before they finally wither away before the arrival of winter. The world will grow cold as the days become shorter and the sun becomes distant. In a similar sense, we will also explore beauty through sorrow with some music I think very befitting of the foggy rainy season approaching. Perhaps we’ll learn how we can find hope and light in the darkest parts of our hearts. I’d like to introduce you to the eldest and most misunderstood child of heavy metal. Welcome to the path less traveled. Welcome to the realms of doom metal!
For the most part, heavy metal and its offspring are know for being fast, aggressive and energetic. However, there has always been an alternate approach. Doom metal is characterized mainly by its slow tempo and dense dark atmosphere. Guitars are tuned very low and droning riffs are repeated a lot in order to induce an almost trance-like state. Keyboards are quite common, especially organs, and are used to both add more haunting melody and further enhance the intense Gothic vibe. Vocals tend to stand out too and are divided into two main camps. The oldschool epic camp that take an elevated operatic approach full of theatrics and drama and the newschool brooding style of lower singing, in particular bass and baritone male vocals, that add to the surrounding darkness and perfectly compliment the low, thick rumbles of the instrumentation. Taking a lot of cues from blues, doom metal songs are macabre, emotional and enveloping. Because of the slow tempo, they are also longer on average too. Of course a prime component are the lyrics which almost always strive to invoke a sense of dread, despair, sorrow, melancholy and impending doom, hence the genre’s name. Common topics include depression, failed romance, existentialism, inner turmoil, demons, magic, mysticism, mythology, nature and ancient poetry. Now, let’s venture together into this dark forest and uncover how this all came to be!
Doom metal started where all metal started, with Black Sabbath (you should really be used to this by now). The self titled track off their self titled album is pretty universally accepted as the first heavy metal song ever, but it’s pretty much archetypal doom metal. It’s very slow, driven by an absurdly low (for the time) and ridiculously heavy riff that utilized bluesy playing techniques along with the so-called “Devil’s tritone” to create an evil, dissonant sound. The Godfather Ozzy Osbourne uses his iconic voice to deliver a melodramatic and horrific performance of the macabre lyrics dealing with demonic possession. It checks all the boxes and because of that, a serious argument can be made that doom metal is the very first metal subgenre, born on the same day as the core genre itself. Sabbath would go on to inspire pretty much every metal band to ever exist, but its within the doom sphere where they’re influence would be the most profound.
Throughout their native England, many Sabbath-worshippers would arise and embrace the darkest aspects of their sound and expand it into this new style. The biggest to arise were the iconic Witchfinder General and Pagan Altar. Both had lyrics focused on mysticism, witchcraft and ancient spells, complimenting their sound with a strong stage presence courtesy of their long robes, monk hoods that cast their faces into shadow and bountiful stage props like candles, skulls, crosses, grimoires and more. All of these have become staples of the presentation of many doom metal acts to this day.
Not long after, dark cries could be heard overseas as the US didn’t take long to through their own wizardly hats into the fray. Many of these Sabbathicals would grow pretty popular by doom metal standards and have since been recognized as some of the most important names in the genre’s evolution and their music continues to induct disciples to this very day.
The genre would truly come into its own in the mid-80s thanks to one mystical outfit from Sweden – macabre masters Candlemass! Playing a slow and thick riff-heavy sound like a casket getting lowered into the ground, with lots of church organs and other keyboards, all lead by the melodramatic wails of their early frontmen Johan Längquist and especially the eccentric curly haired doom priest Messiah Marcolin. I mean, their debut album is literally called Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (epic doom metal) and seems to exist as a blueprint for what doom metal needs to sound like. Candlemass are probably the second most influential band in the sphere after Sabbath and to this day, they are the gold standard for classic doom. Their debut record also christened the sub-movement of epic doom metal, focusing on the oldschool musical style and operatic tenor vocal delivery. To this day, they seem to have a bet with themselves to use the word “doom” at least once per album, which probably part of the reason why they remain such a powerhouse.
Since sadness and dread are such universal themes, it’s no shock that from this point onward, all kinds of doom acts started cropping up all over the world. Finally, probably for the first time in the history of popular music, the outsiders on the fringes of the world felt heard, understood and had an outlet for their negative emotions. It was worldwide group therapy and it has healed many black hearts since, including mine!
Understandably less mainstream than other metal subgenres, doom nonetheless has been a consistent presence in the greater sphere and the fans of it always come out of the woodworks when they hear their calling. While it can be said the genre enjoyed its greats growth spurt in the 80s and 90s, new disciples of darkness have been consistently joining the fray and building new Gothic fortresses for us all to enjoy ourselves and romanticize our melancholic solitude.
Like many stylistic movements, doom metal too has evolved a lot over the years and developed its own subgenres, so now is the time to dive into those. Easily the most significant of these is death/doom metal. As the name implies, it mixes the elements of death and doom into one dark, violent mix. With an especially slow tempo, gratuitous keyboards, severely distorted, low, super heavy riffs and of course the iconic death growl vocals. All of this crafts this incredibly dense sound, trudging forward with the tempo and destructive force of continental drift, an atmospheric monolith that feels too large to comprehend. Born out of the Peaceville icons from England like Anathema and My Dying Bride as well as the norther melancholy of Sweden’s Tiamat and Katatonia, death/doom was unlike anything that came before it and has put the whole metal world on notice.
By far the biggest contributor to the genre would be the immortal Paradise Lost from Halifax, England. They were among the first to mix the relentless brutality of death metal with the cold, melancholic atmosphere and depressive lyricism of doom into one deadly combination. Through continued evolution, peerless musicianship and the incredible voice of their frontman Nick Holmes, who can do anything from low baritone chants, to Hetfield-esque shouts to pure monstrous death growls, Paradise Lost have consistently remained one of the biggest names in the realms of doom and are an institution that all of metal respects.
Death/doom has since become a titan in its own right, so much so that it can be even considered the new default to an extent as most young doom metal bands go for its heavier more aggressive style and only select retro-revival bands tend more towards the old epic style. I mean, if you wanna be dark, you better go all in, so I definitely respect bands diving even deeper into these treacherous dark waters.
But we can go deeper still. From the most bleak and dire recesses of the death/doom sphere, there arose a titan even darker than it. The appropriately titled funeral doom! This style essentially took all the core tenets of doom and sough to push them to the extreme. While doom is slow, funeral doom barely crawls forward at a glacial pace, dragging forward like a coffin in deep mud. While doom repeats low tuned riffs, funeral doom stretches these riffs out into these enveloping walls of shadow taken down to subsonic levels. Keyboards are pretty ubiquitous and vocals are mostly death growls and are likewise extended and buried in the sound, to the point where they mostly serve as additional atmosphere and not as vehicles for lyrics. With its extremely drawn-out compositions, this style really does feel like a funeral procession. This isn’t a path for the faint of heart, but for those that can appreciate it, it’s unlike anything out there.
It’s not just graves and caskets around here though. This unique style seems to attract some of the most open minded individuals out there, birthing many projects festumed with magic, devoted to ancient forgotten tales, spoken in tongues or exploring devastating landscapes. It's a trance like state that can transport us to other realms like few other genres can.
The biggest name in the recent development of funeral doom are the unique Seattle duo Bell Witch. With no guitars, using only heavily modified bass to produce an incomparable sound, they have slowed their songs down to the limits of what can be played by a human. They have also looked at the many jokes about doom being “the same riff repeated for an hour” and said “well, what if we actually did that?” Thus, they have delivered their two latest albums as monolithic 80+ minute magical adventures each consisting of a single uninterrupted song. Truly, nothing compares to them, especially in a concert setting! At this funeral, you’ve never felt so alive!
But that’s not all, for we can get weirder still! A similar spinoff is the experimental movement known as drone doom. Like the name implies, it forgoes traditional songwriting in favour of impenetrable atmosphere and trance inducing repetition. This is mainly achieved through extremely thick and heavy guitar work and extremely long tracks that are often devoid of percussion or vocals. I’m gonna be honest, for most people, this style is gonna be the audio equivalent of watching paint dry. But for the right listeners, this is the exact sound they need to travel to a distant place and ascend to planes never thought possible!
While this style is pretty obscure for obvious reasons, the gold standard for it are the enigmatic guitar duo Sunn O))). Pronounced simply “Sun” and named after a particular amplifier brand, these two use their droning repetitive riffage to create the most enveloping and enthralling tracks within the genre and are famous for their unique live presence. Again, their self-dubbed “life metal” is a very acquired taste for sure, but the taste is O))) so sweet for the right people in the right mindset!
Moving on, of course over time many other hybrid genres have arisen. You can take pretty much any other metal subgenre and “doomify” it by slowing it down and making it more sad and atmospheric. A prime example is the lesser known black/doom movement, taking the tremolo-driven wall of sound and pained shrieks of black metal and bringing it down to a crawling pace and increasing the already enveloping aspect of the genre. It truly is the ultimate product of darkness when the two most macabre and evil children within the metal sphere decide to play together.
One of the most notable non-hybrid doom offshoots has to be stoner rock/stoner metal. I won’t go into detail here, I’ve already done a thorough deep dive into the roots and growth of that genre on the most appropriate of dates earlier this year, but for the sake of this blog, know that stoner takes after the basic tenets of doom like the slow, low tuned riffs, lengthy repetitive compositions and mystical lyricism and expands it into a groovy, bluesy style full of chill vibes and loyal riff worship. Stoner is easily the most fun and colourful doom offspring and it has since become its own global subculture.
But if those happier more jovial vibes aren’t for you, you should try stoner’s depressing brother, sludge metal. As the name implies, this sound feels like a writhing gooey mass, barely moving and capturing all that go anywhere near it, trapping them in its grasp. It’s very similar to stoner but while that one is wacky and whimsical, sludge is the bad trip you remember for the rest of your life. A worthy disciple of doom, sludge is understandably quite underground but it’s just the right medication for the right kind of person.
There’s one more style that we really must mention. If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed its name floating all around – gothic metal. Really, it’s more of a fusion genre as it takes its name and many characteristics (including the iconic fashion sense) from the existing gothic rock movement, which developed separately and independently from doom. But one way or another, doom and goth came to be as one, like two rivers flowing in parallel and ending in the same delta, and there is significant overlap as many bands pendulum between either style, making the distinction a bit blurry. In general though, gothic metal is still quite slow and very dark but is much more upbeat compared to doom, taking on more stylistic cues from classic heavy metal and hard rock, even punk sometimes. Riffs are potent and emotional, vocals are dramatic and catchy and keyboards are ubiquitous. Also, the legendary Paradise Lost, not content with just birthing death/doom, are one of the pioneers and biggest names in gothic metal too, contributing some of the most legendary songs the genre has ever seen. Now you see why their name is so synonymous with this entire movement!
To top it off, we must talk about one of the biggest titans that propelled both goth and doom into never before seen heights – the dark lords of Type O Negative. Formed in Brooklyn by the musical mastermind that is the enchanting Peter Steele, the bards of Vinland quickly took the world by storm through their depressive lyricism about failed romance, black humour and of course their unparalleled songwriting. Their debut record was a straight up doom affair that mixed in some thrash metal and punk elements from Peter’s earlier band Carnivore. Later, they transitioned into a more gothic style, getting more upbeat and melodic, but remaining equally as macabre and depressing, if not more so. With Steele's nigh vampiric presence combined with his ability to make the darkest topics imaginable catchy and instantly memorable, it’s no surprise why these lads became as successful as they did. It was a huge tragedy when Steele left us far too early. One can only imagine what other masterpieces awaited us.
So there you have it, a thorough exploration in the dark realms of doom metal. Now, some of you may be thinking, why would anyone listen to such dark and depressing music? Well, there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, darkness is an inescapable part of life. As the great Bob Ross said “If you have light on light, you have nothing. If you have dark on dark, you have nothing.” You need the darkness in order to appreciate the light. Secondly, negative emotions are something normal and a lot of people need to hear that. It’s OK to be angry, sad or upset, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Being able to hear music that shows understanding for these feelings is also just the thing many need to hear to feel some empathy. I can say for myself that in some of my darkest lowest moments, many of the songs in this blog helped me push through and find hope. Last and certainly not least, despite being so macabre a lot of them are just fun! I dare say that doom metal bands across the board have some of the best riffs and melodies out there. Plus the slower tempo and relative simplicity of their songs makes them ideal for beginner musicians to start their learning journey. The lyrics aren’t even all doom and gloom – there’s magic, fantasy, mythology, storytelling, epic grandeur and so much more. There’s a reason why I called doom metal misunderstood at the start of this blog, but I hope that now you have gained some appreciation for it and won’t hesitate to plunge into darker depths. If you do, I’ll see you there. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other and see you again soon!
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