Bringing “the heavy” in new and interesting ways is tough, but Texas duo Pinkish Black have a way of making it sound easy. Frighteningly dark and drenched in desperation, they evoke everything from the more obvious horror-tinged vibes to ephemeral, unsettling tension. They’re never really heavy in the sense of…
Despite the seemingly straightforward nature of drone, the style is a great deal more varied in practice. For drone metal in particular, the idea of drawing out doom to an even more low, slow and meditative state relies on each individual band’s interpretation of the genre they’re extrapolating from. As…
The Denver trio Palehorse/Palerider embody the core aesthetics of doomgaze, meticulously crafting sweeping soundscapes ripe with mysticism and guttural power. Layering Brandon Richier’s shimmering guitar work and ethereal vocals over the muscular low end provided by bassist David Atkinson and drummer Nate Marcy, they possess the ability to transport listeners…
Last year, we told you several times to listen to Skullcave, a doom metal band doing extremely interesting things in Australia. It was part of a larger, most excellent year for the continent but Skullcave was the band closest to doom as part of it. Their emphasis on emotive clean…
One of the fastest ways to a music critic’s heart is a seamless synthesis of styles. Anytime a group successfully blends adjacent or dissimilar genres, the results can push boundaries with a truly engaging, unique listen. Such is the case with Ache Pillars, the latest EP from one-person band Folian.…
Sigils delivers their debut, You Built the Altar, You Lit the Leaves, amidst a swirl of psychedelic trudge wrought from Tom Colello’s guitar playing and the often soaring vocals of Salvatore Rex. On the first track, “Samhain”, we are greeted with a lumbering riff that rarely deviates over the song’s…
It’s always fun to dive deep into Bandcamp or Spotify or whatever music streaming app you use. I personally love finding those diamonds in the rough, especially brand new stuff. However, you can’t really only enjoy that stuff unless you’ve got some context for it. It’s always awesome to hear…
It’s so interesting how we can find beauty in metallic ugliness. Metal is a genre that prides itself on being dirty and underground. Some people believe the point is to be inaccessible. We have to keep out those normies, after all. We can’t have them coming in here and trying…
Music is meant to move you. Its intended purpose is to make you feel and experience the sensation of emotion. Some music achieves this by providing matching music to a cathartic scene. Other music gets you there via the sheer sound created by a series of notes carefully chosen to…
Few subgenres in metal have as many abilities to express music like doom. How many different combinations of “doom ___” can you think of? How many different variations on the sound have there been? I can think of quite a few, and I know for a fact that the sound can be quite expansive. It takes creative musicians to do it, but doom seems to have that in spades. Chalk up another entry with Burning Vow and their self-titled debut.
