Doom gothic metal bands
Another defining characteristic is the consistent focus on slow tempos, and minor tonality with much use of dissonance (especially in the form of the tritone), employing the usage of repetitive rhythms with little regard to harmonic progression and musical structure. Along with the usual heavy metal compositional technique of guitars and bass playing the same riff in unison, this creates a loud and bass-heavy wall of sound.
Guitarists and bassists often down tune their instruments to very low notes and make use of large amounts of distortion, thus producing a very "thick" or "heavy" guitar tone, which is one of the defining characteristics of the genre.
The electric guitar, bass guitar, and drum kit are the most common instruments used to play doom metal (although keyboards are sometimes used), but its structures are rooted in the same scales as in blues.
During the first half of the 1980s, a number of bands such as Witchfinder General from England, American bands Pentagram, Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, Trouble, and Cirith Ungol, and Swedish band Candlemass defined doom metal as a distinct genre.Ĭharacteristics Instrumentation The genre is strongly influenced by the early work of Black Sabbath, who formed a prototype for doom metal. Both the music and the lyrics intend to evoke a sense of despair, dread, and impending doom.
#DOOM GOTHIC METAL BANDS PLUS#
Another dominant strain of '90s doom metal - pioneered by British bands like Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Anathema - fused Sabbath heaviness with the sounds and sensibilities of goth-metal, plus occasional touches of death metal the results were sorrowful, gloomy epics. Doom metal was one of the formative influences on the retro-obsessed stoner metal movement of the '90s, and it was not uncommon for bands to find favor in both camps. Trouble and Cathedral helped bring doom metal to a wider (though not mainstream) metal audience during the early '90s, and doom's monolithic darkness quickly made it appealing to a variety of tastes. The movement began to take shape in the mid-'80s, as underground bands like the SST label's Saint Vitus, the critically acclaimed Trouble, and Sweden's Candlemass attracted cult audiences for their out-of-fashion, Sabbath-dominated sounds.
Even more indebted to Sabbath than most metal, doom metal is extremely slow, sludgy, and creepy, feeling so heavy it can barely move its deliberate pace and murky guitars are meant to evoke (what else?) a sense of impending doom. Inspired largely by the lumbering dirges and stoned, paranoid darkness of Black Sabbath, doom metal is one of the very few heavy metal subgenres to prize feel and mood more than flashy technique (though the latter can certainly be present).