Features

Feature: Lost Doom Recovered

Being a doom metal fanatic my taste for the heavy and doomy but definitely metallic has significant elasticity. I enjoy doom metal that more discerning ears might not have the time nor inclination for. I’ll leave the lower end of my listening spectrum out of my writing but over the years the shear amount of doom I’ve leant an ear to is significant. Amidst the boulders, forests, and rubble of that mountain of doom there are some quality bands that seem to have gotten lost and left off the radar of most doom fans. These are not the very top shelf, the legends of the genre, but they are really good and considerably enjoyable. It is this article’s intent to get a few more doom fans to discover them.

Interviews

Up from the Depths: An Interview with Stygian Crown

Just two years ago Stygian Crown released their impressive demo and now they’ve released their debut album and they’re already being enlisted for international festivals! This relative success isn’t for nothing. Although it’s still early to tell, it’s pretty clear that Stygian Crown’s self-titled debut is something special and likely to be one of the best traditional heavy metal records of 2020 with its specific brand of crushing epic doom reminiscent of Solitude Aeturnus and Capilla Ardiente. We caught up with Rhett A. Davis for an interview that you can read below!

Classics Appreciation

Classics Appreciation: Saint Vitus – Saint Vitus (1984) Review

There aren’t a ton of doom metal bands more revered than Saint Vitus, and it is for good reason. Of Black Sabbath’s disciples in the 80’s, they are perhaps the most honest and soulful of the bunch, if not exactly a 1:1 copy of the original masters. Rather, what Vitus did is that they applied the atonality, loose song structure, and just pure griminess of American punk to the emerging doom metal format at a time in the 80’s when the early bands were forging their own styles and defining the subgenre on their own terms.

Features

Four Reasons California Metal Still Matters

True Traditional metal, while never as hugely popular as hair or thrash, has been a field in which California has yielded an embarrassing amount of riches. While often not appreciated enough back in the day (much like Cali’s doom pioneers Saint Vitus, the number of people claiming attendance at early shows for many of these bands has inflated far beyond what the actual attendance was) names like Cirith Ungol, Brocas Helm and The Lord Weird Slough Feg are now rightly hallowed and revered in the metal underground. There is still a lot of good stuff happening.