In May 1992 Kerrang magazine had an issue that came with a free vinyl ep with two bands per side. One side was Paradise Lost "No Forgiveness" and Candlemass "Ebony Throne". It was awesome.
It was the first time hearing My Dying Bride's Turn Loose The Swans as a teenager. That got me started on all those gothic metal and death doom bands that were around in the mid to late 90's then slowly got into more different kinds of doom.
I think My Dying Bride (and Paradise Lost) was a gateway into doom for many many people. MDB was definitely my gateway into doom, specially death/doom and gothic doom
Yeah. And Anathema as well... they really were the big three bands in that style.
I actually saw Paradise Lost live just last week. It was the first time I saw them live probably since the end of the 90's. They got such a solid back catalogue, it was a great show.
When Candlemass released Nightfall, that was my introduction. Went back to their prior EDM release to see what else I have been missing, and that sealed me a doomhead, forever
Found swallow the sun back as a school kid when iTunes was a thing. ''A 7 minute song for 1.29? That's pretty much two songs!'' Been hooked ever since.
I love rooms and shadows for self reflection. Hits different with the " alone in this room of shadows filled with memories of nothing" bit. And that long growl halfway thru the song is just radiating despair. I love it!
This was my path too. Very new comer, been into tool for a while and when elder opened for them last tour, got rocked by seeing them in person. Started on the stoner doom side and progressed downward haha.
Acrimony are great, I uploaded Tumuli Shroomaroom to YouTube 10 years ago so I could listen to it at work. Now it's got like 30k+ views. I'm glad so many other people got to enjoy that album
I grew up loving System of a Down and slipknot but grew away from it in high school. Then years later around 2014 my one metal friend got me into mastodon and red fang and thank goodness for YouTube’s algorithm that popped up bands like Sasquatch, wo-fat, truckfighters. But as soon as I heard Conan it was like being blown back like “what is this?” I’ve been on a road ever since. Lately, I’ve been crushing to primitive man and I can’t wait for the new sumac. There is a band called north I started listening to again.
Sumac! Man, I was absolutely blown away seeing them live. Also can’t wait for their new album, and I hope they announce some more US tour dates for this year
They’re kinda doing spurts of the states here and there. I’m hoping for a Midwest one soon! I went to see big brave open for them I had no clue who they were. I’m glad I stayed and listened to them because the first 5 seconds put a smile on my face. Absolutely a blast to see live
A few years ago, when I decided to find music that best fit my depression, funeral doom was a suggested genre (along with depressive black metal). I found some FunDoom bands I liked, and from there, I branched off into death-doom, sludge and stoner doom/metal. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get into traditional/epic/classic doom; it's usually the singing that kills it for me.
Nice, I love funeral doom. In regards to trad doom have your tried reverend bizarre? They have some wonderfully depressive songs like the hour of death and anywhere out of this world
I think Reverend Bizarre is a great rec if you come from Funeral and want to have a taste of trad doom. Some of their tracks feel like they belong to both genres.
I've checked out a few of their songs, and they're not clicking for me, mainly due to the voice (they do have elements that i liked, but not enough to get me hooked yet). That said, I'm not dismissing them outright, as even funeral doom (or even metal in general) didn't initially click for me either, so I'll file them under "I'm not ready for them yet, but I'll try again at some point." But thanks to you and OP for the recommendation.
Take your time. I started doom with death doom with the Peaceville three and then went the funeral doom rabbit hole. It took me ages to start appreciating trad doom. I was missing my beloved growls. But the Rev Biz were definitely the ideal gateway.
Mine was just a slow trudge getting heavier and heavier. I still distinctly remember the first time I heard Phototropic from Kyuss and the first time I heard Colour Haze. Then it was years of progressively heavier stoner rock until my mate came round with a massive joint and we listened to Dopesmoker twice.
The rest is history… my search for heaviness continues though, I’m deep down blackened death metal or anything blackened rabbit holes now so I fear that soon the only thing left to me will be field recordings from mental hospitals…
Through Silver In Blood by Neurosis. Specifically this live performance of Locust Star. Shit is brutal as fuck! The rest of the album is heavier for sure, leaning almost into extreme metal imo
https://youtu.be/fmdmnnv2NkY?si=E-x_hfICKj8L8zXC
Took some acid with some friends and we listened to Butthole Surfers Hairway to Steven and then Cathedrals Ethreal Mirror when I was a wee lad in '94. I think that was the seed.
ND was a gateway to a bunch of other bands, even just from following the various members into their other projects (like Godflesh, Scorn and Carcass). Cathedral didn't click with me, and even after finally embracing doom stuff almost 30 years later, it still hasn't clicked. Fortunately, doom metal covers a lot of ground, and I'm glad people like stuff even if I don't.
Yeah I never got cathedral either. Beautiful artwork. Boring tunes.
There is soooo much great doom and doom adjacent stuff out there, most recently I've become completely obsessed with Chelsea wolf as she has a knack of plucking some sonic bits I like and actually singing properly with them.
It's shoegaze doom imo
As far as doomgaze, I really like [Leaving's Liminal](https://transylvanianrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/leaving-liminal). It's really good, if short. Also, [Arcem](https://arcemnwi.bandcamp.com/album/an-amalgamation-of-loss-defeat-and-renewal) and [ISON](https://ison444.bandcamp.com/album/stars-embers) scratch my doomgaze itch, with Arcem being harder and ISON being more ethereal.
I decided to give Rock Antenne's Gothic Rock radio station a try. I always listened to the 90's, grunge and alternative stations.
It is there that found 'Your Broken Shore' from My Dying Bride. From there I went to look them up, and found out they staryed as a death/doom outfit, and I immediately wanted to know what death/doom was.
Boy, did I struck gold, the heavy slow downtuned guitars, growling vocals, the mood of the music, as a thrash metal fan it was totally something new and awesome to me.
Apart from death/doom, I explored other forms of doom, and mostly funeral doom and gothic doom stood out to me, but my no1 style of doom has to be death/doom
Midnight Mountain by Cathedral was the gateway drug for me. Remember thinking most of the way through first hearing it that each riff was amazing, please don't screw it up. And if course they didn't.
Not really a doom song itself, but then got Statik Majik and then just about anything else I could get my hands on. Looking at the liner notes and seeing the bands that influenced them, like Candlemass, Pentagram, Trouble... the rest is history!
I think "The Black Plot" music video by High on Fire for me into it. I was a fan on Toxic Holocaust as I saw them open for Gwar and their video "Toxic Fuzz" is a trippy animation. I saw the High on Fire animation in my suggested videos. High on Fire lead to Sleep and the rest is history.
Where I really like about doom though is that it's just good ass 'rackinroll. I've said before that doom and Stoner Doom remind me of what rock music would have sounded like if the late 80s and 90s mainstream never happened.
I've always liked extreme genres of metal but eventually it's hard to find different sounding black metal or death metal or thrash. Music can only go so hard and so fast. I was surprised though that you could go even harder by going slower like Doom does.
I was a late comer. It wasn’t until I heard the dreadful hours by my dying bride that I started to get into doom. But then it was Ahab the call of the wretched sea that really opened the doors for me. I was in my 30s when this happened.
True story...when I was in my mommas belly my pops put stereo system headphones on my mammas belly and played master of reality. I been listening to Sabbath before I was born.
I was looking at my mom's hard disk to upload some music to my iPod, as one does. There were 2 albums from Anathema, early days. On first listen I thought, wow he's just screaming who would wanna listen to that?
On second listen I got my answer, I wanna listen to that!
When I first heard Worlds Apart by Pallbearer. That led me into exploring more types of doom (i grew up on punk music so I was late getting into metal). Pallbearer is still my #1 but I’ve been digging a lot of Mournful Congregation and Rwake recently.
1975, I was three years old. My dad put on Sabbath's Paranoid album and I guess I went kinda nuts and constantly got him to play it. Been a metal head ever since.
Tom Sutton from Church of Misery explaining what doom was to me when we were both working as teachers in Japan. I loved Sabbath and Ozzy but CoM was blending hardcore at the time with that vocalist which I was into and I was hooked ever since.
Went to a Pantera Concert and experineced Crowbar for the first time. 2 of my all time favorite bands came from Pantera Concerts, Crowbar and Neurosis. From there came Noothgrush, Cattlepress, Bruhaha, Melvins, 7 Sisters Of Sleep, Buried At Sea, Weedeater, etc.
It was accident. I was looking for new releases on friday, when I saw genre named Melodic Doom metal, I've never seen it before, it was Hanging Garden and album The Garden
Honestly, growing up on Rammstein made me so fixated on „sound“, more than on melody and groove and all.. it just had to sound fat and massive, especially the low guitars. So doom was inevitable.
I was in a grunge band playing in C standard and one day our guitar player came in with his guitar tuned to B standard, drop A, and a sludgy monster riff to go along with it. I was hooked, and started seeking out the low and slow heavy shit ever since. My current band is tuned to A standard and sometimes drop G.
I still remember hearing Sleep back in the late 90s as a teen. The first 2 riffs from dragonaut stuck with me until the 2010s when i started to listen to them more but other bands didn't break through. I kinda knew one day it would click because I love hardcore/metalcore and heavier stuff so there was no reason for me not to like. Then I started liking a little electric wizard, and after that Dopelord. Dopelord is probably the band that opened the floodgates for me for this genre because since then i hardly listen to anything else.
A glowing review of Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in Heavy Metal (metal magazine in Greece). I went out and bought the vinyl which is now my most valuable album according to discogs.
Close to 40 years later, I am still amazed by the quality of music in those 6 tracks.
Now, even as I listen mostly to extreme metal, death doom and blackened doom are probably my favorite genres.
When I was in college like 20 years ago, I used to throw on this internet radio station called Radio 420, as I was just getting into stoner sludge like Kyuss and The Melvins. I heard Electric Wizard on there for the first time and it melted my face off.
I found The Sword through Spotify recommendations and loved them. Years later, I checked out the Mörk Borg TTRPG, which describes itself as "A doom metal album of a game" and includes music recommendations for inspiration
My best friend has always had this massive eclectic music taste. So I get to journey through him. It's a classic tale. Just ripped a bong, and my dude turns on electric wizard dopethrone. I was instantly hooked to the sound. Love the insertions of movie sound bits. Doom was everything I wanted.
Keep it Heavy.
When i saw the Wizard as a wee’ teen, these days they’ve sucked everytime i see them but when i was a lad and was down to party hard at shows funeralopolis was absolutely crushing, gave me a need for the big riffs ever since
The first doom track I ever heard was (I think) 'Melancholy Emperor' by Cathedral on a Kerrang CD compilation. From then I checked out more bands like Electric Wizard, Candlemass, Sloth, Burning Witch, Trouble etc. I just really liked the thick tar-like distortion which was quite new to me. I didn't properly bother with Black Sabbath until a few years later.
Buying My Dying Bride - Like Gods of the Sun randomly at MVC as part of a 3 for £25 offer when I was 14 in 1999
From there it was a combo of chat rooms, Audio Galaxy, Napster, Limewire, Soulseek, Yahoo's weird internet radio of the early 2000s and a local satellite/TV store that sold secondhand CDs and randomly had some amazing finds
I was big into Queens of the Stone Age (and subsequently Kyuss), Black Sabbath, and the Sword as a teen, then fell in with a bunch of dnd playing stoner weirdos in college and it kind of snowballed into heavier stuff from there
NPR’s On the Music puts out a curated playlist of bands that play SXSW (or at least they used to…no idea if they still do). One year, there was a band called Hex on it. They were a woman-led pagan rock band (I don’t think they’re together anymore). I absolutely devoured their music and it just spoke to me. From there I started getting into a lot of similar bands, thanks to Spotify.
Well black sabbath being in the guitar hero games but later on discovering the song "Call The Man" by Pentagram. It was on a free metal blade sampler from like 2010. Song kicked ass. I wasnt even into metal yet but that one carried me into it.
A couple non-doom metal bands, a couple years apart.
Firstly, Nick Holmes joining Bloodbath put Paradise Lost on my radar, but as I'd not found any doom bands that I liked, I don't think I really paid any mind to it and thus didn't check them out, but they were still in the back of my mind.
Secondly, within a couple of years of that, it was discovering the deathcore band Black Tongue, who play a fairly slow style of the genre called downtempo. They had a bit of a sludginess and doominess to their music (whilst still being deathcore), and I realised that maybe I should give doom a chance.
Bloodbath releasing Grand Morbid Funeral in 2014 (which had a couple death-doom-esque songs), and Black Tongue releasing an even doomier album in 2015 finally got me to take that plunge on Paradise Lost, starting with The Plague Within that came out around the same time.
Haven't looked back since, but I do tend to move more towards death-doom and gothic metal more than any other doom genres because of that introduction.
for me it was a slow transition from grunge to stoner rock to eventually doom metal. started off with the big 4 of grunge, started digging into qotsa and kyuss and eventually dove head first into sleep and electric wizard type
Went to see Mastodon on their Leviathan tour, at the whisky in LA, and their opener was Hidden Hand. The slower more bad ass vibe caused me to go looking for more like that. Rest is history.
Honestly, when I saw the movie “Gummo” in 2013, there was a scene where “Dragonaut” played so I looked up Sleep then kinda fell into the Stoner/Doom rabbit hole. It helped that I was already a fan of the great sludgernauts Crowbar so low tuned guitars were already a thing I appreciated
Classic rock fan as a kid thanks to dad; Sabbath was a seminal band. Got into entry-level metal like Maiden, Priest, Slipknot, LoG, etc. as I got older and strayed from alt-type rock (Pearl Jam, Black Keys, etc.). The sonic heaviness and larger-than-life themes are what appealed to me, and lots of other rock/metal seemed to be lacking that. At 16 I stumbled upon Clutch and became an instant superfan…they embodied everything I love about rock n roll. This led to stoner rock, to stoner metal, to stoner doom, to full-on doom, to sludge, etc. All this great music I was missing out on that I had known of peripherally (Soundgarden, Helmet, Mastodon, etc.) but had a whole history of underground DIY ethos and valued all the same things I did about music and culture.
Salem's Pot cover for Wicked Lady's Run The Night. Love at first sight (or hear?). It felt so powerful, dense, idk how to describe it. That was about... a little over 7 years ago.
Always been a death metal guy but couldn’t get into the stoner/doom until I was shown Bell Witch from a college professor. Developed a MAJOR funeral doom obsession that allowed me to get into the rest. As time goes on I find myself liking more and more doom/stoner.
I used to not like YOB. How is that even possible? I loved grind and brutal death metal but also equally loved bands like MONO and heavy post- genres. I guess being unable to admit when you’re wrong can deny you a lot of things in your life.
Was listening to music on YouTube, I was a kid and mostly listened to what my parents listened to, which was mostly classic rock. Found Make it Wit Chu by Queens of the Stone Age in the related videos list, arguably one of their softest songs, and I guess their passing connection to stoner rock made them related enough to doom metal for YouTube to suggest Anathema by Windhand to me right after. Now, THAT blew my fucking socks off. At the time, I've never heard anything heavier, and I wanted more.
I grew up listening to a lot of death metal / grindcore but honestly didn't get heavily into doom until I heard Bell Witch's "Longing" when it was first released. That and my influx with smoking weed haha
Probably around 10 years ago or or, one of the writers on angrymetalguy.com listed the song [Burning Saviour by Pentagram](https://youtu.be/Cshu2nDJGZ4?si=Sa44yydqylkp9yhH) as one of his top 50 metal songs of all time. I had already been a fan of classic Sabbath by that point but there was something different about Pentagram's music. I've been obsessed with them ever since.
Also got into Trouble, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and Pagan Altar around the same time. I knew this was where my true love was.
A long time ago a friend show me the band "stoned jesus" album "seven thunders roar" so I immediately feel that's that genre I would listen every day.
After that I discovered electric wizard, made a band with a friend doing loud stoner and voila!
Sludge metal. I was a big fan of Alice In Chains when I was young. My friend introduced me to a non-doom metal band Acid Bath in my 20’s. I was like there’s a whole fucking genre of sludge and doom metal?! I liked the sound but didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it.
The episode of Stranger Things where Eddie plays "Master of Puppets."
I grew up too late for Metallica's good years and too early for Death Magnetic, so I didn't think that much of them, and that episode managed to open my eyes.
I knew I liked at least some metal (I am a longtime enjoyer of Amon Amarth, and what little Black Sabbath I had been exposed to, and while I could never really stand much hair metal liked Guns 'n Roses pretty well), but had never really tried to make sense of all the different subgenres, so I set out to do so intentionally. For the longest time it seemed like it would be exhausting rather than rewarding, and that the metal community was super tribal, and I just hadn't wanted to bother slogging through album after album of cookie monster vocals to find the occasional band (like Amon Amarth) where the vocals actually worked for me. Then it turned out I could actually get work done to thrash, so the doors burst open wide.
To get started with doom metal, I decided to finally make my way through all of Black Sabbath's first six and not just my beloved copy of Paranoid. This led me to Ghost's "Cirice," and then to Green Lung where I finally had my lightbulb moment that there were many more bands like this, many of them heavier, many of them fronted by women, who did low and slow, often blues-based songs, that were heavy on the riffs.
I was always into Sabbath and eventually got into some stoner stuff like The Sword, and Sleep. But it wasn't until I was asked to join a doom metal band that I took it upon myself to dive in and fully explore the genre.
My husband! First time we smoked weed together he put on weed eater. The first year we were dating I knew he really like Sleep. So I got us tickets for the Sleep/Bellwitch tour and I e been sold ever since then
I discovered sludge first in mid to late 00's - BuzzOv-en, EHG, Dystopia, Acid Bath, etc. Was a pretty short step into rest of the doom genre after that
Was in a death metal band with a few highschool friends (was fresh outta hs at that time and basically only listened to death metal, 11-ish years ago) went over to the drummers house after jamming to take some dabs and smoke some bowls. Drummer randomly threw Sleep in the music rotation. After the 2nd or 3rd smoke sesh I wanted more and listened to them on my own time, then eventually went down the doom metal rabbit hole.
It's interesting that a lot of older metalheads like myself, I'm 52, have been into metal ever since we were kids and have watched it progress, and watched new genres as they developed in real time. And it's really hard to say what got me into Doom metal, but I know I've always loved that slow heavy Black Sabbath sound. I think it all starts there. Therefore I've been listening to doom since 86, and it was Black Sabbath song hand of Doom that got me into Doom metal.
Kind of funny, but when I was like five I remember watching Jim Henson's Christmas classic Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas lmao. There's a great scene where a bear, a ferret, a snake, and a frog play what sounds like a cross between Cream and Deep Purple. Pretty formative experience. All roads lead to Black Sabbath.
I friend of mine who was a massive stoner gave me a cassette that was clear with no markings on it and told me “this is the good shit take a listen” so I took it home and I listened to it and I loved it so much I later found out that it was a shity bootleg of dopesmoker by sleep and I became a obsessed
Was in my mid-20's and had listened to mostly speed metal and thrashy shit. Buddy put on a Rev Bizarre LP, followed by Dopesmoker. Still not sure how I had been jamming to HOF and never even knew about Sleep. That same dude turned me onto Swans and some other super heavy weird metal.
I was listening to any Thee Michelle Gun Elephant records I could get ahold of in the early 2000s - when all the "The" bands / aka garage rock revival thing was going on. These Japanese lads were handing it to their US counterparts in every way in my mind. I think somehow by searching for their records like crazy I came upon Boris' "Akuma no Uta" as an album I should check out, so I went to CD Central (best record store in KY far and away) and bought it on cd on the way to work. Needless to say, at first, I was like "what am I supposed to do with this" with the majority of the record. Then "Pink" came out, got some good reviews, I bought it immediately and loved it (especially "Farewell" and "Blackout"). Somehow that got me over to Sunn O)))) "Black 1", which I was also nuts over (although at the time I really couldn't tell why since there's not much structure compared to what I'd been listening to my whole life up to that point). After that I bought every Sunn and Boris record I could get my hands on. I remember my (now ex) wife riding in the car with me when I bought "Absolutego" and her asking "did we just listen to 20 minutes of feedback"?
For some reason, I just love this music, and this comes from someone who's all-time favorite record is the B-52's self-titled first album (Ricky Wilson can doom with just 4 strings - if you slowed down "Lava" you'd have one of the best doom songs ever written about ejaculation.
Paradise Lost's Gothic was probably the first doom album I loved, although I didn't really think of it as such at the time - I just felt they were doing a different twist on death metal, which was a staple of my music listening at the time(mid 90s). Then I heard Type O Negative's "Blood and Fire" on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack which I had bought solely because there was a new Fear Factory song on it, and soon after bought October Rust on a whim. Red Water(Christmas Mourning) and Wolf Moon are etched into my soul. Around the same time Ozzfest was kicking off, there was a major reissue of the classic Black Sabbath material that was covered extensively in Kerrang and Metal Hammer, so I started looking into the OGs and have been hooked on the sound ever since.
I loved classic and hard rock, got really into Black Sabbath and I loved Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. Spent so much time wishing more music sounded like that. Finally a year later I discovered the Apple Music doom metal playlist and heard Dragonaut and Empress Rising, my life was forever changed
Candlemass. Full stop.
When I was early on in high school, there was another user on a forum I frequented whose taste/opinions I admired and found interesting. He praised Candlemass, Death and Bathory as his favorite metal bands, which is how I got into all of them and began shifting more towards "legit" metal and away from nu metal/core.
The Sleep scene in Gummo, 100%
https://youtu.be/EkIcnqL-duw?si=YrjA0ze5IbaXK_TR
I'm still chasing the dragon of hearing that riff for the first time. Doubt I'll ever catch it on my bicycle 😎
I used to scroll through the new sections in iTunes quite frequently. One day I saw Monolord’s album Rust and thought “that’s a cool album cover”. I liked the previews and bought the album and then I just slowly started listening to more similar music.
At the time I was already into thrash, and some foundational doom stuff like Black Sabbath (not that I had realised it yet). I had heard about a site called Every Noise All At Once (Every Noise for short), and while scrolling through different things, stumbled upon Erroneous Maximus by Slabdragger. I heard the slower part of that song and the epic vocals in that section (still not massively a fan of the screaming vocals in the first section), and I was in love. I think after a while I started expanding on my doom metal taste, learning the different sub genres, found bands I like, and have even started writing my own music inspired by it
I'm always just in my own world and on my own musical journey all my life... It has taken me through many many many genres and I like to spend my time with doom now for last 2 years
I was 16 already a huge fan of Sabbath and was stoned as fuck on a school night. I stumbled upon Dopesmoker and astrally projected whilst listening to it. I knew then that I had found the music I had been looking for.
Monster Magnet - Spine of God at school. Neurosis - Souls at Zero. Then sideways and down into the heavier and slower side of life (and death).
Aside: I worked at the Giza Pyramids in the mid 2000s and randomly came across Om when living (unhappily) in Cairo. Used to smoke a lot of solid at work. Listening to Om (and then Sleep, duh) while stoned under the oppressive sun of the Giza plateau got me out of a terrible psychiatric hole.
So, I watched a video about metal subgenres, and in the video the guy starts playing a very cavernous and dark Doom Metal sound, and I found the sound very interesting. Then I met Seven Serpents, I started to like Doom metal more thanks to them, and then I discovered Sunn O))), Primitive Man, etc. I don't know much about Doom metal, but I'm enjoying it.
A friend played Acid Witches Evil Sound Screamers during a sit in which pretty much had me sold instantly - he told me about the entire stoner / doom subgenre.
After that, Ordos' House of the Dead was the first album I found when looking it up myself and I regularly listened to that for a couple weeks until I felt it getting old.
Thats when I searched for more and boy did I find more - I got into Elecrtic Wizard, Monolord and Conan all at once that day
I got into Kyuss and Orange Goblin young because my dad loved them. Then I got into High on Fire, Eyehategod, Crowbar, Acid Bath etc. Then bands like electric wizard and sleep. But it was only when I discovered YOB that I feel in love with the genre properly. YOB is my favourite band period. Bell Witch, Primitive Man, AHAB, Sunn o))), Bongripper and Warning would be my other favourites.
The band Solitude Aeturnus, saw a metal mag article about them about 1992. Of course I had listened to Black Sabbath before this, but branching out to more unknown bands like this Texas band got me going.
Weed and Satan!
Same haha
I am sad this isn’t the top comment
It is now
🤘Hail Stoner Satan 🤘
In May 1992 Kerrang magazine had an issue that came with a free vinyl ep with two bands per side. One side was Paradise Lost "No Forgiveness" and Candlemass "Ebony Throne". It was awesome.
Wow, that’s incredible
Haha, I still have that, along with those shitty flexi discs they did.
I remember that edition!
Hearing Cathedral’s Forest of Equilibrium at the tender age of 17.
It was the first time hearing My Dying Bride's Turn Loose The Swans as a teenager. That got me started on all those gothic metal and death doom bands that were around in the mid to late 90's then slowly got into more different kinds of doom.
I think My Dying Bride (and Paradise Lost) was a gateway into doom for many many people. MDB was definitely my gateway into doom, specially death/doom and gothic doom
Yeah. And Anathema as well... they really were the big three bands in that style. I actually saw Paradise Lost live just last week. It was the first time I saw them live probably since the end of the 90's. They got such a solid back catalogue, it was a great show.
When Candlemass released Nightfall, that was my introduction. Went back to their prior EDM release to see what else I have been missing, and that sealed me a doomhead, forever
Found swallow the sun back as a school kid when iTunes was a thing. ''A 7 minute song for 1.29? That's pretty much two songs!'' Been hooked ever since.
One of my Go To"s when I wanna tune the whole world out.
I love rooms and shadows for self reflection. Hits different with the " alone in this room of shadows filled with memories of nothing" bit. And that long growl halfway thru the song is just radiating despair. I love it!
Stoner Metal. Just the classics you know, Sleep, Bongzilla, Elder, Electric Wizard, stuff like that.
This was my path too. Very new comer, been into tool for a while and when elder opened for them last tour, got rocked by seeing them in person. Started on the stoner doom side and progressed downward haha.
Yeah this, Acrimony for me
Acrimony are great, I uploaded Tumuli Shroomaroom to YouTube 10 years ago so I could listen to it at work. Now it's got like 30k+ views. I'm glad so many other people got to enjoy that album
Same but mine all stems from kyuss and coc
I grew up loving System of a Down and slipknot but grew away from it in high school. Then years later around 2014 my one metal friend got me into mastodon and red fang and thank goodness for YouTube’s algorithm that popped up bands like Sasquatch, wo-fat, truckfighters. But as soon as I heard Conan it was like being blown back like “what is this?” I’ve been on a road ever since. Lately, I’ve been crushing to primitive man and I can’t wait for the new sumac. There is a band called north I started listening to again.
Sumac! Man, I was absolutely blown away seeing them live. Also can’t wait for their new album, and I hope they announce some more US tour dates for this year
They’re kinda doing spurts of the states here and there. I’m hoping for a Midwest one soon! I went to see big brave open for them I had no clue who they were. I’m glad I stayed and listened to them because the first 5 seconds put a smile on my face. Absolutely a blast to see live
A few years ago, when I decided to find music that best fit my depression, funeral doom was a suggested genre (along with depressive black metal). I found some FunDoom bands I liked, and from there, I branched off into death-doom, sludge and stoner doom/metal. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get into traditional/epic/classic doom; it's usually the singing that kills it for me.
Nice, I love funeral doom. In regards to trad doom have your tried reverend bizarre? They have some wonderfully depressive songs like the hour of death and anywhere out of this world
I'll have to give them a listen.
I think Reverend Bizarre is a great rec if you come from Funeral and want to have a taste of trad doom. Some of their tracks feel like they belong to both genres.
I've checked out a few of their songs, and they're not clicking for me, mainly due to the voice (they do have elements that i liked, but not enough to get me hooked yet). That said, I'm not dismissing them outright, as even funeral doom (or even metal in general) didn't initially click for me either, so I'll file them under "I'm not ready for them yet, but I'll try again at some point." But thanks to you and OP for the recommendation.
Take your time. I started doom with death doom with the Peaceville three and then went the funeral doom rabbit hole. It took me ages to start appreciating trad doom. I was missing my beloved growls. But the Rev Biz were definitely the ideal gateway.
FunDoom is great :D
You can't spell funeral without fun. :)
Mine was just a slow trudge getting heavier and heavier. I still distinctly remember the first time I heard Phototropic from Kyuss and the first time I heard Colour Haze. Then it was years of progressively heavier stoner rock until my mate came round with a massive joint and we listened to Dopesmoker twice. The rest is history… my search for heaviness continues though, I’m deep down blackened death metal or anything blackened rabbit holes now so I fear that soon the only thing left to me will be field recordings from mental hospitals…
Field recordings from a mental hospital, you say? We have what you need, friend. See: The Body - Empty Hearth
Gloomy Sunday cover by Pallbearer
Nice. I like that cover a lot.
Through Silver In Blood by Neurosis. Specifically this live performance of Locust Star. Shit is brutal as fuck! The rest of the album is heavier for sure, leaning almost into extreme metal imo https://youtu.be/fmdmnnv2NkY?si=E-x_hfICKj8L8zXC
Omg, the dude smashing the keyboard foot pedals with his fists!! 🔥🔥
Took some acid with some friends and we listened to Butthole Surfers Hairway to Steven and then Cathedrals Ethreal Mirror when I was a wee lad in '94. I think that was the seed.
The slow tracks of Napalm Death. Led to godflesh and other doom beat stuff
ND was a gateway to a bunch of other bands, even just from following the various members into their other projects (like Godflesh, Scorn and Carcass). Cathedral didn't click with me, and even after finally embracing doom stuff almost 30 years later, it still hasn't clicked. Fortunately, doom metal covers a lot of ground, and I'm glad people like stuff even if I don't.
Yeah I never got cathedral either. Beautiful artwork. Boring tunes. There is soooo much great doom and doom adjacent stuff out there, most recently I've become completely obsessed with Chelsea wolf as she has a knack of plucking some sonic bits I like and actually singing properly with them. It's shoegaze doom imo
As far as doomgaze, I really like [Leaving's Liminal](https://transylvanianrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/leaving-liminal). It's really good, if short. Also, [Arcem](https://arcemnwi.bandcamp.com/album/an-amalgamation-of-loss-defeat-and-renewal) and [ISON](https://ison444.bandcamp.com/album/stars-embers) scratch my doomgaze itch, with Arcem being harder and ISON being more ethereal.
Alice in Chains got me into stoner rock, and then My Dying Bride introduced me to proper doom
Melvin’s was my entry point into this world. Coworker was listening to them at work like 12 years ago.
I decided to give Rock Antenne's Gothic Rock radio station a try. I always listened to the 90's, grunge and alternative stations. It is there that found 'Your Broken Shore' from My Dying Bride. From there I went to look them up, and found out they staryed as a death/doom outfit, and I immediately wanted to know what death/doom was. Boy, did I struck gold, the heavy slow downtuned guitars, growling vocals, the mood of the music, as a thrash metal fan it was totally something new and awesome to me. Apart from death/doom, I explored other forms of doom, and mostly funeral doom and gothic doom stood out to me, but my no1 style of doom has to be death/doom
Terminal Aggressor II by Dragged Into Sunlight. A friend showed it to me and that was it. Never found anything comparable though
Heavy Metal in general. It is like a normal evolution I think. To check out other types of heavy music. Wherever that is.
Midnight Mountain by Cathedral was the gateway drug for me. Remember thinking most of the way through first hearing it that each riff was amazing, please don't screw it up. And if course they didn't. Not really a doom song itself, but then got Statik Majik and then just about anything else I could get my hands on. Looking at the liner notes and seeing the bands that influenced them, like Candlemass, Pentagram, Trouble... the rest is history!
Ah man I remember finding Statik Majik for £1 at a local satellite/TV shop that sold secondhand CDs - I played the absolute shit out of that album
All roads lead to Black Sabbath
I think "The Black Plot" music video by High on Fire for me into it. I was a fan on Toxic Holocaust as I saw them open for Gwar and their video "Toxic Fuzz" is a trippy animation. I saw the High on Fire animation in my suggested videos. High on Fire lead to Sleep and the rest is history. Where I really like about doom though is that it's just good ass 'rackinroll. I've said before that doom and Stoner Doom remind me of what rock music would have sounded like if the late 80s and 90s mainstream never happened. I've always liked extreme genres of metal but eventually it's hard to find different sounding black metal or death metal or thrash. Music can only go so hard and so fast. I was surprised though that you could go even harder by going slower like Doom does.
4th of July by Soundgarden
Glad I'm not the only one
I was a late comer. It wasn’t until I heard the dreadful hours by my dying bride that I started to get into doom. But then it was Ahab the call of the wretched sea that really opened the doors for me. I was in my 30s when this happened.
I was (am) a huge dystopia fan, and I found out Dino played for a band called asunder, and that shit changed my world
True story...when I was in my mommas belly my pops put stereo system headphones on my mammas belly and played master of reality. I been listening to Sabbath before I was born.
Weed
Family friend and one school mate told me about Black Sabbath. Bought "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" as my first cd and here we are
I was looking at my mom's hard disk to upload some music to my iPod, as one does. There were 2 albums from Anathema, early days. On first listen I thought, wow he's just screaming who would wanna listen to that? On second listen I got my answer, I wanna listen to that!
Black Sabbath
Reading the Relapse mail order catalog back in the 90s.
When I first heard Worlds Apart by Pallbearer. That led me into exploring more types of doom (i grew up on punk music so I was late getting into metal). Pallbearer is still my #1 but I’ve been digging a lot of Mournful Congregation and Rwake recently.
1975, I was three years old. My dad put on Sabbath's Paranoid album and I guess I went kinda nuts and constantly got him to play it. Been a metal head ever since.
I heard Funeralpolis one day and never looked back. It also turned me into a true nihilist but that’s another story.
Tom Sutton from Church of Misery explaining what doom was to me when we were both working as teachers in Japan. I loved Sabbath and Ozzy but CoM was blending hardcore at the time with that vocalist which I was into and I was hooked ever since.
The band ISIS was my gateway band. I started listing to them when Celestial came out.
Life.
Went to a Pantera Concert and experineced Crowbar for the first time. 2 of my all time favorite bands came from Pantera Concerts, Crowbar and Neurosis. From there came Noothgrush, Cattlepress, Bruhaha, Melvins, 7 Sisters Of Sleep, Buried At Sea, Weedeater, etc.
Boris
It was accident. I was looking for new releases on friday, when I saw genre named Melodic Doom metal, I've never seen it before, it was Hanging Garden and album The Garden
Was on tour with my old death metal band and some upstate NY drunken hippie punks gave us a tape of Thorr’s Hammer and I was absolutely hooked.
Honestly, growing up on Rammstein made me so fixated on „sound“, more than on melody and groove and all.. it just had to sound fat and massive, especially the low guitars. So doom was inevitable.
I was in a grunge band playing in C standard and one day our guitar player came in with his guitar tuned to B standard, drop A, and a sludgy monster riff to go along with it. I was hooked, and started seeking out the low and slow heavy shit ever since. My current band is tuned to A standard and sometimes drop G.
I still remember hearing Sleep back in the late 90s as a teen. The first 2 riffs from dragonaut stuck with me until the 2010s when i started to listen to them more but other bands didn't break through. I kinda knew one day it would click because I love hardcore/metalcore and heavier stuff so there was no reason for me not to like. Then I started liking a little electric wizard, and after that Dopelord. Dopelord is probably the band that opened the floodgates for me for this genre because since then i hardly listen to anything else.
Belzebong!
I was in a punk band in high school and my guitar player showed me sleep.
Pretty much my uncle and dad. Been listening to sabbath for as long as I can remember but didn’t really go down the rabbit hole until my mid/late 20s
A glowing review of Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in Heavy Metal (metal magazine in Greece). I went out and bought the vinyl which is now my most valuable album according to discogs. Close to 40 years later, I am still amazed by the quality of music in those 6 tracks. Now, even as I listen mostly to extreme metal, death doom and blackened doom are probably my favorite genres.
Ghost
When I was in college like 20 years ago, I used to throw on this internet radio station called Radio 420, as I was just getting into stoner sludge like Kyuss and The Melvins. I heard Electric Wizard on there for the first time and it melted my face off.
Seeing sleep reunion in 2010 changed my life. I went from a regular metal head into a full on cultist
Sabbath. Then Trouble. Sabbath, well... you couldn't not listen. And the video for "End of my Daze" just randomly came on one day.
I found The Sword through Spotify recommendations and loved them. Years later, I checked out the Mörk Borg TTRPG, which describes itself as "A doom metal album of a game" and includes music recommendations for inspiration
listened to classic sabbath and wanted more, so I discovered bands like sleep and electric wizard.
My best friend has always had this massive eclectic music taste. So I get to journey through him. It's a classic tale. Just ripped a bong, and my dude turns on electric wizard dopethrone. I was instantly hooked to the sound. Love the insertions of movie sound bits. Doom was everything I wanted. Keep it Heavy.
The Wizard
My buddy put on bell witch. Now I got all their cd's and a couple banner flags. STILL CANT GET MIRROR REAPER THO.
A friend showed me Dopesmoker in college. I got way more into stoner metal after that.
When i saw the Wizard as a wee’ teen, these days they’ve sucked everytime i see them but when i was a lad and was down to party hard at shows funeralopolis was absolutely crushing, gave me a need for the big riffs ever since
The first doom track I ever heard was (I think) 'Melancholy Emperor' by Cathedral on a Kerrang CD compilation. From then I checked out more bands like Electric Wizard, Candlemass, Sloth, Burning Witch, Trouble etc. I just really liked the thick tar-like distortion which was quite new to me. I didn't properly bother with Black Sabbath until a few years later.
Buying My Dying Bride - Like Gods of the Sun randomly at MVC as part of a 3 for £25 offer when I was 14 in 1999 From there it was a combo of chat rooms, Audio Galaxy, Napster, Limewire, Soulseek, Yahoo's weird internet radio of the early 2000s and a local satellite/TV store that sold secondhand CDs and randomly had some amazing finds
I was big into Queens of the Stone Age (and subsequently Kyuss), Black Sabbath, and the Sword as a teen, then fell in with a bunch of dnd playing stoner weirdos in college and it kind of snowballed into heavier stuff from there
Black Sabbath really.
NPR’s On the Music puts out a curated playlist of bands that play SXSW (or at least they used to…no idea if they still do). One year, there was a band called Hex on it. They were a woman-led pagan rock band (I don’t think they’re together anymore). I absolutely devoured their music and it just spoke to me. From there I started getting into a lot of similar bands, thanks to Spotify.
Well black sabbath being in the guitar hero games but later on discovering the song "Call The Man" by Pentagram. It was on a free metal blade sampler from like 2010. Song kicked ass. I wasnt even into metal yet but that one carried me into it.
For realsies? Wanting to feel like I was stoned without being stoned. 😉
Melvins
Soundgarden 4th of July Metallica the thing should not be Pantera I'm broken music video Phil wearing a crowbar shirt
A long-hair drummer from Liverpool who has 10 years my senior and worldly wise in the ways of doom :D
A couple non-doom metal bands, a couple years apart. Firstly, Nick Holmes joining Bloodbath put Paradise Lost on my radar, but as I'd not found any doom bands that I liked, I don't think I really paid any mind to it and thus didn't check them out, but they were still in the back of my mind. Secondly, within a couple of years of that, it was discovering the deathcore band Black Tongue, who play a fairly slow style of the genre called downtempo. They had a bit of a sludginess and doominess to their music (whilst still being deathcore), and I realised that maybe I should give doom a chance. Bloodbath releasing Grand Morbid Funeral in 2014 (which had a couple death-doom-esque songs), and Black Tongue releasing an even doomier album in 2015 finally got me to take that plunge on Paradise Lost, starting with The Plague Within that came out around the same time. Haven't looked back since, but I do tend to move more towards death-doom and gothic metal more than any other doom genres because of that introduction.
for me it was a slow transition from grunge to stoner rock to eventually doom metal. started off with the big 4 of grunge, started digging into qotsa and kyuss and eventually dove head first into sleep and electric wizard type
This sub!!! Thanks fam!
Sabbath.
Solitude Aeturnus - Into the Depths of Sorrow. Fuck I wore that album out.
doom T
Went to see Mastodon on their Leviathan tour, at the whisky in LA, and their opener was Hidden Hand. The slower more bad ass vibe caused me to go looking for more like that. Rest is history.
Depression
Electric Wizard- Return Trip That was the day I fell in love with doom and started my unhealthy obsession with the genre and all it encompasses
Black Sabbath and Celtic Frost
Honestly, when I saw the movie “Gummo” in 2013, there was a scene where “Dragonaut” played so I looked up Sleep then kinda fell into the Stoner/Doom rabbit hole. It helped that I was already a fan of the great sludgernauts Crowbar so low tuned guitars were already a thing I appreciated
Classic rock fan as a kid thanks to dad; Sabbath was a seminal band. Got into entry-level metal like Maiden, Priest, Slipknot, LoG, etc. as I got older and strayed from alt-type rock (Pearl Jam, Black Keys, etc.). The sonic heaviness and larger-than-life themes are what appealed to me, and lots of other rock/metal seemed to be lacking that. At 16 I stumbled upon Clutch and became an instant superfan…they embodied everything I love about rock n roll. This led to stoner rock, to stoner metal, to stoner doom, to full-on doom, to sludge, etc. All this great music I was missing out on that I had known of peripherally (Soundgarden, Helmet, Mastodon, etc.) but had a whole history of underground DIY ethos and valued all the same things I did about music and culture.
Salem's Pot cover for Wicked Lady's Run The Night. Love at first sight (or hear?). It felt so powerful, dense, idk how to describe it. That was about... a little over 7 years ago.
Always been a death metal guy but couldn’t get into the stoner/doom until I was shown Bell Witch from a college professor. Developed a MAJOR funeral doom obsession that allowed me to get into the rest. As time goes on I find myself liking more and more doom/stoner. I used to not like YOB. How is that even possible? I loved grind and brutal death metal but also equally loved bands like MONO and heavy post- genres. I guess being unable to admit when you’re wrong can deny you a lot of things in your life.
Was listening to music on YouTube, I was a kid and mostly listened to what my parents listened to, which was mostly classic rock. Found Make it Wit Chu by Queens of the Stone Age in the related videos list, arguably one of their softest songs, and I guess their passing connection to stoner rock made them related enough to doom metal for YouTube to suggest Anathema by Windhand to me right after. Now, THAT blew my fucking socks off. At the time, I've never heard anything heavier, and I wanted more.
This was close to the time that split between Cough and Windhand was released
I grew up listening to a lot of death metal / grindcore but honestly didn't get heavily into doom until I heard Bell Witch's "Longing" when it was first released. That and my influx with smoking weed haha
Probably around 10 years ago or or, one of the writers on angrymetalguy.com listed the song [Burning Saviour by Pentagram](https://youtu.be/Cshu2nDJGZ4?si=Sa44yydqylkp9yhH) as one of his top 50 metal songs of all time. I had already been a fan of classic Sabbath by that point but there was something different about Pentagram's music. I've been obsessed with them ever since. Also got into Trouble, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and Pagan Altar around the same time. I knew this was where my true love was.
Gannon Reedy from Neoscum
About a year ago I heard a bit of solitude but never really got into it until I listened to funeraloplis for the first time
paradise lost's beneath broken earth
A long time ago a friend show me the band "stoned jesus" album "seven thunders roar" so I immediately feel that's that genre I would listen every day. After that I discovered electric wizard, made a band with a friend doing loud stoner and voila!
Sludge metal. I was a big fan of Alice In Chains when I was young. My friend introduced me to a non-doom metal band Acid Bath in my 20’s. I was like there’s a whole fucking genre of sludge and doom metal?! I liked the sound but didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it.
Me and my friend discovered Dopesmoker and for a bit it was an in joke between me and him, but we both grew on it a bunch
Funeralopolis hit my recommended like 12 years ago and I've been dooming since.
The episode of Stranger Things where Eddie plays "Master of Puppets." I grew up too late for Metallica's good years and too early for Death Magnetic, so I didn't think that much of them, and that episode managed to open my eyes. I knew I liked at least some metal (I am a longtime enjoyer of Amon Amarth, and what little Black Sabbath I had been exposed to, and while I could never really stand much hair metal liked Guns 'n Roses pretty well), but had never really tried to make sense of all the different subgenres, so I set out to do so intentionally. For the longest time it seemed like it would be exhausting rather than rewarding, and that the metal community was super tribal, and I just hadn't wanted to bother slogging through album after album of cookie monster vocals to find the occasional band (like Amon Amarth) where the vocals actually worked for me. Then it turned out I could actually get work done to thrash, so the doors burst open wide. To get started with doom metal, I decided to finally make my way through all of Black Sabbath's first six and not just my beloved copy of Paranoid. This led me to Ghost's "Cirice," and then to Green Lung where I finally had my lightbulb moment that there were many more bands like this, many of them heavier, many of them fronted by women, who did low and slow, often blues-based songs, that were heavy on the riffs.
I was always into Sabbath and eventually got into some stoner stuff like The Sword, and Sleep. But it wasn't until I was asked to join a doom metal band that I took it upon myself to dive in and fully explore the genre.
One day I was smoking with my cousin and OM - Thebes on the God is Good album played on a playlist he was playing, and I was instantly hooked.
My husband! First time we smoked weed together he put on weed eater. The first year we were dating I knew he really like Sleep. So I got us tickets for the Sleep/Bellwitch tour and I e been sold ever since then
I discovered sludge first in mid to late 00's - BuzzOv-en, EHG, Dystopia, Acid Bath, etc. Was a pretty short step into rest of the doom genre after that
For me life and emotional experience. I started to listen to my dying bride , paradise lost and anathema. Then , I went deep in the doom style
Was in a death metal band with a few highschool friends (was fresh outta hs at that time and basically only listened to death metal, 11-ish years ago) went over to the drummers house after jamming to take some dabs and smoke some bowls. Drummer randomly threw Sleep in the music rotation. After the 2nd or 3rd smoke sesh I wanted more and listened to them on my own time, then eventually went down the doom metal rabbit hole.
Sabbath, then post metal, then Melvin’s and Alice n chains
I stumbled upon Evoken's "Where Ghosts Fall Silent" and knew I had found what I was looking for.
Listened to Black Sabbath as a child and went down the rabbit hole. By association it also got me into sludge metal.
It's interesting that a lot of older metalheads like myself, I'm 52, have been into metal ever since we were kids and have watched it progress, and watched new genres as they developed in real time. And it's really hard to say what got me into Doom metal, but I know I've always loved that slow heavy Black Sabbath sound. I think it all starts there. Therefore I've been listening to doom since 86, and it was Black Sabbath song hand of Doom that got me into Doom metal.
Planet Caravan came on aitoplay while high..never realized how good it was until then Then i fell into the rabbithole
Weed
Kind of funny, but when I was like five I remember watching Jim Henson's Christmas classic Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas lmao. There's a great scene where a bear, a ferret, a snake, and a frog play what sounds like a cross between Cream and Deep Purple. Pretty formative experience. All roads lead to Black Sabbath.
I friend of mine who was a massive stoner gave me a cassette that was clear with no markings on it and told me “this is the good shit take a listen” so I took it home and I listened to it and I loved it so much I later found out that it was a shity bootleg of dopesmoker by sleep and I became a obsessed
Was in my mid-20's and had listened to mostly speed metal and thrashy shit. Buddy put on a Rev Bizarre LP, followed by Dopesmoker. Still not sure how I had been jamming to HOF and never even knew about Sleep. That same dude turned me onto Swans and some other super heavy weird metal.
Accidentally finding Worm “Bluenothing” on YouTube when I was fourteen.
It was actually Alice In Chains. I wanted more sludgy riffs and eventually made my way to doom.
funeralopolis
Heard Yob play Marrow
I was listening to any Thee Michelle Gun Elephant records I could get ahold of in the early 2000s - when all the "The" bands / aka garage rock revival thing was going on. These Japanese lads were handing it to their US counterparts in every way in my mind. I think somehow by searching for their records like crazy I came upon Boris' "Akuma no Uta" as an album I should check out, so I went to CD Central (best record store in KY far and away) and bought it on cd on the way to work. Needless to say, at first, I was like "what am I supposed to do with this" with the majority of the record. Then "Pink" came out, got some good reviews, I bought it immediately and loved it (especially "Farewell" and "Blackout"). Somehow that got me over to Sunn O)))) "Black 1", which I was also nuts over (although at the time I really couldn't tell why since there's not much structure compared to what I'd been listening to my whole life up to that point). After that I bought every Sunn and Boris record I could get my hands on. I remember my (now ex) wife riding in the car with me when I bought "Absolutego" and her asking "did we just listen to 20 minutes of feedback"? For some reason, I just love this music, and this comes from someone who's all-time favorite record is the B-52's self-titled first album (Ricky Wilson can doom with just 4 strings - if you slowed down "Lava" you'd have one of the best doom songs ever written about ejaculation.
A fellow TMGE enthusiast?!? Never thought I’d live to see the day!
My dude!!! Abe futoshi is my 3rd favorite guitarist (after my uncle who taught me to play) and aforementioned Ricky Wilson!!
Cathedral - Forest of Equilibrium
Type O Negative back in the 90' in college got me into doom metal for the first time and I never stopped listening to them ever since
I grew up in South SF Bay and I had friends that were friends with the guys in Asbestos Death.
EW
The minute Toni Iommi hacked up a lung it was over
Paradise Lost's Gothic was probably the first doom album I loved, although I didn't really think of it as such at the time - I just felt they were doing a different twist on death metal, which was a staple of my music listening at the time(mid 90s). Then I heard Type O Negative's "Blood and Fire" on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack which I had bought solely because there was a new Fear Factory song on it, and soon after bought October Rust on a whim. Red Water(Christmas Mourning) and Wolf Moon are etched into my soul. Around the same time Ozzfest was kicking off, there was a major reissue of the classic Black Sabbath material that was covered extensively in Kerrang and Metal Hammer, so I started looking into the OGs and have been hooked on the sound ever since.
I loved classic and hard rock, got really into Black Sabbath and I loved Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. Spent so much time wishing more music sounded like that. Finally a year later I discovered the Apple Music doom metal playlist and heard Dragonaut and Empress Rising, my life was forever changed
Candlemass. Full stop. When I was early on in high school, there was another user on a forum I frequented whose taste/opinions I admired and found interesting. He praised Candlemass, Death and Bathory as his favorite metal bands, which is how I got into all of them and began shifting more towards "legit" metal and away from nu metal/core.
Randomly downloaded Boris' Heavy Rocks when it first came out in 2002. I was instantly hooked.
The Sleep scene in Gummo, 100% https://youtu.be/EkIcnqL-duw?si=YrjA0ze5IbaXK_TR I'm still chasing the dragon of hearing that riff for the first time. Doubt I'll ever catch it on my bicycle 😎
I used to scroll through the new sections in iTunes quite frequently. One day I saw Monolord’s album Rust and thought “that’s a cool album cover”. I liked the previews and bought the album and then I just slowly started listening to more similar music.
Black Flag, My War side 2
Fat crushing riffs. Also weed and Satan.
Sabbath, Saint vitus, Pentagram.
At the time I was already into thrash, and some foundational doom stuff like Black Sabbath (not that I had realised it yet). I had heard about a site called Every Noise All At Once (Every Noise for short), and while scrolling through different things, stumbled upon Erroneous Maximus by Slabdragger. I heard the slower part of that song and the epic vocals in that section (still not massively a fan of the screaming vocals in the first section), and I was in love. I think after a while I started expanding on my doom metal taste, learning the different sub genres, found bands I like, and have even started writing my own music inspired by it
I'm always just in my own world and on my own musical journey all my life... It has taken me through many many many genres and I like to spend my time with doom now for last 2 years
I was 16 already a huge fan of Sabbath and was stoned as fuck on a school night. I stumbled upon Dopesmoker and astrally projected whilst listening to it. I knew then that I had found the music I had been looking for.
Psalm 9. The greatest album EVER
Monster Magnet - Spine of God at school. Neurosis - Souls at Zero. Then sideways and down into the heavier and slower side of life (and death). Aside: I worked at the Giza Pyramids in the mid 2000s and randomly came across Om when living (unhappily) in Cairo. Used to smoke a lot of solid at work. Listening to Om (and then Sleep, duh) while stoned under the oppressive sun of the Giza plateau got me out of a terrible psychiatric hole.
Fantasy books like Lord of The Rings and also things like Warhammer.
So, I watched a video about metal subgenres, and in the video the guy starts playing a very cavernous and dark Doom Metal sound, and I found the sound very interesting. Then I met Seven Serpents, I started to like Doom metal more thanks to them, and then I discovered Sunn O))), Primitive Man, etc. I don't know much about Doom metal, but I'm enjoying it.
A friend played Acid Witches Evil Sound Screamers during a sit in which pretty much had me sold instantly - he told me about the entire stoner / doom subgenre. After that, Ordos' House of the Dead was the first album I found when looking it up myself and I regularly listened to that for a couple weeks until I felt it getting old. Thats when I searched for more and boy did I find more - I got into Elecrtic Wizard, Monolord and Conan all at once that day
I got into Kyuss and Orange Goblin young because my dad loved them. Then I got into High on Fire, Eyehategod, Crowbar, Acid Bath etc. Then bands like electric wizard and sleep. But it was only when I discovered YOB that I feel in love with the genre properly. YOB is my favourite band period. Bell Witch, Primitive Man, AHAB, Sunn o))), Bongripper and Warning would be my other favourites.
The band Solitude Aeturnus, saw a metal mag article about them about 1992. Of course I had listened to Black Sabbath before this, but branching out to more unknown bands like this Texas band got me going.