The Axis Unseen free demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807810/The_Axis_Unseen/
It took about 3.5 years, but now it’s actually coming out in less than two weeks. I’m really excited to see what people think of it and it has been cool watching streamers react to the demo. Somehow my two story tall tree guy is really good at sneaking up on people. :D
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Pallbearer and Ahab are both pretty good for funeral doom or death/doom (depending on who you ask).
I like a little bit of “epic” doom themes but trad doom, power metal, and actual epic doom are a little too cheesy for me, so I lean toward Conan (very heavy, approaching a sludge-drone hybrid) and Khemmis (who describe their sound as “doomed heavy metal”)
I actually usually skew more psychedelic doom or stoner/prog doom, which has a lot of great stuff in the past few decades. Sleep’s Holy Mountain (classic stoner metal), Grief’s Infernal Flower by Windhand (psych doom), Clearing the Path to Ascend by YOB (heavy stoner/prog), Lore by Elder (very proggy but still catchy).
Also, I assume you’ve seen the most common recommendations for classic sludge, The Melvins (especially Houdini and Bullhead), Eyehategod, and Side B of My War by Black Flag. If not, get started there
edit: Obviously I’ve got lots of other fun options in each of these veins, so hmu if you want more
I’ve been on a non-stop yt metal rabbit hole after googling some of these bands. Thanks for re-awakening the wide world of metal. It’s strange how you go through different types of music throughout your life.
Happy to get you excited with some new music! I’ve listened to heavy music for decades but it had definitely gotten a little stale for me. It was only in the last 2 years that I discovered stoner/doom as a sub-genre, so I’m not all that far ahead of you. Some really great stuff that is frankly just as heavy but much catchier than most other metal subgenres. I mean, I love me some black/death metal, but I’m just not really getting obsessed with those bands/albums/songs the same way as I can with this slow riff worship you see in stoner/doom.
Dude, Windhand’s Forest Clouds is so freaking sick. What a vibe—the album art, the track names, and ofc the sound is so awesome. Man, it feels so hyperbolic, but I honestly haven’t had this feeling listening to music in sooo long.
For sure, I dig some death/black metal stuff a bit, but I’ve always been a nu metal plebian that having this convo on reddit would just have die-hard gatekeepers take a dump on me, tbh. I’ve always hated how gatekeepy metal has always been. Thanks for the recs and interesting genre info! All the genre names are so hilariously awesome xD
Windhand was my gateway into this whole world, and I couldn’t agree more. The first time I heard their stuff, it just blew my mind in a way I hadn’t experienced in probably a decade.
I came into metal from metalcore, and there’s no faster way to get yourself banned from the metal subs than posting metalcore, so I feel you in the gatekeeping, too. The doom scene really does pull from all sorts of influences and tends to be pretty accepting of a ton of fringe bands and sounds so you get people that are excited to talk about music instead of just shitting on other people’s taste. So you get “doom wop,” stoner rock, doom ‘n’ roll, fairy doom, witch metal, caveman battle doom, and so on.
Have fun exploring it all! There’s a ton of good shit out there, and for my money, to this day, nothing hits like that first time hearing “Forest Clouds”
Thanks for sharing all this. I go through phases with music and it’ll be great to have some new bands to check out.
Back in the day I got a kick out of this site and would send it to people who were just learning about and starting to get into metal: https://mapofmetal.com
This would be a neat site if it displayed properly.