Doom metal

[Famous Mortimer]

A comedy show I like just recommended Primitive Man, and they're pretty good. Funeral doom, black metal and "noise" (not heard enough yet to hear the noise inspirations), and they did a split with my home town's own Fister a few years back.

I just popped "The Lifer" on in the office, it's fucking great.

I was just reminded of them as I'm off to see Fister this weekend. $10 ticket! It's like the old days.

I prefer stuff without vocals (like Blown Out or Rotor) but there are a few doom bands with female vocals that are well worth checking out:

Undersmile, they split off into more shoegazey stuff sometimes but a track like 'Cutter's Choice' is amazing heavy doom but with different vocals:

https://undersmile.bandcamp.com/

There's an odd quality to the singer's voice, like they're trying to do "Alice in Chains, but doom". I'll have to listen to more.

[The Mollusk]

They just put out a new album (wait, I'm seeing it flagged as an EP despite it being longer than their last album) which I'm yet to hear but yeah they're fucking great. Caustic is a superb album, pure blackened sludge annihilation, nothing but molten despair.

[DoesNotFollow]

Went to ABYSSAL FEST yesterday - stoner/sludge/doom all-dayer in Southampton. I think nine bands played of the ten that were originally billed. Lowen had to drop out because of covid, which was a particular shame because they sound really interesting, but never mind.
Of note fer me were:

Wallowing from Brighton. Weird, cosmic-themed sludge chock full of noise and effects. If you're familiar with bands like Drug Honkey, Space Bong or Suffering Luna then you'll kind of get the idea. I'd listened to a bit of them online beforehand and was excited. However, although their stage presence was great I was a bit disappointed with their choice of songs.

Monolithian from Cornwall. Have seen this crusty doom two-piece several times now and every time they kill it. Sorta similar to Primitive Man as style descriptors go but, for my tastes, much more listenable and enjoyable.

Witchsorrow from Hampshire. Bringing the more traditional Doom Metal which is kinda hard to come by in a small live setting these days. I've seen them once or twice, but had underestimated how much I would enjoy them this time. Just hearing the blues-y, psych-y solos (yes, solos!) was a real treat.

Slomatics from Belfast were the last band and I suppose a fitting closer to the event, something I could kind of just hang my head low to while I recovered from the previous two bands. Slomatics are very similar to Conan (with whom they shared a split with a few years back) and I find the thickness of the tone kinda sucks a lot of what energy there may be in the fairly simplistic, repetitive riffs and percussion. I'm just a bit of a traditionalist at heart really, and I prefer bands that structure their songs a bit more rather than just pummel you with their signature brand of fuzz, noise or volume. /opinion

All in all the whole thing was great, I don't really do the huge festivals so this was kinda my big gig event for the year, and worth the wait after two years of covid postponements. My back is killing me.