STATE OF DOOM #14: NEW AND NEWER SOUNDS IN DOOM METAL
STATE OF DOOM #14: NEW AND NEWER SOUNDS IN DOOM METAL
Mastodon’s “Seabeast”: A Tribute through Storm and Cinema
The video and the song together form a rare moment where heavy music, literature, and cinema meet seamlessly. The influence of Melville, the echoes of early film, and the raw energy of four musicians at their hungriest all collapse into a single vision.
Doom Cinema: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
When Robert Wiene released The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920, Europe was still marked by the shock of war. Cities broken, men returned hollowed, authority both feared and obeyed. The film channels that climate, but instead of showing the trenches or the rubble, it bends space itself.
The Sound of Gray: Revisiting Warning – Watching From a Distance
Watching from a Distance, released in 2006, stands with quiet certainty. Formed in the mid-nineties in Harlow, Essex, Warning was built around the voice and guitar of Patrick Walker, whose writing shaped the band’s identity – slow-moving, unadorned, and resolute-delivering doom metal stripped to its most human core.
Playlist Update: Nomadic Rituals; Sun of the Dying; Pale Keeper
Playlist Update: Nomadic Rituals; Sun of the Dying; Pale Keeper
After the Sabbath: Introduction
What was it about Black Sabbath that made them one of the most influential rock bands of the 20th century? What caused a strange blues-rock band from the late ’60s to shake an entire generation awake and draw them in? What makes a band, without even trying, become a cornerstone – if not the cornerstone – of an entire genre?
After the Sabbath: Experiment and Fracture (1973–75) | Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage
This time I’ll start with a question. I genuinely don’t understand why so many Sabbath fans seem to believe that the Ozzy era ended after their fourth album. That view is completely off, baseless, and casually erases some of the strongest material the band ever recorded.
After the Sabbath: The Disintegration (1976–78) | Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die!
Technical Ecstasy came out in 1976, during a time when tensions between Ozzy and the rest of the band were reaching a breaking point. It ended with his not-so-final departure after the recording sessions. Never Say Die! was released in 1978, after Ozzy returned to the band – but only briefly.
After the Sabbath: The Door Opens (1970) | Self-titled and Paranoid
A twist of fate and a newspaper ad brought together four young men from a nowhere suburb near Birmingham in the late ’60s. Four unemployed outsiders, broke and strung out, trying to pull out of themselves the kind of sound that could knock people to the floor. They wanted to make noise, as much as possible. To shake and rattle anyone who needed a real shakeup. In other words, everyone.
After the Sabbath: Into the Void (1971–72) | Master of Reality and Vol. 4
It’s 1971, and Black Sabbath already had two very successful albums behind them, especially considering how little support they got from the press and the industry. Paranoid gave Ozzy the freedom to wail and scream with unchecked confidence, let Tony Iommi unleash distortion straight from hell, let Geezer Butler keep delivering wild and dominant bass lines, and gave Bill Ward space to drum more and more aggressively.