(NCS reader, commenter, and occasional contributor SurgicalBrute volunteered to help educate me about death/doom.)

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these . . . sorry about that. Unlike some of the other guys here, I’m not a writer by profession. So when you combine that with my natural laziness . . . you end up with long periods of inactivity.

I actually requested the chance to write this post though. While I don’t really enjoy Traditional Doom (there are some exceptions), and I really have to be in the right mood for Funeral Doom. Death/Doom hits a sweet spot for me. Never so slow that I start to lose interest, it still manages to establish the crushing atmosphere that’s so important for this style of metal.

Now, I know Death/Doom can be a rather ambiguous term . . . I’ve seen it applied (and not incorrectly) to everything from the mid-paced death metal of Asphyx and Autopsy to the slow moving riffs of Ahab. For the sake of simplicity I’m going to limit this article to my own personal definition . . . where, more often than not, the pace is kept slower than the average Old School Death Metal band, but still quicker than any kind of Funeral Doom.

As usual, I’ll do my best to provide links for distros/labels that may still have merchandise available (and if anyone’s curious as to what Ive been spinning, you can find me on http://www.last.fm/user/Surgical_Brute)

Enjoy the music \m/ Continue reading »