Aarni

Om is an American stoner/doom drone band formed in San Francisco in 2003 by bassist-vocalist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius, previously the rhythm section of Sleep. The band is known for droning, bass-driven, meditative songs steeped in spirituality and mysticism, a marked departure from Sleep's Black Sabbath-rooted sound. After Hakius departed in 2008, Emil Amos (of Grails) joined on drums, and the group's acclaimed fifth album Advaitic Songs was released by Drag City in 2012.

Giant Squid are an American post-metal and progressive/doom band formed in Sacramento, California in 2002 and led by Aaron Gregory, known for oceanic and marine-biology concept records including Metridium Fields (2006) and The Ichthyologist (2009), released via labels including Translation Loss. Cellist and vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz, of Amber Asylum and Grayceon fame, joined the band in January 2007, deepening its chamber-tinged heaviness. The band shares members and a 2007 split 7-inch, 'Sutter's Fort,' with fellow Bay Area group Grayceon.

This Is Oblivion is the duo of violinist/vocalist Lulu Black and drummer Michael Kadnar (also of The Number Twelve Looks Like You and So Hideous), who began the project in 2020 and released it on Kadnar's own Silent Pendulum Records. Their 2022 self-titled debut strips doom weight down to violin, viola, piano and industrial electronics under Black's ghostly vocal, building each track from a single melodic line over doomy percussion. It reads as gothic chamber-doom seance, closer kin to Chelsea Wolfe or Swans than to conventional metal.

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Nàda were a Lucerne, Switzerland outfit (active 1992-1997) fusing sludge/doom heaviness with industrial clang and tribal/neofolk percussion, earning Terrorizer coverage in 1994 and comparisons to Neurosis, Swans and Einstürzende Neubauten. Their two albums, 'Celmètra' (1994, Licht & Blindheit/Common Cause) and 'Ùr' (1997, Licht & Blindheit), are murky, ritualistic slabs built on layered percussion and detuned riffing rather than conventional song structure. A largely forgotten act of 90s European experimental sludge, tangential to any scene rather than embedded in one.

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Grandmother Is Dead is a Czech one-man project from Prague, active since 1996, built entirely around Josef Pernikl playing and recording all instruments in his home studio as a hobby release he doesn't sell for profit. Its self-described 'Scenic Doom' style pairs doom metal with ambient, industrial and theatrical passages, and each album pursues a grim historical theme — its first release in 1997 was inspired by the Sobibor concentration camp, followed by The Camp (2006) and the atomic-bomb-themed Trust Christ Today (2009) — often layered with recorded witness testimony. Pernikl has also played guitar in the thrash band Lobotomia.

Formed in Helsinki in 2016 and describing themselves as a "conjuration from the Northern Wilderness," Babes in the Abyss build a dark, primitive avant-garde sound around harmonium and organ rather than guitar, with bass and drums filling out the low end. Their 2022 debut Physis is organ-driven, cinematic and ritualistic, closer to a doom-adjacent drone ensemble than to riff-based metal, with haunting shared vocals over sustained keyboard tones.

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A New York art-world side project active from 2000-2003, pairing visual artist Rita Ackermann with Gang Gang Dance's Lizzi Bougatsos in a ritualistic, blood-and-paganism-themed 'art + metal' hybrid — chant-like incantations and wordless vocal panting over heavy, dirge-paced guitar/bass, with Orthrelm's Mick Barr guesting on guitar for Labia Minora. Functioned as much as a performance-art and visual-art collective as a band, releasing on Captain Trip and, posthumously, Locust Music.

Birushanah are an experimental sludge/doom band from Osaka, Japan, formed in 2002, fusing crushing sludge metal with Japanese traditional percussion and scales. Founding bassist Sougyo was previously a member of fellow Osaka doom act Corrupted.

Zaraza is a Montreal industrial death-doom duo formed in 1993 by Polish emigre Jacek Furmankiewicz and local noise artist Brian Meagher, built around drum machines, samplers and dueling death-grunt/operatic vocals rather than a conventional metal lineup. Their 1997 debut Slavic Blasphemy fused doom/death heaviness with the bombast of industrial acts, and was named a top album of the year by Chronicles of Chaos webzine. The band split in 2006, reunited in 2015, and released a third album, Spasms of Rebirth, in 2017.

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Aaen Anima is a Prague, Czechia avant-garde/doom-metal project founded April 25, 2002 as, in the band's own words, "originally playing acoustic avant-garde." Its 2003 album "Aniline Harp" pairs guitars and bass with cedar drum, bell, didgeridoo, darbuka and harmonium (all played by founder Aaen), plus flute (Ismia) and keyboards/djembe (Jari Velaochaga) — an eclectic, ritual-tinged folk-instrumentation palette rare even for avant-garde metal. No activity is documented past 2008.