Angelblood

A Finnish outfit, founded by bassists Mika A. A. Hyytinen and Topi Aarnio, built around the gimmick-that-works of having no guitarists at all — two bass players (4-to-12-string, baritone-tuned) carry all the riffing, joined by keyboards/samples and dual male/female vocals from Kari Husa and Anna Pienimäki. Their sole full-length, 2009's On Rituals and Correspondence in Constructed Realities (Season of Mist), moves from doom-metal roots into a cavernous, drone-heavy hybrid of gothic, black, and alt-rock with electro-folk and Baroque touches.

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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Midnight Odyssey is the one-man cosmic/atmospheric black metal outlet of Brisbane's Dis Pater, running concept albums soaked in mythology since 2007. Its sprawling Biolume trilogy (2019-2023) folds synth-driven ambient drone, neoclassical arrangement, and doom-metal pacing around a core of raw, lo-fi black metal. The project regularly spins off pure ambient/ kosmische material and symphonic re-recordings alongside the metal proper, making atmosphere as central to its identity as riffs.

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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Pylar is a masked, pseudonymous avant-garde black/doom metal collective from Seville, Spain, active since 2012, blending ritualistic doom and psychedelic black metal with kraut-rock, dark folk, and industrial textures. The band performs under a self-styled mythology and stage ceremony involving masks and invocatory ritual.

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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Dramanduhr is a one-man Sicilian avant-garde/Mediterranean metal project by songwriter-producer Stefano Eliamo, formed in 2020 and built around an invented ritual mythology (the "Rite of the Volcano") and its own glossolalia language, Dahrmonium. Eliamo performs all vocals, guitars, bass, drums, percussion and synths himself, augmented on the debut by guest viola and soprano vocals. The project has released two full albums to date, Tramohr (2022, BloodRock Records/Nero Corvino) and Vertuhn (2025), fusing black-metal-styled blasts and chugs with orchestral, tribal and esoteric-occult atmospheres.

Midoran is the solo dark-fantasy project of French multi-instrumentalist Athal'Zacker, part of the Cercle Mortuaire collective alongside acts like Degenerescence and Mortuaire. Its prolific catalog alternates between raw, melodic black metal and synthesizer-driven dungeon synth passages, built around an ongoing fantasy narrative (Zolaria, Merozia, the Athal'Zackar mythos) in a vein reminiscent of Nuit Noire or Trha. Releases favor world-building atmosphere and lore over technical ambition.

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Thorne was a short-lived experimental/atmospheric black metal band from Río Gallegos, Argentina, that recorded one demo (Until Their Ruins Be Our Trench, 2013) and one full-length, Ekpyrosis & Restitutio in Pristinum Status, released as a limited cassette in 2017 by Brotherhood of Light Recordings. The album mixes Spanish-language black metal with lengthy instrumental passages and a lute-song arrangement of Renaissance composer John Dowland's 'Grief'. The band split up after this release.

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.