Jarboe

Mamiffer is an American experimental band based in Seattle, Washington, founded in 2007 by Faith Coloccia out of ideas from her former group Everlovely Lightningheart. It began as her solo project and grew into a duo with Aaron Turner (of Isis and Sumac), who became her creative partner and later husband; the two also co-founded SIGE Records. The music intertwines ambient, drone, and post-rock composition with piano and ethereal vocals, and the band is known for collaborative albums and rotating guest musicians.

Tribes of Neurot is an American experimental group formed in 1995 by the members of Neurosis as an ambient, ritual-noise counterpart to that band, weaving tribal structures, drone, musique concrete and manipulated field recordings into abstract soundscapes. Their best-known work, Grace (1999), was conceived as a companion to Neurosis' Times of Grace: built from sounds taken from that album and designed to be played simultaneously with it, synchronizing track by track so the two discs form an enhanced experience neither delivers alone, while still standing on its own. Later conceptual releases include Adaptation and Survival: The Insect Project and Meridian.

Runhild Gammelsæter is a Norwegian vocalist who is also a professional biologist holding a Ph.D. in cell physiology. She first drew notice fronting the American doom band Thorr's Hammer, which she joined at 17 alongside Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, and later co-formed the duo/trio Khlyst with James Plotkin. Her 2008 solo debut Amplicon (Utech Records) is built almost entirely from her own voice, warped with effects, with each track founded on a scientific, largely biologic theme conceived as a soundtrack to the cycle of the universe. Her voice ranges from the death-metal growls of her Thorr's Hammer work to unnerving, art-inflected experimental singing.

Haiku Funeral is a ritualistic industrial/black-metal-adjacent project born in a Marseille studio on Halloween 2008, built around Bulgarian multi-instrumentalist Dimitar Dimitrov (electronics, keyboards, vocals) and American bassist/vocalist William Kopecky, with Finnish drummer David Lillkvist also credited on record. Their sound is a hallucinogenic blend of occult drone, droning doom, and cinematic/ritual ambient, colored by theremin, e-bow, spring-drum, children's harp, and sitar - one reviewer singled out the sitar-and-tribal-percussion 'Cherni Shamani' as evoking cyber-shamanic trance. Six albums deep (most recently Drown Their Moons in Blood, 2021, via Aesthetic Death), they occupy a genuinely fringe niche between black metal atmosphere and psychedelic ritual ambient.

Cherni Shamaniplay in the dock

Bandcamp

compare profiles →

This node covers the atmospheric, largely un-distorted pole of Devin Townsend's solo catalog: Ocean Machine: Biomech (1997, "a mix of hard rock, ambient, and progressive rock"), the pure-ambient/experimental Devlab and The Hummer, and Ghost (2011) — a deliberately quiet, New Age-inflected release Townsend paired with the heavy Deconstruction as two halves of one project.

Earth is an American band formed in 1989 in Olympia, Washington, led by guitarist Dylan Carlson, who is regarded as a father of drone. Their 1993 album Earth 2 is recognized as a pioneering work of drone metal, built from heavily distorted, minimalist, slow-moving guitar. After a late-1990s hiatus, the band re-emerged in the 2000s with a cleaner, twangy desert-rock minimalism on albums like Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) and The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (2008), with Carlson and drummer Adrienne Davies as its core duo.

Nazoranai is an improvising power trio formed in 2011 by Keiji Haino (guitar, vocals, synth), Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))) (bass) and Oren Ambarchi (drums), issuing its self-titled live debut on O'Malley's Ideologic Organ imprint in 2012. The name signals a stance against pure free improvisation, favoring a more deliberate approach as the trio moves from sparse, post-industrial landscapes into huge firestorms of riff and distortion. Its genesis traces to a 2006 introduction between Haino and O'Malley via Ambarchi.

Nazoranai (なぞらない)play in the dock

Bandcamp

compare profiles →

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.

Fish Eyeplay in the dock

BandcampSpotify

compare profiles →

Casualties of Cool is a duo project by Devin Townsend and vocalist Ché Aimee Dorval, releasing a self-titled debut in 2014 after a crowdfunded campaign. Townsend described it as sounding like "haunted Johnny Cash songs — late night music, completely isolated," pairing alternative country, ambient and blues-rock textures with Dorval singing most of the leads; guests include saxophonist Jørgen Munkeby (Shining) and drummer Morgan Ågren (Zappa/Kaipa circle).

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. are a Japanese psychedelic collective founded in 1995 by guitarist Kawabata Makoto as an outlet for a rotating cast of players, releasing their self-titled debut on PSF Records in 1997. Extraordinarily prolific, with well over 100 albums, they fuse acid-rock jams, krautrock motorik, raga drones and harsh noise into cosmic long-form freak-outs. The touring lineup has long centered on Kawabata with Higashi Hiroshi, Tsuyama Atsushi and, at points, guitarist Mitsuru Tabata.