Khanate

Burning Witch was an American doom/sludge metal band formed on Capitol Hill in Seattle in early 1995 from the ashes of the doom/death band Thorr's Hammer, active until 1998. Known for extremely slow tempos, dense feedback and Edgy 59's alternately mournful and tortured vocals, the group is best remembered as a formative pre-Sunn O))) project for guitarist Stephen O'Malley. Their EP recordings were gathered on the compilation Crippled Lucifer, released in 1998 on Southern Lord Records, the label O'Malley co-founded with fellow Seattle musician Greg Anderson.

Boris's early drone/doom era built monolithic, amplifier-worshipping slabs of sludge, doom and drone metal, frequently structured as single extended long-form pieces rather than conventional songs. The 1996 debut Absolutego is a 65-minute track of oozing, slow-motion, Melvins-inspired drone rock/metal, while Flood (2000) unfolds as one roughly 70-minute title track broken into four movements. Across Amplifier Worship (1998) and Boris at Last -Feedbacker- (2003) the trio pushed feedback, distortion and glacial tempos to the foreground, a sound whose kinship with Sunn O))) later yielded their joint album Altar.

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Thrones is the long-running solo project of American bassist Joe Preston, begun in 1994 and given to bass-heavy doom, avant-garde noise rock and experimental drone. Preston is a scene hub in his own right — a former member of Earth and the Melvins and a guest on Sunn O)))'s recordings — and Thrones channels that low-end lineage into one-man records like the Southern Lord compilation Day Late, Dollar Short (2005). The music pairs crushing riffs and heavily processed vocals with an eclectic, unpredictable sensibility.

Ufomammut are an Italian power trio formed in 1999 in Tortona, dealing in a signature strain of psychedelic sludge that spans doom, stoner, sludge and drone metal. Their music favors lengthy songs built on repeated heavy riffs, droning vocals and a heavy use of synths and sound effects, staged live with synchronized psychedelic visuals by founders Poia and Urlo's Malleus art collective. Their most recent studio albums — including Fenice (2022) and Hidden (2024) — appear on Neurosis's Neurot Recordings.

Khlyst is an American experimental drone/doom project formed in New York in 2006, built around guitarist James Plotkin (Khanate, OLD, Phantomsmasher), Norwegian vocalist Runhild Gammelsæter (Thorr's Hammer), and drummer Tim Wyskida (Khanate, Blind Idiot God). Their sole album, the dually-titled "Chaos Is My Name" / "Kaos er mitt navn," was released by Hydra Head Records in October 2006. Across eight Roman-numeral-titled pieces it alternates Gammelsæter's shrieked, free-form vocals with eerie ambient guitar and percussion soundscapes.

Opium Warlords is the solo-turned-trio outlet of Sami Albert Hynninen (Albert Witchfinder of Reverend Bizarre), stretching doom metal into extended drone-riff meditations with minimal percussion. Since 2010 he has been joined by drummer Erkki Virta and keyboardist Laura Länsimäki, though the project remains built around Hynninen's distorted bass and bleak conceptual framing. Six albums deep on Svart Records, the band trades hooks for duration, dissolving riffs into noise and silence.

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Beneath the Sod is the solo funeral/industrial doom project of Irish musician Ray Keenaghan (Wreck of the Hesperus), formed 2017. Releases include Circling the Drain (2017, Fort Evil Fruit), the split cassette Transmorphic Eye (2018, with Crypticum), and a self-titled 2021 EP on Cursed Monk Records described as harsh, synth-laced industrial doom metal with guest vocals from Richard Carson.

Polish occult doom/drone trio from Lodz built entirely around improvised 'automatism' -- the band records without prior composition or rehearsal, chasing psychedelic-rock, doom, and drone textures under an Austin Osman Spare-derived chaos-magick concept. Three full-lengths deep as of 2022, most released through Italy's I, Voidhanger Records.

Overmars was a French post-metal band active from 2001 to 2011, formed in Lyon around vocalist Xavier Théret, guitarists Antoine Simon and Pierrick Marin, bassist Marion Leclerc, drummer Benjamin Pic, and keyboardist Tiphaine Coudert. Their 2005 debut Affliction, Endocrine... Vertigo (Candlelight Records) fused doom, industrial, gothic rock, death and black metal into an oppressive, droning, oftentimes sludgy whole, while 2007's Born Again stretched that approach into a single 40-minute piece that NME later named among its 'Twenty Heaviest (Metal) Records of All Time.'

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Reto Mäder's long-running Sum Of R has cycled through several lineups since 2008; the current Swiss-Finnish incarnation with Marko Neuman (vocals) and Jukka Rämänen (drums) pushes furthest into ritual drone-doom territory on 2025's Spectral, an 'acoustic séance' of tape manipulation, mellotron, and psychedelic doom built around sustained tones rather than riffs. The record pulls in a small constellation of scene names as guests — Juho Vanhanen of Oranssi Pazuzu, Vicotnik of Dødheimsgård, and G. Stuart Dahlquist of Burning Witch/Goatsnake — placing the band at a crossroads of drone, post-metal, and avant-black circles, even as Mäder's other projects (Ural Umbo, Hexvessel, Dark Buddha Rising) sit outside this atlas.

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