OvO

Seattle avant-garde doom/post-black metal band formed in 2012 around vocalist Joy Von Spain, melding melodic black metal, glacial doom, and psychedelic sludge into operatic, ghost-story atmospherics. Signed to Prophecy Productions, their catalog (Moros, Black Somnia, Ligeia) has been called too glacial for sludge, too disjointed for black metal, and too melodic for noise — a genuinely hard-to-pin-down hybrid.

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Khanate was an American drone/extreme doom supergroup formed in New York in 2000 by guitarist Stephen O'Malley and bassist James Plotkin, with vocalist Alan Dubin and drummer Tim Wyskida. Their glacial music paired extremely slow tempos and harsh layers of feedback with Dubin's torturous shrieking, debuting with a self-titled album on Southern Lord Records in 2001. The band split in 2006 before a surprise return with the album To Be Cruel, released via Sacred Bones Records in 2023.

Zhertvoprinosheniya (Жертвоприношения, 'Sacrifices') is a St. Petersburg experimental funeral-doom/black metal project that explicitly reconstructs the late Sergey Kuryokhin's improvisatory 'Pop-Mechanics' performance-art tradition. 'Некромеханика' (2020) centers the self-built Soviet-era 'utyugon' synthesizer alongside trombone, radio noise and electronics for a drone-heavy, ritualistic funeral atmosphere rather than conventional riffing. It reads as a direct lineage act carrying Russian avant-garde/noise performance art into black/doom metal territory.

Umbrtka is a prolific Czech black/doom/industrial project from Plzeň, active since 1999 and centered on a self-invented industrial deity presiding over the city's factories, railways and scrapyards. Their 'grey metal' sound layers dissonant black metal with field recordings, mechanical noise and surreal spoken-word narration. František 'Franta' Štorm — closely associated with Czech black metal pioneers Master's Hammer — served as a past vocalist.

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.

Author & Punisher is the one-man industrial/drone/doom-metal project of San Diego mechanical engineer Tristan Shone, who performs on custom-designed and hand-fabricated instruments he calls 'Drone Machines' and 'Dub Machines'. Handpicked by Tool to support their 2020 tour, Shone returned the favor on his 2022 Relapse album Krüller: Tool's Danny Carey drums on 'Misery' and bassist Justin Chancellor plays on 'Centurion'. The result pairs monolithic, machine-driven weight with dub space and industrial menace.

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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.

Killing Joke are an English post-punk band formed in Notting Hill, London in 1979, whose 'tension music' fused aggressive rhythms with gothic, industrial and metallic weight across landmark records like Night Time (1985) and Pandemonium (1994). Frontman Jaz Coleman's apocalyptic delivery and the band's dense, dubwise heaviness made them a widely cited influence on industrial and alternative acts including Metallica, Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails. Longtime bassist Paul Raven, who joined in 1982, was later briefly recruited for a planned Godflesh US tour that collapsed before it began.

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.

Abishai is the lo-fi noise-rock vehicle of Torrance, California multi-instrumentalist Abishai Smith (aliases DJ Bathtub, Eden, Mizpah), who splatters feedback, drum machines, and kazoo across deliberately unpolished sludge, no wave, and noisecore excursions. The 43-track 'Raw and Legendary!!!' (2017) is a maximalist, comedic blowout of punk-metal bits, while the wider catalog under various aliases swings into death industrial, drone, power electronics, and ambient territory — DIY extremity closer to a bedroom noise scene than conventional metal songcraft.