Devon Discovers Doom

I ran from metal for years. Now, I'm obsessed with extreme doom, and you can be, too.

When I was 11, I accidentally found what would be my new obsession wandering around YouTube: “Nemo” by Finnish power metal band Nightwish. Tarja Turunen’s operatic vocals, the simple piano hook, and weighty guitars overwhelmed me. Its emotive breadth resonated with me immediately: at that age, I’d had my first encounter with a depressive episode, found myself socially ostracized for reasons I don’t fully understand (and, at my gargantuan age, I can’t and don’t care to investigate), and was desperately trying to memorize every Top 40 hit. As much as I reveled in the Recession-era hits from Gwen Stefani, Kanye West, Mariah Carey, and more, nothing hit me quite like “Nemo.” For the next three years, I was a devoted Nightwish stan, following them through concept albums, lineup changes, and drama. Being a symphonic metal freak in middle school is a lonely experience, but maybe it taught me character. I don’t know. I tried listening to Nightwish the other day and I hated it, not sure why.

Quite literally, someone showed me Florence & The Machine and The National and I stopped caring about Nightwish right around 8th grade. Since then, my interests haven’t skewed far from the kind of alternative rock and pop that’s acceptable for polite conversation. I’ve seen Mitski 6 times. But when I started booking at Grog Shop in Cleveland, I realized just how big of a blind spot metal had become for me. My colleagues tossed around words like sludge, thrash, and technical with a certainty I could not even approach.

So, I did what any normal person would do: watch a 13-video YouTube series on metal subgenres. In going through the genre’s canonical history, its major players, geographies, and sonic directions proved, above all else, fun. Did I like a lot of what I was hearing? Not especially. You’re not going to get me to really enjoy Voivod or Destruction. But bands like Obituary, Darkthrone, Earth....they awoke something in me. Lucky for me, Grog Shop had a slew of upcoming spring metal shows so I could test out if this was just a phase.

My first real metal/adjacent show was just a year ago: Portrayal of Guilt & Yautja at the Grog. From there, I saw bands like Ragana, Primitive Man, The Body, and more, primarily across the alternative metal scene, where clubs are small and artists take more liberties. It was heterogeneous, curious, and fucking thrilling. As much as I still enjoy your run-of-the-mill indie rock show, the live metal experience is unreal. I am totally drawn to the energy.

Where I got really hooked is on extreme doom. Bands like Sunn O))), Bell Witch, Vile Creature, and select Boris records have me completely hooked. Records that take the tools of heavy metal, encase them in concrete, and let them loose in an echo chamber. Extreme doom captures senses of desolation, injury, exhilaration, solidarity, and grief with a terrifying acuity. I love everything about it — the tom hits on the back of the beat, the interminal feedback, the experience of each note grabbing and shaking my ribcage over tracks that often linger for more than 20 minutes.

I’m not the greatest at emotional expression. I joke online about constantly crying, but the truth is, I so rarely experience an event so singularly overwhelming that I have to weep. Instead, I find myself mired in conflicting affective states that require a more measured negotiation of responses. As much as I’d like to cry it out, I won’t erupt, as if my body knows that it won’t do much good. But I experienced an untameable euphoria when I caught that experimental doom supergroup Khanate was back with a surprise album, To Be Cruel, their first in 14 years. There are few sufficient methods to describing the frigid, swirling, pummeling universe the band conjures over three 20-minute movements. When Alan Dubin hollers “I’m going to tear you apart” on “It Wants to Fly,” I’m ready. Fucking destroy me. I’ve never been much of a masochist, but whatever it takes, let my soul free. Peel off my skin, burn it, let me watch. There’s nothing left for me on this plane, so let me go to the next one, and let me feel every ounce of pain I need to feel to get there.

There are few musical styles that command your absolute attention like Khanate. The sluggish delivery, the sinister delivery, the curated feedback: To Be Cruel strikes the fear of God in me. I revel in this extreme state. You don’t get to dwell in the pain as much in thrash metal. You don’t get messages this cryptic in death metal. You don’t get to appreciate each individual move in progressive metal. Discovering extreme doom brought me a stronger tool for creating everyday catharsis and brought me close to my uglier emotions the way Nightwish did for me 15 years ago. Give it a fucking try.