On 14 December 1993 No Fashion Records released Dance of December Souls, the debut album of Katatonia, recorded in six days that April at Unisound Studios with Dan Swanö producing. It runs fifty-three minutes. Two of its eight tracks pass thirteen.
Black doom is the catalogue name for music that keeps the equipment of black metal, the shriek, the tremolo figure, the thin and freezing guitar tone, and drags it down to the tempo of doom, so that a riff the second wave would have fired off in four bars is laid out across a full minute and left to decay. What joins the records below is a method, not a scene: the frost of the black half carried at the walking pace of a dirge, slowly enough for the cold to settle instead of passing over.
The approach from the opposite side came out of drone. The line that runs from Earth and Sunn O))) touched black metal directly on 17 October 2005, when Southern Lord released Black One, on which Sunn O))) covered "Cursed Realms (Of the Winterdemons)" by the Norwegian band Immortal and brought in Malefic of the American one-man project Xasthur among the guests. A drone album in black metal's robes is still a drone album. The roster below is built from the other direction, by black metal musicians who chose to slow down.
The first fires: Katatonia and Bethlehem
Recorded by a trio in which Jonas Renkse both sang and played the drums, with Anders Nyström on guitar and Guillaume Le Huche on bass, and with Swanö adding keyboards, the Swedish album that opened this lineage sets a black metal rasp over riffs moving at the speed of a burial party, and works the method out most completely in its two longest pieces, "Velvet Thorns (of Drynwhyl)" at just under fourteen minutes and "Tomb of Insomnia" at thirteen. The trio did not stay there. By Brave Murder Day in 1996 the harsh vocals had passed to Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth, and by Discouraged Ones in 1998 Renkse was singing clean, which leaves the debut as the one Katatonia record this list admits.
Formed in 1991 in Grevenbroich by the bassist Jürgen Bartsch with Klaus Matton and Andreas Classen, the German band that gave its debut the title Dark Metal, Bethlehem, released that album on the French label Adipocere in 1994, with eleven minutes of "Apocalyptic Dance" and one track under a German title, "Gepriesen sei der Untergang", and followed it in 1996 with Dictius Te Necare on the American label Red Stream. Recorded over December 1995 and January 1996 at Bernd Gast's studio in Bad Honnef and dedicated in its booklet to all suicide victims, the second album put Rainer Landfermann on vocals, on "Tagebuch einer Totgeburt" and the eight minutes of "Dorn meiner Allmacht". Bartsch, the one constant member, died on 27 August 2025 after an illness. The band's singer Yvonne Wilczynska announced his death, as NME reported the following day.
Forgotten Tomb: the long smoulder
Founded in 1999 in Piacenza by Ferdinando Marchisio, who signs himself Herr Morbid, as a solo project after the end of his black metal band Sacrater, the Italian band that carried the northern shriek furthest into the doom tempo, Forgotten Tomb, released the debut Songs to Leave on the Swedish label Selbstmord Services in August 2002, a year after a finished promo had gone out to labels, five tracks across nearly forty-eight minutes that open on the eleven minutes of "Entombed by Winter" and close on the twelve and three quarters of "Disheartenment". Springtime Depression followed on Adipocere in August 2003, recorded that January at Abyss Studios in Sweden with Tommy Tägtgren and with Ted Wedebrand as session drummer, while Marchisio kept the vocals, guitars and bass for himself, and its six tracks run from "Todestrieb" and "Daylight Obsession" to the eleven and a half minutes of "Subway Apathy". Reviewing both records on their 2012 reissues for Metal.de, Jan Wischkowski heard on the debut a mixture of depressive black metal and melodic doom in which Katatonia could not be avoided, and on the second the same mixture, slow and heavy passages colliding with fast outbursts. Marchisio himself has named Black Sabbath as an influence, along with old-school punk, post-punk and the dark wave of the 1980s.
The method is a charcoal clamp. The burner stacks cut timber into a mound, seals it under turf, lights it from the inside and then spends days starving it of air, so that the wood never breaks out into the open flame of a pyre but chars slowly in the dark and comes out as black fuel that burns hotter than the timber ever could. The records from Piacenza treat the material of the second wave the same way: the tremolo and the shriek, which in the north had been played at the speed of a fire taking hold, are banked under leaden mid-tempo riffs and left to smoulder across songs of seven to thirteen minutes, and what the listener carries away is not the blaze but the fuel.
A black metal riff played at half speed is not black doom. Black doom begins at the point where the slowness is what makes the cold impossible to bear.
Ilse Brandt, KaosMetal
Love's Burial Ground on Adipocere in 2004, Negative Megalomania on Avantgarde Music in 2007 and the move to the Polish label Agonia Records for Under Saturn Retrograde in 2011 took the band toward the gothic rock and dark wave in its background, with clean vocals set beside the harsh ones. Nightfloating, released by Agonia on 12 July 2024, closes its six tracks on the ten and a half minutes of "A Despicable Gift", and not every critic followed: reviewing it for Metal.de in August 2024, Oliver Schreyer gave it seven out of ten, heard "A Chill That You Can't Taint" reuse the opening riff of "Reject Existence" and found the album, for all its playing, too predictable.
The band's history also holds a record that belongs in any entry on it. In a Metal Storm interview published in July 2004, Marchisio announced that Forgotten Tomb would support the German black metal band Absurd, classified as right-wing extremist by the intelligence service of the state of Thuringia, at shows in Italy that September. In January 2007 Metal.de asked him about his 2003 stint on guitar with the Italian band Front Towards Enemy, whose later line-up had appeared on a compilation called "White Death"; he answered that he had only helped a friend at a short reunion, that the band was unpolitical, that he took no interest in politics and that his personal views had nothing to do with Forgotten Tomb. In April 2007 the German magazine Legacy explained on its forum that it had asked for those links to be cleared up before an interview and, after Marchisio's reply, chose not to run one, and a statement signed by Marchisio on behalf of the band, posted in the same thread, called Forgotten Tomb unpolitical and said it could not be labelled a Nazi band. On 25 October 2013 Belltower News reported that Forgotten Tomb was billed for the fifth Fireblade Force Festival, a national socialist black metal event planned for 2 November 2013 in the Barnim district of Brandenburg, and wrote that the band had long been known for far-right remarks by its members and for contacts and personal links into that scene, noting that its bassist had played since 2013 in The True Endless, also on the bill. The organiser called the festival off on 1 November, and the Brandenburg state intelligence report for 2013 lists Forgotten Tomb among the bands of that prevented concert in Finowfurt.
Frost at funeral pace: Dolorian, Nortt and The Ruins of Beverast
Formed in Oulu in 1997 as a duo of Anti Ittna Haapapuro and Ari Kukkohovi, with Jussi Ontero joining on keyboards a year later, the Finnish project from the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, Dolorian, recorded When All the Laughter Has Gone in April 1998 and saw it released by the Italian label Wounded Love Records in 1999, fifty-three minutes in seven tracks, opening with "Desolated Colours" and ending on the eleven minutes of "With Scorn / Perish". A second album under the band's own name followed in 2001. After Voidwards in 2006 the band went on hold.
Played at the pace of a dirge, the shriek stops being an attack and becomes a climate.
Working alone since 1995 and describing what he plays as pure depressive black funeral doom metal, the Danish musician whose only public name is the name of his project, Nortt, stripped the black half of the hybrid down to its colour and its temperature, which in the reading of two Metal.de reviewers means drums beating slowly like a failing heart, dark ambient and a lone piano, breathed vocals, and guitars that hold their chords beneath cold keyboard melodies until they frost over instead of riffing. Gudsforladt came out as a vinyl edition of 350 copies on Sombre Records in 2003, a year before its first CD issue. Ligfærd appeared first as a cassette on Possession Productions in 2005 and on CD through Total Holocaust Records in 2006, and reviewing it in July 2007 Metal.de counted it among the darkest and most life-denying albums of all time. Galgenfrist followed on Avantgarde Music at the end of 2007, with "Til gravens vi" and the ten minutes of "Over mit lig" at its centre.
Founded in 2003 by Alexander von Meilenwald after the break-up of Nagelfar, the one-man project that plays every instrument in the studio, The Ruins of Beverast, builds the heaviest structures in this list. Rain Upon the Impure, the second album, released by Ván Records at the end of 2006, runs seven tracks and almost eighty minutes, five of them past thirteen minutes, from "50 Forts Along the Rhine" to "Soliloquy of the Stigmatised Shepherd" at fifteen and a half, each long piece raised like an earthwork, one slow ramp of riff heaped on the last until the black metal at the summit stands above everything around it, with two short interludes, "Rapture" and "Balnaa-Kheil the Bleak", set between the long pieces rather than parked in front of them.
Woods of Ypres: black doom in Ontario
Formed in 2002 in Windsor, Ontario, by David Gold with Aaron Palmer and Brian McManus, the Canadian band whose name carries a First World War battlefield, Woods of Ypres, released Pursuit of the Sun & Allure of the Earth on Krankenhaus Records in 2004 and Woods III: The Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues at the end of 2007, then put out Woods IV: The Green Album in November 2009, which Earache reissued after signing the band in 2010, with Gold the one constant member.
Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light was written and recorded in six weeks of July and August 2011 at Beach Road Studios in Goderich with the producer Siegfried Meier, and for the first time Gold shared the writing, with the guitarist Joel Violette, from Gold's "Lightning & Snow" to Violette's "Career Suicide (Is Not Real Suicide)". David Gold was killed on 21 December 2011, aged 31, in a collision on Highway 400 south of Barrie, Ontario, as the Barrie Examiner reported two days later. Earache released the album in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2012, Violette later said there could be no Woods of Ypres album without Gold, and in 2013 the record won the Juno Award, the Canadian music industry's annual prize, for Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year.
The roster in dates
| Year | Band | Record | Label | Two songs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Katatonia | Dance of December Souls | No Fashion | "Velvet Thorns (of Drynwhyl)", "Tomb of Insomnia" |
| 1994 | Bethlehem | Dark Metal | Adipocere | "Apocalyptic Dance", "Gepriesen sei der Untergang" |
| 1999 | Dolorian | When All the Laughter Has Gone | Wounded Love | "Desolated Colours", "With Scorn / Perish" |
| 2003 | Forgotten Tomb | Springtime Depression | Adipocere | "Todestrieb", "Subway Apathy" |
| 2006 | The Ruins of Beverast | Rain Upon the Impure | Ván | "50 Forts Along the Rhine", "Soliloquy of the Stigmatised Shepherd" |
| 2007 | Nortt | Galgenfrist | Avantgarde Music | "Til gravens vi", "Over mit lig" |
| 2012 | Woods of Ypres | Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light | Earache | "Lightning & Snow", "Career Suicide (Is Not Real Suicide)" |
| 2024 | Forgotten Tomb | Nightfloating | Agonia | "Nightfloating", "A Despicable Gift" |
Two roads lead out of this roster. One runs back up the tempo into depressive black metal, which claims Forgotten Tomb's early records as its own. The other keeps the weight, drops the voice altogether and ends in instrumental Doom Metal, where there is no shriek left for the frost to travel on and the riff has to carry the whole load alone.
