Twenty-four, then seven, then three. Those are the places reached on Billboard's Heatseekers Albums chart, the list that ranks artists who have never entered the top hundred of the Billboard 200, by Soma in 2013, Grief's Infernal Flower in 2015 and Eternal Return in 2018, and the band that made the climb, Windhand of Richmond, Virginia, got there without shortening a single song, closing its first record for Relapse on a piece that runs thirty minutes and twenty-nine seconds. The numbers went down. The weight never did.
Think of a dry stone wall on a hill farm, laid without a spoonful of mortar, where every stone holds by its own weight and by the weight of the stones set above it, so that nothing glues the courses together and nothing needs to, and a stone that was too light for its place is found out by the first hard winter and lies in the grass by spring. That is how a roster of women in doom has to be built if it is to stand. No stone is in this wall because of who carried it. Each one is there because of what it weighs: a label, a year, a record, two songs, and enough mass to bear the course above.
The women below hold every position in the wall and not only the microphone: a second guitar and a Hammond organ in a Dorset band that had just lost its guitarist, the voice and the guitar of a California trio, the bass under a Yorkshire institution, two violins in Utah, a flute in Toronto. What the tag on the sleeve is worth is argued in female Fronted Doom Metal. Here we go by the records.
No stone is in this wall because of who carried it. Each one is there because of what it weighs.
Windhand, the base course
Formed in Richmond in 2008 around the singer Dorthia Cottrell and the guitarist Garrett Morris, with Ryan Wolfe behind the kit from 2010, the Virginia quintet issued its self-titled debut on Forcefield Records in 2012 and then signed to Relapse for Soma, released on 17 September 2013, six songs that open on "Orchard" and end on "Boleskine", half an hour in which, as Pitchfork heard it, the band keeps restating its case, the riff set down, set down again and packed in until it stops reading as a riff and starts reading as ground. Rolling Stone placed it third among the metal albums of that year.
Jack Endino, the producer of the first Nirvana album, took the band into Soundhouse Studios for Grief's Infernal Flower, released on 18 September 2015, a record that opens on "Two Urns" and "Forest Clouds" and buries its two longest pieces, "Hesperus" and "Kingfisher", each past fourteen minutes, deep in its second half; it reached seventh on the Heatseekers chart.
All my favorite songs, all the ones that have really moved me, have always been kind of "dark" or mournful or even kinda scary, whether that be played through full stacks or on an acoustic guitar.
Dorthia Cottrell, interviewed by Kim Kelly, Vice, 14 February 2015
Endino produced Eternal Return as well, released on 5 October 2018 with "Halcyon" at the front and "Grey Garden" behind it, and the band, by then a four-piece with Morris the only guitarist, carried it to third on the Heatseekers chart, the last and highest step of the climb that opens this piece; in Pitchfork's reading, Cottrell had never sounded so convincing as the leader of a rock band. What followed was the road rather than the studio. Parker Chandler, bassist since 2013, parted with the band in 2024, Creep Purple Records announced a vinyl edition of the 2012 to 2014 outtakes Songs From The Satan House that October, and in February 2025 Windhand announced nine European dates in nine days for that June, with Download, Freak Valley, Graspop and Hellfest among them.
Cottrell's own records run beside the band's. Her self-titled solo debut, released by Forcefield Records on 3 March 2015, sets her voice against an acoustic guitar with none of the amplifiers behind it, and Death Folk Country followed on Relapse on 21 April 2023, "Harvester" and "Family Annihilator" among its songs. It is the same stone, dressed on another face.
In the engine room: guitar and bass
Recruited in August 2003 from Sourvein and the band 13, after Tim Bagshaw's exit had left Jus Oborn without his writing partner, the guitarist Liz Buckingham had been rehearsing with Electric Wizard for only days when the sessions for We Live, released by Rise Above in 2004, began, and every original song on Witchcult Today, recorded with Liam Watson at Toe Rag Studios and released on 20 November 2007, carries her name beside Oborn's, "Dunwich" and "Satanic Rites of Drugula" among them, with her Hammond organ laid under the two guitars like a leaden footing under the first course. Time to Die, released by Spinefarm on 29 September 2014, has "Incense for the Damned" and "I Am Nothing", and it reached sixty-fourth on the Billboard 200.
Formed in California in 1993 around its singer, guitarist and principal songwriter Lori S., the trio Acid King has kept her riffs as the load-bearing course of every record: Busse Woods, issued by Man's Ruin in 1999 with Billy Anderson engineering, runs "Silent Circle" into "Drive Fast, Take Chances", and Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere, released by the Finnish label Svart on 17 April 2015, brought Anderson back as producer, with a Hammond B-3 played by Rafa Martinez on "Red River" and "Laser Headlights" beside it.
Bass is the stone nobody looks at and the one carrying the rest. Lena Abé took it in 2007 in My Dying Bride, the Yorkshire band whose Peaceville records had helped lay down the slowest extremity fifteen years before she arrived, and she is on For Lies I Sire, released on 23 March 2009, where "My Body, a Funeral" opens the record and "Bring Me Victory" went out as an EP, with Katie Stone on violin and keyboards for that album alone. Abé is still on bass on A Mortal Binding, released by Nuclear Blast on 19 April 2024. When Aaron Stainthorpe's departure was confirmed on 9 October 2025, the bass was one of the stones that stayed where it was set.
Voices laid on the riff
Renamed from Raven in 1998, the Helsinki funeral doom band Shape of Despair took in Natalie Koskinen, then credited as Natalie Safrosskin, that same year, and on Angels of Distress, released by Spikefarm on 25 September 2001, her voice runs beside Pasi Koskinen's growls through five funereal songs and fifty-five minutes, from "Fallen" to "Night's Dew", at a pace so glacial that each chord settles fully before the next is lifted into place. She is still in the line-up on Return to the Void, released by Season of Mist on 25 February 2022.
Begun in the winter of 2012 by Leif Edling, the bassist and founder of Candlemass, the Swedish band Avatarium found its singer in Jennie-Ann Smith, and she has fronted every record since: the Moonhorse EP in September 2013, the self-titled debut on Nuclear Blast that November opening on "Moonhorse" and "Pandora's Egg", and, after the move to AFM Records in 2022, Between You, God, the Devil and the Dead in 2025. Edling later stopped playing live with the band for health reasons. The voice stayed.
Formed in Cittadella in 2014, the Italian quartet Messa and its singer Sara Bianchin released Close on Svart on 11 March 2022, recorded in the spring of 2021 with an oud and a mandolin in Alberto Piccolo's hands and a duduk played by Giorgio Trombino, "Pilgrim" and "Rubedo" among its ten tracks. The Spin, released by Metal Blade on 11 April 2025, has "At Races" and "Fire on the Roof", and it made Decibel's top forty albums of 2025.
Violin, flute and organ
Founded in Salt Lake City in 2005 by the guitarist and singer Rebecca Vernon, the Utah band SubRosa built its heaviest records on two violins, Sarah Pendleton's from the start and Kim Pack's from 2008, and on More Constant Than the Gods, released by Profound Lore on 17 September 2013, the violins run across the riffs of "The Usher", fourteen minutes long, and "Ghosts of a Dead Empire" like through-stones, the long flat slabs a waller sets across the full width of a wall to tie its two faces into one weighted mass. Decibel ranked it thirty-fifth among the metal albums of the 2010s. The band split in 2019. At the end of 2025 it announced a reunion for the Fire in the Mountains festival of July 2026.
Formed in Toronto in 2006, the Canadian band Blood Ceremony has Alia O'Brien on vocals, flute and organ, three places in the wall held by one musician, and Living with the Ancients, released by Rise Above on 1 March 2011 and produced by Sanford Parker in Chicago, opens on "The Great God Pan" and carries "Oliver Haddo", named for the magician of Somerset Maugham's The Magician. The Old Ways Remain followed in May 2023.
The wall as it stands
| Band | Musician | Role | Record | Label, year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acid King | Lori S. | guitar, vocals | Busse Woods | Man's Ruin, 1999 |
| Shape of Despair | Natalie Koskinen | vocals | Angels of Distress | Spikefarm, 2001 |
| Electric Wizard | Liz Buckingham | guitar, organ | Witchcult Today | Rise Above, 2007 |
| My Dying Bride | Lena Abé | bass | For Lies I Sire | Peaceville, 2009 |
| Blood Ceremony | Alia O'Brien | vocals, flute, organ | Living with the Ancients | Rise Above, 2011 |
| Windhand | Dorthia Cottrell | vocals | Soma | Relapse, 2013 |
| SubRosa | Rebecca Vernon, Sarah Pendleton, Kim Pack | guitar and vocals, violins | More Constant Than the Gods | Profound Lore, 2013 |
| Avatarium | Jennie-Ann Smith | vocals | Avatarium | Nuclear Blast, 2013 |
| Messa | Sara Bianchin | vocals | Close | Svart, 2022 |
Read down the years and the wall rises course by course, from Busse Woods in 1999 to The Spin in April 2025, and not one stone in it was set there by a tag; each record holds its place as a dry stone wall holds on a hillside, by its own weight and the weight of everything laid after it. Pull any one of them out and the course above it sags. There is no mortar anywhere.
Two of these stones, the Yorkshire one and the Finnish one, belong to a longer wall of their own, and it is followed band by band in the Death Doom Metal Bands.
