On 10 March 2020, one day before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, the Warsaw quartet Dopelord released Sign of the Devil, six songs recorded the month before at Tall Pine Records and Nebula Studio with the engineer Haldor Grunberg. Within days there was nowhere left to play them. The record travelled anyway, through Bandcamp, into a genre that had been building for twenty years on two continents.
We call that genre stoner doom, and it is the point where two lines cross. From stoner metal it takes the fuzz pedal, the valve amplifier driven past its limit, the cannabis imagery and the long jam, all of it traced back to the California desert in where the fuzz came from; from doom it takes the tempo, the Sabbath riff slowed to a dirge until each chord has time to settle, and the conviction that a song is finished only when the listener has stopped expecting it to change. The stoner bands kept the groove moving. The bands in this article let it sink like tar.
Heard at its best, stoner doom sounds less like a band playing than like a hive at dusk, the whole colony gone still on the comb and every body in it vibrating on the same low frequency, one note held by thousands of wings for so long that it stops being a sound and becomes the temperature of the air, felt in the chest before the ear has decided what it is hearing. The riff is that note. The repetition is the colony refusing to let it drop. It is the method every band below shares, and it is why a Warsaw record of 2020 and a North Carolina record of 2007 can stand in the same crate.
The reference points, and the American hum
Two bands set the terms before most of the groups in this article had tuned a guitar, and both have their own histories on these pages. Sleep, the San Jose trio whose single hour-long song was refused by London Records and finally issued in full as Dopesmoker by Tee Pee Records in 2003, and Electric Wizard, the Dorset band whose Dopethrone came out through Rise Above Records in 2000, are the two poles against which everything that follows is measured: the first for the idea that one riff can carry an hour, the second for the idea that the riff should come out of the speakers bruised, dirty and dragged across the gravel of its own distortion.
Formed in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1998 as a side project of Dave "Dixie" Collins, bassist and singer of the sludge band Buzzoven, which broke up the same year, Weedeater carried the Sabbath riff down to the Atlantic coast and worked it through ...And Justice for Y'all in 2001 and Sixteen Tons in 2003 before Southern Lord Records issued God Luck and Good Speed in 2007, the first the trio made with Steve Albini behind the desk. Goliathan, the most recent, came out through Season of Mist in 2015. There has been no studio album since. The press gave the trio a label of its own, weed metal.
The Chicago instrumentalists of Bongripper, formed in 2005 and instrumental from the start, took the other road out of Sleep and removed everything from the song except the riff itself, driving each one into the ground like a pile driver sinking a weighted steel column into wet earth, the same blow repeated until the column stops moving and only then the next. Satan Worshipping Doom was self-released in 2010; Miserable in 2014 and Terminal in 2018 came out on the band's own imprint, The Great Barrier Records, and Empty followed on 19 April 2024 after a gap of six years.
Founded in Richmond, Virginia, in 2008 and signed to Relapse Records in 2013, Windhand put a singer at the centre of the sound, Dorthia Cottrell, who with the guitarist Garrett Morris remains from the 2008 line-up. Soma reached number 24 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart, Billboard's list for acts that have never reached the top hundred of its main album chart, in 2013; Grief's Infernal Flower went to number 7 on the same chart and number 16 on the Hard Rock Albums chart in 2015, and Eternal Return followed in 2018.
One note held by thousands of wings, until it stops being a sound and becomes the temperature of the air.
Europe takes up the note
The Gothenburg trio Monolord, Thomas V Jäger on guitar and vocals, Mika Häkki on bass and Esben Willems on drums, formed in 2013 and issued its debut Empress Rising through RidingEasy Records on 1 April 2014. The band moved to Relapse for No Comfort in September 2019 and Your Time to Shine in 2021, the second of those its fifth full-length.
Founded in Liverpool in 2006 by the guitarist and singer Jon Davis, first as a two-piece with the drummer Richie Grundy, the band that calls itself Conan swings its riffs like a felling axe, one stroke, a long wait, the trunk going over, a sound the music press has labelled caveman battle doom. Monnos arrived through Burning World Records in 2012; Napalm Records then issued Blood Eagle in 2014, Revengeance in 2016, Existential Void Guardian in 2018 and Evidence of Immortality in 2022.
| Band | Country | Key record | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electric Wizard | England | Dopethrone | 2000 |
| Sleep | United States | Dopesmoker | 2003 |
| Weedeater | United States | God Luck and Good Speed | 2007 |
| Bongripper | United States | Satan Worshipping Doom | 2010 |
| Mars Red Sky | France | Mars Red Sky | 2011 |
| Stoned Jesus | Ukraine | Seven Thunders Roar | 2012 |
| Windhand | United States | Soma | 2013 |
| Monolord | Sweden | Empress Rising | 2014 |
| Conan | England | Blood Eagle | 2014 |
| Belzebong | Poland | Greenferno | 2015 |
| Elephant Tree | England | Habits | 2020 |
| Dopelord | Poland | Sign of the Devil | 2020 |
Further out on the edges of the genre stand three bands that brought something other than weight. The Bordeaux trio Mars Red Sky, Julien Pras, Jimmy Kinast and Mathieu Gazeau, formed in 2007 and released a self-titled debut in 2011. Stoned Jesus, founded in Kyiv in 2009 by Igor Sydorenko, went from First Communion in 2010 to Seven Thunders Roar in 2012 and The Harvest in 2015, and in 2017 became the first Ukrainian rock band to tour South America. The London band Elephant Tree released Habits through Holy Roar Records on 24 April 2020, and The Obelisk called it one of the best heavy rock releases of that year.
Dopelord, and the Polish hive
Founded in 2010, the Warsaw quartet spent its first decade far from the big labels: Paweł Mioduchowski on guitar and vocals, Grzegorz Pawłowski on guitar, Piotr Zin on bass, vocals and mellotron, Piotr Ochociński on drums, releasing Magick Rites in 2012 and Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult in 2014 on their own and building an audience through Bandcamp rather than through any office. Dopelord did not wait for a contract.
Children of the Haze, recorded at Nebula Studio in October 2016 with Haldor Grunberg, who recorded, mixed and mastered it, and released on 16 January 2017, runs six songs and a little over forty minutes, opening on the eight minutes of "Navigator" and passing through "Scum Priest" and the title track. Sign of the Devil, issued through Green Plague Records, kept the same engineer and the same six-song shape three years later, from "The Witching Hour Bell" and "Hail Satan" to "Heathen" and the ninety-four seconds of "Headless Decapitator" that close it, and the 2021 EP Reality Dagger, three songs cut at the same February 2020 sessions, held the band's place through the months when no one could tour.
Released on 6 October 2023 through Blues Funeral Recordings, Songs for Satan was the fifth full-length, and its release notes describe a band mining decades of Polish Catholic oppression for lyrical fuel and set it beside Electric Wizard, Windhand, Bongzilla and Acid King. The Obelisk, writing about the band in December 2025, heard Sabbath worship with a gleeful blasphemy on top. The same notes credit the band with an equal mastery of lumbering plod and silvery hooks, and that pairing, a riff dragged and leaden underneath a melody a room could sing back, is rare enough in this genre to explain why Season of Mist came calling eighteen months later.
Poland has a second band in the hive. Belzebong, formed in Kielce in 2008, has never used a singer, working through Sonic Scapes and Weedy Grooves in 2011, Greenferno in 2015 and Light the Dankness in 2018, then signed to the Italian label Heavy Psych Sounds in November 2025 and returned in 2026 with The End Is High, four songs in thirty-four minutes.
The present, to 2026
Monolord went to Ashland, Oregon, in the autumn of 2025 to make its sixth full-length with the producer Sylvia Massy, and Relapse released Neverending on 29 May 2026. Conan issued its sixth album, Violence Dimension, through Heavy Psych Sounds on 25 April 2025. Windhand took on the bassist Thomas Hamilton and the guitarist Leanne Martz in 2025 and toured Europe that June, and Bongripper followed Empty on 28 August 2026 with Live in Leipzig, taped at Naumanns Tanzlokal in October 2025.
The Europeans have moved up a tier. Dopelord signed to Season of Mist in April 2025, which made the band a labelmate of Stoned Jesus, marked fifteen years with an autumn tour that included a date on 15 November on Orange Goblin's farewell run, and spent the early months of 2026 opening for Napalm Death on the Campaign for Musical Destruction tour. Stoned Jesus followed Songs to Sun in 2025 with Songs to Moon, announced for 16 October 2026. Elephant Tree toured Europe in April 2026 with new material in progress.
Sleep itself, the first pole of this whole story, released Hempispheres through Third Man Records on 3 September 2026, with Al Cisneros now joined by Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums and Bubba Dupree on guitar. Green Lung, which released Necropolitan through Nuclear Blast on 11 September 2026, bent the same riff towards English folk horror and belongs to another branch. The hive is still humming, and the records that hold its note longest are gathered in the Best Stoner Metal Albums.
