The Doom Doc Traces Metal’s Heaviest Genre To Its Roots
~Review by Shawn Gibson, with Billy Goate~
The story of doom begins two generations ago in the UK with a band called Black Sabbath. An important new film, titled The Doom Doc, seeks to connect the dots from those early days to the present, just one city away from Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, and Bill’s Birmingham roots. Directed by Connor Matheson, the Sheffield documentary was released the same year as Black Sabbath played their last.
DOOM /do͞om/
noun
death, destruction, or some other terrible fate
verb
condemn to certain death or destruction
The Doom Doc made its timely appearance in 2017; the year Birmingham legends Black Sabbath decided this was (really) The End. Roughly an hour-and-a-half north, we’re met by the hustle and bustle of Sheffield, England. Traffic is awash in a glowing red hue. Pedestrians going to and fro in crowded movements reminiscent of a group of ants.
Sheffield is home of Def Leppard, Human League, and Pulp for the mainstream. For the underground, it’s home to Kurokuma, Regulus, Ba'al, ARAE, and a steady swell of others who are making sure the UK doom scene stays on the map right where Black Sabbath left it.
We hear the voice of Craig Bagshaw, who lives in Sheffield and also fronts Holy Spider Promotions. He tells a tale of going to a party and one of his mates answering the door with a screwdriver in hand and a wild look in his eyes. Upon entry, Craig's friend tells him that he's got some MDMA and he's already toasted. There is an argument about quality of said MDMA. Craig's friend then takes his belt off and starts whipping his mate’s asses as if he was their dad! He screams some twisted gibberish about the Holy Order of the Spider.
Most everyone reading this understands how DIY metal is and even more so with doom and sludge. Jack Newnham of Slabdragger argues, "You’ve just got to make your own scene. You've got to make it happen! If you don't, there isn't a scene." Not surprisingly, heavy music for these folks has become a lifestyle. "It goes beyond hobby to a lifestyle," insists Slabdragger’s Sam Thredder.
Doom may mean different things to different people, but to George Ionita of Kurokuma and ARAE, "Doom’s like fucking apocalypse! It's like when it rains down on you, like when it's so heavy...When we come out with a heavy riff, we'll take off our plugs and stuff and just fucking mosh. That's what doom is! It's the pleasure inside, when I close my eyes playing the song and I see visuals.” George has an example in mind for us, too. “We've got this song about a fucking volcano. I close my eyes and I think about the volcano. I see the volcano overflowing, exploding. It's boss! It's all I've got to say."
Bandmate Joe E. Allen chimes in: “You don't go to doom-sludge shows to hear nice melodies and to hear someone singing nice songs. You go because you want feel like something heavy hitting you in the chest and that's the kind of shows we put on with Holy Spider. We don't want something that feels like a normal metal gig. We want to do something that feels like you’re on some other plane of existence. It's just mashed together into this experience of really loud, really. Really extreme heavy, affecting music."
Sheffield-based writer Rachel Genn serves as narrator of The Doom Doc, tracing doom metal all the way back to the almighty Black Sabbath. Sabbath changed everything and influenced everybody. They’re the first band to tune down, she recounts, because Tony Iommi had to in an attempt to play guitar after an unfortunate industrial accident clipped several of his fingertips. The incident is recounted in Tony’s own memoir, Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath (2011).
"That started the whole thing," affirms drummer Vinny Appice of Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heavy & Hell fame. "Tony plays in the pocket, playing these chords. You wanna hear doomy chords? Just let Tony riff for a little bit. It's amazing! That's why we call him Mr. Riff -- The Riff Doctor!"
"Yeah it's all about Sabbath really, isn't it, to be honest?” turning back to Slabdragger’s Sam. “Like, they just smoke weed all the time -- so did all the bands in the ‘60's -- and they make the music we pretty much make."
Rachel sums it up nicely for us all: "Doom metal is a subgenre of metal and involves very slow tempos, extremely loud volumes, repetitive, sometimes psychedelic, riffs, and long compositions. Lyrics dealing with evil negativity, spirituality or fantasy. It’s the musical equivalent of wading through black treacle."
I’ve not had an experience with black treacle, but it sounds tantalizing.
"I think like one of the main things with like the Conan guitar sound is, in general, that the fact that the guitar is tuned to drop F, which is totally, ridiculously low,” Says Chris Fielding of Conan and Skyhammer Studio with a chuckle.
Breaking down doom even further, the documentary tells us where the subgenres of sludge metal and stoner rock fit into the equation. "Sludge is like a wilder, greased-up version of doom,” we’re told. “It was Melvins from Washington who first begun the sound." The Seattle band, of course, famous for its punked-up doom tendencies. Other bands like as Eyehategod, Sourvein, Thou, and Crowbar would go on to define the genre even more distinctively.
Speaking of which, the great Kirk Windstein now makes an entrance to tells us about the sludgey roots of the venerated NOLA band Crowbar. "We had come from thrash backgrounds and all that kind of shit. We were like, We just want to do something completely different. We're burned out on it. We kinda just did the opposite of what everybody else was doing. Everybody else was tuned to E standard, playing 1000 miles an hour [so we] tuned it down to fucking B and drop A, playing super slow. We felt it made it a lot heavier.”
It appears that Kirk has been caught up in the Spirit at this moment in the interview, as he then exclaims: “God it's so fucking heavy! There's no way to describe it. I love heavy music!"
Cheers to Kirk Windstein and his earth-shakingly heavy riffs.
In the '90s there was another scene that must be mentioned to understand the evolution of doom metal. Several states down from Washington, another important development in heavy music was taking place in the much sunnier terrain of the southwest. Most famously, bands like Kyuss and Fu Manchu dabbled in fuzzy, tuned-down rock ‘n’ roll, which we simply call stoner rock. Stoner bands began appearing not only in California, Arizona, and Texas, but all around the freaking world.
Rob Graham of the Sheffield-based Wet Nuns and Drenge mentions being a little irked by the term stoner rock. “I think it's sad when any form of expression becomes just about the drugs that the people are into,” he says, while also noting: “It's pretty cool to smoke weed and listen to heavy music.” A better word to focus on? Blues. “To begin with we were sorta just a blues band. Like we were this thrashy kinda garage blues band. Bored, creative people that wanted to really [make] fuckingly stupid loud music.”
As the conversation goes along, we stumble upon a familiar theme: “Somewhere along the way we stumbled across this like kinda thing heavy, so heavy!” Rob says, notably enthused. “That's what we're about we were trying to be as heavy as we could be. It's like trying to run in a swimming pool! It's like being stuck in a tar pit and melting. That's what it conjures to me, anyway."
Anyone up for little skinny dip in a lake of treacle?
While “stoner” may be used in a derogatory sense, there’s no denying that marijuana has been a huge influence for doom metal and stoner rock bands alike, leading to the advent of stoner-doom. If Black Sabbath started doom’s love affair with their ‘71 single “Sweet Leaf,” bands like Electric Wizard and Sleep (with their monumental opus, Dopesmoker) forever married Mary Jane to The Riff. Others, such as Weedeater, Weedpecker, Bongzilla, BelzebonG, Dopelord, Dopethrone, have become important mile markers for the scene.
"Yeah the two seem to go hand in hand," says Kez Whelan of Terrorizer Magazine and Nottingham doom-grind act Shrykull. “Even though it's associated, that sweet leaf is the influence it isn't for everybody in the doom scene.”
Not everyone is down with the dope, however. Craig and Joe’s counterpart in Holy Spider Promotions, Terry Larkin, is introduced to us next. A UK doom fan, he is quite; a marijuana fan, not so much. "I was never really into the whole listening to music and smoking weed. It doesn't affect me nicely at all!” He does seem to contend that we can get high on the music composed by a musician under the influence. “They can actually channel it into the music effectively giving the listener that same feeling, too." Music makes you high? That’s a thesis we can get behind.
Kirk Windstein returns, because you know he has stories to tell from all those years hanging with Phil Anselmo, Pepper Keenan, Jimmy Bower, and the rest. "A lot of the guys did smoke weed,” he recalls, “so we were very creative sitting in a circle together with a good buzz, you know, coming up with shit that ended up being great. Down was much more of a collaboration and a jam session type thing. So we jammed from fuckin’ in the afternoon until whenever -- fuckin’ two o’clock in the morning. By then, everybody was tanked or high or whatever might be. We were able to come up with some great music doing it that way!"
By this point in The Doom Doc, we’re clear on at least one thing: doom, whatever the flavor, is about keeping it real. You’ll never be short of songs about the despair, depravity, and greed in this dog eat dog, eye for an eye world of ours. Doom metal bands are straight shooters. Whether it concerns religion, politics, or human nature, they call it like they see it.
"Bands like us and in our genre and the whole nine yards, we write and speak about reality," Kirk says. "A lot of people are scared of reality. The truth hurts. A lot of people try to sugarcoat it [and] sweep it under the rug. I think it's important. People always ask me, you know, ‘Can we talk about this, can we talk about that?’ I’m like, you can ask me anything you want. I might not answer, [but] chances are I'm gonna.” What he says next really resonated with me, as I’m sure it will with many of our readers: “I think it’s really for people struggling, you know, with depression -- or its alcohol and drugs. It's very important for them to realize they’re not alone and other people have been there."
Ethan McCarthy of Primitive Man chimes in: "We're writing about real life stuff, you know, so it's like a way to release bad feelings about life's shit, if that makes sense." It makes good sense to me.
"I don't know what we're into, but I fucking like it!" proclaims the great Bill Ward, adding: “You know, for me, playing in a loud, aggressive band, which is what Black Sabbath was, it’s the most comfortable, sonic, and heartfelt place one could be.”
Doomed & Stoned’s Elizabeth Gore and Hugo Guzman were fortunate enough to contribute to this portion of The Doom Doc, visiting the Black Sabbath drummer at his studio in Los Angeles.
This scene we invest in. We choose to nourish this garden.
"Doing a live gig,” Bill Ward says, “I need to thrash and to play and get everything out of me and reach that place of satisfaction inside. I like to come off the stage wasted...It’s very sexual. It’s like, you know, it’s the same thing we have to do when we get together and have sex!" Oh, Bill. You do have a way of leaving us speechless.
“Playing live on stage gives me that same feeling," Bill continues. "That's what music is supposed to do! It's supposed to go wherever it's supposed to. It’s pretty simple. I find no faults, no judgement, you know. Leave that to someone who’s more righteous. As far as I'm concerned, metal's fucking metal!"
Returning now to Joe E Allen from Kurokuma: “I remember Conan being extremely atmospheric, extremely heavy, extremely loud -- and that was only amplified by the way we were feeling. It was almost a transcendental experience. I was touched by the finger of doom that night!"
As a vested fan of the genre, this was pretty much my “Hell, yeah!” moment of the documentary. From start to finish, The Doom Doc is an evident work of passion. For fans of doom, it should be required watching. I’m not sure how newcomers to the genre will take it -- it’s hard to be objective when you listen to it, write about it, play it, and live it. Nonetheless, this 90-minute film is a welcome entry into a fairly small collection of documentaries on the heavy underground. Hopefully viewers will be inspired by it to dig into their own local scenes and do a little riff-mining of their own.
Upcoming Screenings of The Doom Doc
International Film Festival Rotterdam (Holland), January 2018
Desertfest London (UK), May 2018
Bristol (UK), May/June 2018
Brutal Assault (Czech Republic), August 2018
Look for The Doom Doc on DVD by this summer at www.theDoomDoc.com
UPDATE!
The Doom Doc DVD is now available pre-order, with worldwide shipping and streaming options availalbe. Visit: thedoomdoc.bigcartel.com
