Drone Metal

Drone metal is a pinnacle of acquired taste. Characterized by fuzzy chords being held out for full minutes, laden with feedback and reverb, sometimes at paces too slow to warrant percussive instruments... drone metal is not for everybody. Behind drone metal's visage of being a seemingly impenetrable niche of near-music, however, lies a booming counterculture stuck somewhere between doom metal, ambient, and post-rock. So let's check it out.

Drone metal, as its name would imply, takes its notes from drone music. Drone is a subgenre of experimental music focusing on long, sustained tones and the repetition of singular notes. Many types of classical and regional music make usage of a single continuous drone as a backbone for melody and rhythm, but drone as a genre focuses on the drone alone, creating a hypnotic, dreamlike atmosphere. Also influential on the genre's foundations are ambient and noise. Ambient music places its focus on sound over structure, with both conventional and unconventional methods of creating minimalist, moody soundscapes. Dark ambient is particularly influential on drone metal. Noise music, on the other hand, is exactly what it would sound like: experimental music that strays from all conventions of what counts as "music," preferring to assemble sounds in a thick, harsh wall. Combining these three experimental styles with doom metal birthed the microcosm that is drone metal.

In the early 1990s, a band called Earth arrived onto the scene with a few demos that would shape the drone metal scene at large. The sludge metal band Melvins would soon create a masterwork of the whole genre, their 1992 record Lysol. Alongside these two, other bands would have similar ideas: Naked City, Black Mayonnaise, Circle, Boris, Thrones, and Corrupted would all contribute to the growing drone metal sound over the course of the decade. Lo-fi compilations such as The Way of Nihilism were made early on in the style's development too, mirroring the underground boom of the noise rock and No Wave movements of the late 1970s. Though, from a metal perspective, drone metal was drawing primarily from doom metal, the genre would combine with a plethora of others over the timeline of its existence, most notably crossovers within sludge metal, post-metal, black metal, and avant-garde metal (to which drone metal owes a lot of its fundamental ideas). 

Recommended '90s drone metal listening:

1. Melvins - Lysol (1992)

2. Naked City - Leng Tch'e (1992)

3. Earth - Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (1993)

4. Corrupted - Paso inferior (1997)

5. Boris - Amplifier Worship (1998)

In the 2000s, the lines between drone metal and post-metal were blurred even further, leading to the beginning of a wave of music with many names. Some call it metalgaze or doomgaze, alluding to the washy, reverby subgenre of alternative rock known as shoegaze, while others call it post-doom or simply atmospheric metal. Whatever the name, bands like Jesu, The Angelic Process, Nadja, and Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine all encapsulated this new sound. Drone metal as a whole flourished in its own niche sort of way, with the addition of the genre's biggest claim to fame: a band called Sunn O))). Alongside them were other more "traditional" drone metal bands such as Black Boned Angel and Khanate. Bands like Boris and Corrupted continue strong into the decade, where others like Earth and Melvins would go on to pursue a multitude of other genres (post-rock and stoner metal, respectively).

Recommended '00s drone metal listening:

1. Boris - Boris at Last: Feedbacker (2003)

2. Jesu - Jesu (2004)

3. Nadja - Touched (2007)

4. The Angelic Process - Weighing Souls With Sand (2007)

5. Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions (2009)

The 2010s brought a renaissance of heavy drone metal into the fray, with sludgy, funeral doom metal-influenced bands such as Bismuth, Conan, Drowning Horse, Bongripper, and Hell rearing their unforgiving brand onto the populace. Other genre combinations began to flourish, such as the introduction of post-industrial music into the drone metal formula. Bands such as Author & Punisher, The Body, and Khost would introduce elements of death industrial and power electronics, creating an even bleaker, colder atmosphere. Other bands stuck to the ambient/post-rock side of things such as Wolvserpent, Wrekmeister Harmonies, and Big Brave. Others still would push the boundaries even further, such as the unlikely blend of drone metal and psychedelic rock seen in the releases of Bong.

Recommended '10s drone metal listening:

1. Bong - Mana-Yood-Sushai (2012)

2. Hell - Hell III (2012)

3. The Body - I Shall Die Here (2014)

4. Bismuth - The Slow Dying of the Great Barrier Reef (2018)

5. Big Brave - A Gaze Among Them (2019)

As a whole, drone metal remains a small but consistent slice of the metal pie. As specific of a niche as it serves to fill, drone metal does so with the utmost ability to push its own limits, just as the experimental music it takes from as influences. Drone metal, despite being all about long, sustained notes (not unlikely to last for hours on end!), will never get stale as long as there are musicians willing to look beyond the narrow, confining conventions of "music."