A lot of dark, metal-inspired art these days tilts heavily towards horror vacui style busyness, but Russian artist Denis Forkas Kostromitin goes for thick atmosphere and brooding moodiness over fussy and intricate lines. Think black and doom metal versus technical death metal.

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I’m about to go on tour with my doom metal band, but this disgustingly cute animated short by Andy Martin has me cooing like a little girl. Don’t tell my bandmates.

Dark Castle is a duo from Saint Augustine, Florida, that makes sweaty, hallucinatory, heavy-as-hell doom metal. Frontwoman Stevie Floyd emasculates dudes with her dexterous riffage and gutteral growls while drummer Rob Shaffer uses a bass drum as a floor tom to ensure the destruction of your lower intestines. They’re touring through September. Don’t miss these guys live.

Macedônian brutal doom outfit Potop, whose name means ‘flood’ in Polish, is one of the most anguished, despairing, dirty, hateful bands of the genre since Burning Witch. Their down-tuned, down-tempo sludge is virulently anti-life, oozing out of the speakers like poison gas.

Finland’s Reverend Bizarre make classic, heavy-as-hell doom metal with clean vocals. The instrumentation still nods at more contemporary bands in the extreme reaches of the genre (Themgoroth, Skepticism, et al), but the Sabbath references are also there, and frontman Sami Hynninen (aka Sir Albert Witchfinder) sings in a snarling baritone that is reminiscent of classic hard rock bands like Uriah Heep and Captain Beyond.

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I’m totally on a huge doom metal kick lately, and Pantheist are one of the more interesting bands I’ve heard lately. Ostensibly a funeral doom band – meaning they play particularly slow and depressive metal – the London-based outfit from Belgium is not as harsh as most bands of this ilk, probably much to the chagrin of many metalheads. I am, however, a big fan of dramatic, theatrical music, so this floats my goat. The clean vocals, monk-like chanting, and occasional acoustic guitars are a nice contrast to the gothic organs, death-metal growls, and plodding pace that are usually associated with this genre.

The other night I got to check out legendary doom metal band Evoken. The five-piece, formed fourteen years ago, drew a tiny crowd in their home state of New Jersey (granted it was quite late and Longbranch isn’t exactly a bustling town), but they crushed the few heads that were there with down-tuned slabs of darkness. I’ve seen a lot of metal in my time, but I’ve rarely seen guys as serious, intimidating, and scary as these dudes — the bassist (David Wagner) looked like a satanic Joe the Plumber. It certainly helped that the venue still had its Halloween decorations up. For those not in the know, doom metal can refer to any variety of metal that is slow and particularly centered around lower-frequency sounds. Evoken’s particular brand is known as ‘funeral doom’, which translates as ‘say good-bye to bowel control’, a sub-genre of death metal that includes bands like Thergothon and Skepticism.