We Are All Doomed: 10 Doom Metal Tracks to Ride Out the End

The world is irreversibly fucked. Sure, every generation has had its own hyperbolic exclamations of the end being nigh, but millennials are experiencing some seriously unprecedented shit that just can't be overlooked. Don't buy it? Let's run the numbers.

We have warmed the globe enough to finally push the polar ice caps to a melting point with no return. Russia is (once again) losing its imperial mind as Ukraine continues to crumble from within. Thailand put on its martial law pants yesterday. The U.S. still has its pee-pee stuck in the proverbial bear traps that are Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention its involvement in a plethora of other nefarious and costly international actions.

We don't have the bandwidth nor continence to thoroughly delve into the government's transgressions against its own people as of late. That Malaysian airliner is still missing. Everyone's got cancer. We don't have an affordable hovercar option yet. Apparently the Fukushima power plant is still billowing radiation into the ocean like a severed artery in a Tarantino flick. What the fuck is MERS? More shooting sprees? We could continue, but we're sure you're already typing up some barbed comment about fear-mongering liberals or some self-righteous treatise about the nature of Republicans. The truth is, we're all a part of the problem. And we're getting exactly what we've asked for.

So, as we see it, the only reasonable thing to do is try to enjoy the plod toward certain doom as much as possible. We here at County Grind have absolutely no intention of going out with a whimper. We'll be busy worshiping amplifiers, bathing in glorious distortion, and drowning out the sounds of our own destruction with some tailor-made tunes. Perhaps you'd like to join the party? Turn up as we go down with this playlist of 15 top-notch doom tracks.

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10. Candlemass - "Demon's Gate"

Candlemass is the band many credit with actually providing the doom-metal genre with a name and are without stylistic peers in their use of epic melody over Sabbath-influenced sludge. Though the band has had many frontmen, Messiah Marcolin's operatic contributions are regarded as legend in many circles.

9. Witch - "Seer"

All of you '90s revivalists are so busy buying repressed Dinosaur Jr. records to play on your Crosley turntables that you've probably overlooked how much cooler J. Mascis' other project Witch is. While we're well aware that this is a most unpopular opinion, we'll take Mascis the doom drummer over Mascis the alt-rock moaner any day.

8. Electric Wizard - "Funeralopolis"

Electric Wizard's Dopethrone is a considered a sacred document of the doom/sludge/stoner sub-genus of metal, and may well be the heaviest album ever recorded. The mercilessly crushing guitars that kick in at 1:30 on "Funeralopolis" are the actual sound of the planet ceasing its rotation.

7. Cavity - "Set In Cinders"

Cavity was arguably the heaviest band to ever creep forth from the swamps of Miami and this track is one of the band's most unrelentingly decimating. An absolutely disgusting display of sonic nihilism.

6. Black Sabbath - "Into the Void"

No blurb required.

See also: Top Ten Black Sabbath-Influenced Bands From South Florida

5. Crowbar - "...And Suffer As One"

Crowbar may well have been, physically speaking, the heaviest band to walk the earth at one time. However, lineup changes have since slimmed down the New Orleans bred doom-sludge titan's curb weight. Fortunately, the band remains the aural equivalent of an ocean freighter full of Mack trucks colliding with a cruise ship full of steel girders.

4. Cough - "Mind Collapse"

This group has distilled the heaviest aspects of all metal genres into a chopped and screwed assault that lumbers along like an unholy death-bent sonic behemoth. Cough once played Churchill's Pub in Miami and brought such an overwhelming war of aural attrition to the stage that I thought I was actually going to die.

3. Pentagram - "Be Forewarned"

There are few stories in music sadder than that of Pentagram, and namely that of the band's frontman Bobby Liebling, who was the subject of a must-see documentary entitled Last Days Here. It chronicled the singer's life over several years of living in obscurity, engrossed in his addictions.

Pentagram truly should have been the American answer to Black Sabbath in the early '70s. Fortunately, the band is now championed by a metal community that has attempted to fix the mistake (which was greatly circumstantial) before the need for posthumous tributes.

2. Eyehategod - "Man is too Ignorant to Exist"

No band better distills pure, unbridled nihilism into oppressive sound than New Orleans' Eyehategod. Though the band tragically lost drummer Joey LaCaze in 2013, it has continued to tour and record and remains the undisputed perfecter of sludge metal.

1. Saint Vitus - "Born Too Late"

Ozzy is known as the Prince of Darkness, but we all know that he is actually the King of Darkness. With that said, Scott "Wino" Weinrich would have to be the actual Prince of Darkness.

The singer/songwriter/guitarist helped to sculpt the doom metal sound with his contributions to bands including Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, and Spirit Caravan, and has undoubtedly defined the archetype for doom guitar sounds. May we all look as awesome as Wino when we are his age, and may we all revel in the above posted holy document of doom.

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