On french doom band Monarch!’s February 28 release, Omens, the eardrum-bursting walls of fuzz and drone are served up on a (grimly unpolished) silver platter. Monarch recorded this, their sixth album, in four different countries before having it mixed by Sanford Parker and mastered by Collin Jordan (Twilight, Ministry, Yob). The album also features newest Monarch! member Rob Shaffer (Dark Castle, YOB), adding another delightfully unsettling element to the band’s repertoire.
To enter to win your own copy of Omens, tell us in the comments below why you enjoy drone/doom/sludge music. The contest will end at midnight on Friday, March 9 and the winner will be contacted within 48 hours of the end of the contest. As always, you must have a mailing address in the continental United States or Canada to enter.
LISTEN TO OMENS
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BUY OMENS
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Because it’s visceral yet at the same time oddly soothing. Put it on the turntable after a long day at work, and all frustrations and disappointments seem like something that happened to another person in another lifetime.
Love all these album giveaways, by the way.
At a very young age, I learned that the darkness wasn’t so scary if I made it my friend. Listening to doom/drone/sludge music is like popping a zit or lancing a boil, but in an emotional sense. Any lingering bile and hatred is forcibly, cathartically, ejected from my psyche, and the end result of my years of listening to this kind of music is that, in general, I’m much more emotionally well-adjusted than people who listen to happy music. Perhaps it’s counter-intuitive to some, but I think this music, if applied at the correct volume and for the proper amount of time (always?, is the best therapy there is. There is positive power in despair and anguish.
Because I like to get high also.
because i need music to play while i train my turtles for turtle racing!
Because the sound of droning chord played through an actual wall of amps is one of the most life affirming sounds you or I could possibly hear. Other music is great and can penetrate your psyche but drone penetrates both your psyche and your physical self. It’s a drug. A drug that rattles your bones.
This type of music makes a long day,not seem so long. Helps to put your mind at ease.
I enjoy these subgenres ’cause they’re dreadfully bleak, more so than the rest, and that includes black metal. The fact that its unsettling is what draws me to it.
i hate drone
Because it is incredibly heavy.
Strange question. I’ll devide it into its three parts:
Drone: First time I heard SUNN, it struck me as a complete experience. Tons of smoke, par cans and gut-wrenching bass. I tried to buy their album and take the experience home. Of course it didn’t work. Monarch on the other hand, which I think belongs to this category, manages to do this by using melody lines and more interesting vocals. And they have a similar live performance, even though they would benefit from more lights, more smoke and visual effects. Monarch is my prefered drone act by far, since they maintain interest wether it is at home or on stage.
Doom: The legacy of Black Sabath, need I say more? I don’t think so.
Sludge: Mixing a whole lot of sub-genres makes sense. I like punk, even though I do not listen to it. I like hardcore, even though it bores me after a while. Sludge is the melting pot where all good things meet. Stoner, doom, hardcore, punk, you name it. Sludge IS diversity.
If you met me, you wouldn’t think I would even consider listening to drone/doom/sludge music. When I’m filled with pain, this music knows how to fix it. Better yet, it understands that humans have a darker image most aren’t willing to face. When you’re stuck in a void, you need knowledgeable darkness in your personal space. To those who have accepted the dark, to those who know the light can lead to unwise guidance, we feel the droning sounds and act out in defiance. We are doomed from the get-go. And all the sludge created by chaos and mayhem will eventually reach everyone’s flow. This is why in darkness, I grow, and why I believe the Omens album is worthy to have and know.
Black Sabbath.
Man, I first heard Monarch! … I dunno, 6 or 7 years ago. It just popped up in my myspace account (ha!) … and I was blown away. Here was someone making the music I’d always thought possible in this genre. Steaming sludge, hard as nails yet oddly passive … laid back even … while tearing your ears off. It’s like a Zen koan. The less resistant, the stronger.
Others have tried this, but few can resist the urge to glam it up with “red-hot guitar licks.” Monarch! — thank Satan — has no need for such spandex cock-flaunting. This is the music of your dreams, secretly burning behind your sleeping eyes.
In other words, Me Like.
Cheers,
-Mat (aka Year5000)
It helps me escape.
There is no other sound in the world like the gristly rolling textures of guitars and bass at mind altering volumes trailing off into feedback.
I find doom/drone to be oddly soothing. Maybe it’s the repetition. At any rate, it inspires a dreamlike state for me. One that allows me to think and imagine in darker terms. I really like to listen to doom/drone when I’m working on art. For whatever reason, it seems to inspire me more than any other genre of music. I’m not necessarily a dark person but maybe the music takes me to some dark place, and out comes art.
‘Cause it’s, like, fuckin’ heavy, man.
Drone music is enjoyable to me because it has gone from simply being an element of music and grown to be a whole genre unto itself. It stretches across many boundaries and is not limited to being solely a metal thing. La Monte Young employed drones heavily, as do sitar players, both obvious examples of drone in a non-metal context. However, when a drone is placed in a metal context, it transforms: notes extend and fill the air, rattling the mind. There is much that one can examine about each note, each chord, the tones, and there are many interpretations of the sound being made. Some view it as boring and repetitive, claiming there isn’t enough going on to hold their attention; I beg to differ. There is plenty happening if one takes the time to examine it closer. Drone requires a certain level of patience and attention to detail to really pay off, and so few people are willing to actually listen. Those of us that do recognize the colossal power it wields. Drone on and on and on, forever.
Because somehow it’s able to seep through this thick skull of mine and bury itself deep in the pleasure centers of my brain and cause total relaxation.
That low rumble creates a physical sensation that’s unmatched by anything else.
Why do I love drone/doom/sludge? Because I love heavy music and nothing is heavier than drone doom.
Cuz that’s how I roll son!
I used to take generic benadryl and listen to Monarch! and feel itchy and tired and angry. I miss those days.
I like doom because you can spell it like this DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! to indicate heaviness! More ‘O’s equals more DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
the riffs, duh
Because girls don’t like guys who like real metal.
As slow and murky as the whole genre can be its still the heaviest in my opinion and its the only genre of music I can handle for more than 5+ min at a time. It requires your full attention and thats how I prefer to listen to music, like a therapy session.
Listening to a well executed drone album is the closest thing you can get to meditation without putting in all the effort. You drop the needle on a good drone album and time doesn’t flow right for a while.
Doom is different though, doom changes your ideas on weight of music. One day you happen to listen to an album that blew you away with it’s heaviness 10 years ago and it sounds like 1960s radio rock now that you are in a different orbit. Deep space doom.
And then there’s sludge, when you absolutely, positively need everyone in the room to squirm in their seats. Slow and abusive, just like prom night.
Helps me do the crossword with my grandfather’s ghost.
It’s the only suitable soundtrack for masturbating with sand paper.
’cause I’m the only girl around
Drone doom makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, kind of like a lightsaber through the pancreas.
I find that drone draws me in because it’s largely about creating an atmosphere and ethos. To me, the combination of huge walls of sound, low frequencies and sound textures create an emotional impact that has the ability to both uplift and to crush (depending on the artist, of course). Being completely saturated by sound can give the soothing effect of white noise in that it is so much aural stimuli, your brain shuts of some of its intentional awareness and you begin to listen with fresh ears and feel the music and its evocative mood.
Because I was born that way.
Winter is the season of doom and drone for me, slow and crushing, uncompromisingly meditative. Death and decay rule the earth in preparation for rebirth and reincarnation to come in the spring. It may take more effort to appreciate, but the more time spent in the wilderness, the more it speaks to you.
After a long day at work, it is nice to come home, put on a good drone metal album, maybe light up a cigar (or something equally dang and stanky), and veg out until you fall asleep.
Doom metal is the deepest music there is. On the surface, yeah, anybody can headbang extremely slowly or act impressed by the depth of any drone band’s tone, but good droney doom is so much more than that. The music is so slow that only the trve adept metal head who is able to listen over and over again is rewarded with the esoteric insight of knowing the song. Real good drone and doom is pure art. Sunn O)))), for an easy example, uses a pedal that spits a signal, yet keeps both chains oscillating at the same time. This tonal perfection is the reason doom is the continuation of a tradition once expressed solely through classical music, and now, as I see it, the main hope for modern metal to move foreward without falling into the stigmatic traps of KVLT-points or avant-garde hip-metal.
This heavy textural tradition, inherent to doom metal, allows the actual music to vary alot without getting cheesey. For example, really evil melodies and relatively positive melodies can fit together without sounding too disparate. This is necessary to metal because it opens up every musical note instead of just relying on minor chords and tritones to sound dark. Besides this, doom and drone can express themselves in many ways, from your jammy stoner sludge to your ambient black metal intro. Doom is Life.
Doom is a throwback to the old Sabbath sound that stands the test of time. Its minimalist approach and apocalyptic feel makes doom/sludge/crust sound foreboding and archaic. Its almost like roots rock in a modern sense. When listening to bands like Eyehategod or Electric Wizard I find it more enjoyable to listen to because it has heart, soul, and depth which you can’t find in anything else that is coming out these days.
Why do I enjoy drone/doom/sludge music?
Because this is exactly what I hear in my head all the time!
Thanks for keeping me sane.rocko.
“…found it difficult to think of the things that disturb me…Afterwards, everything seemed right with the world.
A new, yet seemingly ancient kind of experience…Very unusual!!!
…A PHYSICAL PRESENCE IN THE ROOM….I CAN ALMOST TOUCH THE SOUNDS.
When I got up, I could swear I was a few inches off the ground!
Forget drugs and alcohol…I am now very, very mellow!
I feel alert yet very calm…Wonderful after a hard day.
MY TENSION HEADACHES HAVE DISAPPEARED!
Always had trouble relaxing…after auditioning Earth 2, had an incredibly deep sleep. “
Because listening to this music make me feel nor living, nor dead, just awaiting for the stars to align and strange aeons to come.
It blots out all those annoying thoughts with the awesome power of bass.
They rocked my world!
I like drone music because tone.
It’s linked with our deepest chords, being able to enter our skin and impact our organs, like a sort of ancient tribal ritual, the listener can lose contact with the surrounding reality and feel free to rejoin his animal and instinctive nature.
Because it makes my brain go heavy and dreamy, my eyes roll back in my lolling head and I get carried off on a slow-rising-falling wave of low-end infinity. In short: immersion.
Well im from new zealand living in australia, i watched you guys in brisbane, i wrote about you for sludge factory webzine . before watching you i didnt know much of the genre. 2 of you had darkthrone shirts which instantly got my attention. i learned the power of a simple destorted loud cord that can have over people. i now listen to the full lenth of Sleep – dopesmoker everyday! thanks for coming this side of world!
I want this album!!!!
)
I love the hopelessness I hear in it. It’s like being adrift at sea all alone on a small raft.
It’s the collapse of the human civilization made into music, and it’s soothing to my heart.
I like this kind of music because it sneaks up on you. Listening to an incredibly slow song that lasts for twenty minutes, your mind may wander for a bit, but suddenly you’ll realize that something amazing just happened. In that way, it distorts your perception of time. The music itself is like a drug.
I like doom/drone/sludge because of it’s physicality, you can FEEL the music rather than just hearing it, because of the bass frequencies. Also it can make me feel like I’m in a trance, which is like a religious experience I guess…
Doom/drone/sludge is very effective
i can remember our last practise in our team. It gives more ‘life’ ,it makes the song alive and gives you an extraordinary feeling..