Drone Metal

When talking about heavy metal music, musical textures are often overlooked. The truth is that textures and atmosphere are huge aspects of doom metal, sludge metal, post metal and black metal that can often mature a band’s sound in surprising ways. Drone metal is a subgenre of heavy metal where textures and atmosphere mean absolutely everything when discussing the quality of the music. It’s a subgenre that is not for everyone, but once it’s understood, it’s hard not to at least appreciate the musicality that goes into it.

Drone metal revolves around sustained or repeated sounds, notes and tones called drones. These drones are made with the electric guitar and often incorporate a large amount of reverb or audio feedback. Songs usually lack much of a rhythm or beat, and are focused on the drawn-out textures created by the drones. Drone metal rarely features vocals, but if it does, the vocals are almost always screamed or deeply growled. 

Drone metal usually shares some common traits with doom metal, sludge metal and post metal, being intense but slow in nature. Therefore, the music usually sounds very dark, dense and claustrophobic.  During live performances, drone metal bands frequently incorporate visual images to go along with the sounds, usually in the form of short films. These visual landscapes often add a sense of psychological depth to the music.

Earth was the first band to pioneer drone metal in the early 1990s. The band was based out of Seattle and took influence from The Melvins along with minimalist musicians of the time. Earth first released music in 1991, but their acclaimed debut album, Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version, was put out in 1993. The entire drone metal scene often looks back to this album as one of drone metal’s crowning achievements and the album served as a sort of bible for later drone metal bands to come. 

On another note, one interesting fact about Earth is that the band’s guitarist, Dylan Carlson, was a very close friend of Kurt Cobain. Therefore, Cobain has recorded vocals which the band has used on the song “Divine and Bright.” Carlson is also known to have bought the gun that Cobain would later use to kill himself, though Carlson did not think that Cobain was ever going to use it in such a way. 

Another major juggernaut of the drone metal scene is Sunn O)))). Experimental musician Stephen O’Malley formed the band as a tribute to Earth. Since then, the band has achieved major success within the heavy metal community, and is today considered to be one of the leaders of the drone metal subgenre.  

Even though drone metal isn’t that popular of a subgenre, it has a very devoted underground following. Bands such as Boris, Corrupted, Nadja and Jesu have helped to sustain the subgenre and have advanced the musicality of drone metal in new and exciting ways.