Trying to take this apart and understand each piece. I came back to edit the beginning here and preface it with: I'm not gonna make an argument in defense of doom. And maybe I don't understand doom enough myself to critique it. So instead, I'm gonna riff off some stuff and imagine something new that goes beyond the derivative stuff already discussed in this thread.
In particular, I'm not gonna argue with
Electric wizard sounds like some rednecks trying to start an IROC.
LOL. That's so great.
I'm thinking in particular about:
spaceship musics
It sounds like galactic civilizations are living out space operas and suns are living and dying and the universe is waiting for you
I get that people least classify themselves based on sounding like influences -- Sleep, Electric Wizard, etc.
But I'm trying to wrap my head around what it'd mean to fully embrace doom-as-spaceship-music, or even more generic, metal-as-enjoyed-by-a-galactic-civilization-with-kilometer-long-ships-and-Culture-style-AI-minds-running-the-show-while-everyone-lives-out-their-hedonistic-lives. As in, what would a "spaceships and galactic civilizations" genre sound like?
The things that characterize doom for me (and maybe other people have different ways to quantify this) are heavy and slow. For take-it-or-leave-it, where I'll
leave it, is the generic-metal-allusions-to-witchcraft/Satanism and weed-jokes-as-band-names. These don't contribute anything, especially if we're going to effing space.
The heavy part comes in live as loudness, which gives us the
amp/monster truck bull shit
And isn't really an important part of the sound. Perhaps the amps are just part of the
live feeling / experience. Heaviness can come from a wall of amps played live. Musically, we could also get the same sounds in a studio, with less amps. So let's say we abandon the my-amps-are-louder measuring competition and focus on sound, composition and theory. I think, in particular, that a recording with no dynamics is a boring recording.
I think the thing missing from a lot of these bands is
space. As in, space between notes. A lot of the "heavy" comes from droning notes, rather than slow and sparse. I think sparse could be interesting. Think David Gilmour -- he doesn't play all the time in every Pink Floyd song. The could also come from dynamics with sparse playing, say, from reverb trails, rather than from traditional droning or feedback where we're again headed towards the "getting louder and louder until the recording is as 'loud' as it can get."
Some other things missing from my (personal) thinking on the spaceship music: synth. The bands listed as not creative, aren't using synthesis enough, I think. Dunno, would like to explore this or hear examples where it is being done. Again, we can go back to Pink Floyd, even. They were doing much more creative stuff here than most bands.
On the same vein, other instrumentation. Guitar/bass/drums.. thinking beyond orchestral hits to add something with a bow in there, or maybe horns. I don't know. You invent it.
Composition: John Williams has got an edge on these bands. Seriously. If you're going to make an hour long record, maybe have a
theme that you return to. Maybe an arc or progression that everything goes through. 10-songs-5-minutes-each-on-a-record is boring, too, if they're all just little good riffs you had and you're not even gonna bother to write lyrics or tell a story with them. We can go back to classical music here. Leran you about counterpoint, and have your bass player do something other than the same bassline for 15 minutes.
We're past the age of records and CDs, and into the age of Spotify and Youtube. The length of a CD doesn't matter anymore, basically. I haven't seen it that often, but if a set is 2 hours, maybe a 2 hour recording that actually-goes-somewhere is a new format to explore. Granted, 2 hours playing is some intense BS. So maybe not. This also means that Dopesmoker is basically halfway there,
Lastly, in case anyone thought I was going to be super serious or offer useful advice: bring back the clap track.
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That all said, and ideas exhausted, I tried to come up with some defenses of doom from recent history. The new Elder is good. And Ufomammut is good. Any others?
SubRosa is a recent discovery for me, and proves that you can be loud and heavy while bringing in some new instrumentation (violin) and have dynamics such that you can have a female vocalist (gasp).
