Thought I'd type up a quick post linking some, in my opinion, quintessential DSBM bands. DSBM is pretty self-explanatory: black metal (typically atmospheric black metal) with a central focus of depression, suicide, loneliness, despair, anger, hatred, sadness, and many more similar emotions. It's often long and repetitive, but not always; it's actually a very varied genre.

Here are my top bands, with links to my favorite album of theirs.

Make a Change... Kill Yourself is what I consider peak DSBM: raw, atmospheric, and drenched in emotion. The band's name, titles, and lyrics are all very self-explanatory, but you don't need to be poetic and deep to hit hard emotionally.

Leviathan is what I think of as the peak of American black metal, with his first album The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide being another quintessential DSBM album. Most of Wrest's (Jef Whitehead) other work as Leviathan isn't DSBM, though it dances around it. Tenth Sub Level channels much more anger and hatred.

Shining is another angry and hateful band, with Halmstad (full title Halmstad (Niklas angående Niklas)) being a monument of hatred and aggression. Shining is the work of Niklas Kvarforth, who claims to aim to make people hurt themselves and kill themselves with his music, something that clearly comes across.

Xasthur is another pillar of American black metal. It's hard to choose a record to link because they're all brilliant, but they're all very similar; no matter what album you put on, you'll be transported to a extremely dissonant and alien world of sadness and anger.

Lifelover is an interesting one; they definitely fit into DSBM, but have many elements of post punk, post rock, post metal, and are generally better labeled as depressive rock in my opinion. Lots of imagery of drugs, alcohol, and urban Swedish life.

Psychonaut 4 is similar in its topics, but has a very different, though similarly post metal, sound. Hailing from Georgia, they have lyrics in Georgian, Russian, and English, conveyed through shrill, piercing screams unlike any other band.

Këkht Aräkh isn't typically linked into this genre, but he fits very well in my opinion. Dark, gothic, romantic black metal that tells stories of love, sadness, and loneliness through concept albums of vampires seeking love. There's a reason Pale Swordsman is a phenomenon.

NONE is probably the closest band you'll find to Xasthur, but they're still entirely different. Very dark, bleak, atmospheric, and cold dirge-like songs fill their albums.

I'll add more to this post in the future, but these bands are a good starting point for anyone curious about the genre.

Favorite tracks:

• Dream of a Dead Sun

• Tortured by Solitude

• Red Snow

• Hymn to Eternal Frost

Hymn to Eternal Frost, None - A World, Dead and Gray, and AYAT - Such a Beautiful Day! (The Exaltation of Saint Francis), all have the same riff.

I've already made a blog post about this album. You can find it here, here's an excerpt from my blog, plus a couple of thoughts at the end.

Il Était Une Forêt…

The metal archives hates reviews that take the album “track by track” but I don’t care, so I’m doing just that.

Cicatrices

I play these when I go to sleep, the track “Cicatrices” grabbed my attention. We have those screams at 3:30, then get ready for it, that riff at 4:29? I always sway my head and shoulders along it, it sounds like everything is falling apart, and it’s just oh, so beautiful. I swear I’m gonna create a hall of riffs that every time I hear, I need to stop everything I’m doing and vibe to them. You just can’t listen to that 4:29 without paying attention to it. Plus the piano that joins in at that part. F-uck-ing. Just wow.

Veux-Tu Danser

The intro is haunting. Baby sounds, and little baby song chimes. I love it when artists sample stuff about childhood, and when they sample it well, it works amazingly. Like that one time Lifelover sampled “Emil i Lönneberga - Bom sicka bom” at the end of “Nackskott”? Just haunting, to hear a happy innocent song play in such a gut-wrenching album. I’ll make a post about bands sampling cool stuff.

Apparently the track translates to “Do You Want to Dance?” (hah!) after that riff in Cicatrices? I’ll take you up on that offer!

All in all the album is haunting, beautiful, brutal, and of course depressive. I will be looking like this when I read the name “GRIS”

Anyway it's been almost two months since I've listened to that album, I still come back to it. I started appreciating the other tracks as well Le Gala Des Gens Heureux and Profonde Misanthropie are great as well. I cannot seem to describe it for I lack the necessary knowledge and terminology but good god is a depressing.

Also wow I just looked at the translation of the track names:

1. Once upon a Forest...
2. The Reception of Happy People
3. Scar
4. Do You Want to Dance?
5. Deep Misanthropy
6. The Dryad

Bandcamp, Metal Archives, Youtube

My new depressive post black metal EP

Brand new album from the legendary NONE

RIP Roman. A truly emotional album. The first track, Yellow, carries so much weight, pain, and beauty.

Off the new self-titled album, out September 15. Crazy song and a crazy video. So excited for this!

The album/band that really got me into this genre. This is the epitome of the genre in my opinion. Truly depressing sound and atmosphere.

My first full-length album from two years ago.