Pallbearer und Blood Vulture

Pallbearer is a group that has helped define the genre of doom metal over the last few years of their career. I happened to come across their performance at Heavy MTL 2013 in Quebec, Canada, and I was so intrigued by their show that I stayed for the entire thing. They have a truly deep sound, with incredibly rhythmic and powerful chords to accompany it.

On stage, they're hypnotising. Not enough that their audience falls into a deathly trance as they start to play, they themselves seem to fall into some other dimension as they go on with the music, taking everyone listening with them. It's really raw music, a very visceral kind of tune that gets right underneath your skin. When they played 'The Ghost I Used To Be', the entire crowd went wild, and I joined them.

They have an incredibly powerful voice, and they're using to bring across their unique blend of doom and death metal. I felt like even though they had adopted these magnificently dark stage personas, the guys really enjoyed performing for such an attentive and receptive crowd, who were just waiting to absorb everything that they had to offer.