Drone metal slows distorted guitar to sustained tones, fusing minimalist drone with extreme metal

Drone metal takes heavy metal’s distorted, amplified guitar sustain and slows the tempo until individual notes ring out for extended periods, so the electric guitar itself becomes a drone instrument. It was first established by Earth (Olympia, WA, formed 1989 by Dylan Carlson), which combined the sludge metal of the Melvins with the minimalist practice of Young, Riley and Conrad. Sunn O))), initially a tribute to Earth, is ‘most responsible for the contemporary prominence of the drone metal style.’ The concept matters as the loud, dark end of the drone continuum: same sustained-tone-as-content principle as sine-wave drone, but realized through amplified distortion and doom weight rather than pure tone. It sits adjacent to drone proper as a rock offshoot.

Examples

Earth — Earth 2 (1993); Sunn O))) — extended sustained distorted-guitar chords at doom tempo; Boris (Tokyo) and Corrupted (Osaka) developing parallel styles.

Assessment

Explain what makes drone metal ‘drone’ despite being a metal genre, and name the two founding acts and what they borrowed from minimalist practice.