We got in on on our house in early 2016 and the price of real estate in our area increased by 20% while we were in escrow.
Our house has more than doubled in price since then but if we had fallen out of escrow, we would not have been able to buy anything anywhere near our jobs/preferred city (and my partner and I have a combined income north of 150k/year).
Shit is crazy these days
Appropriate.
My geologist coworker said that agate isn’t really a mineral either, mostly because it gets used too broadly and doesn’t have one singular chemical composition.
Then again, I’m just an organic chemist, and classifying minerals seems suspiciously like biology to me…
slug metal
Also, may I introduce you to our slug metal overlords, Slugdge
Windhand was my gateway into this whole world, and I couldn’t agree more. The first time I heard their stuff, it just blew my mind in a way I hadn’t experienced in probably a decade.
I came into metal from metalcore, and there’s no faster way to get yourself banned from the metal subs than posting metalcore, so I feel you in the gatekeeping, too. The doom scene really does pull from all sorts of influences and tends to be pretty accepting of a ton of fringe bands and sounds so you get people that are excited to talk about music instead of just shitting on other people’s taste. So you get “doom wop,” stoner rock, doom ‘n’ roll, fairy doom, witch metal, caveman battle doom, and so on.
Have fun exploring it all! There’s a ton of good shit out there, and for my money, to this day, nothing hits like that first time hearing “Forest Clouds”
Not really all that related, but if you like Panopticon by ISIS, you might also appreciate the best Appalachian atmospheric black metal I’ve ever heard, Kentucky by Panopticon.
Happy to get you excited with some new music! I’ve listened to heavy music for decades but it had definitely gotten a little stale for me. It was only in the last 2 years that I discovered stoner/doom as a sub-genre, so I’m not all that far ahead of you. Some really great stuff that is frankly just as heavy but much catchier than most other metal subgenres. I mean, I love me some black/death metal, but I’m just not really getting obsessed with those bands/albums/songs the same way as I can with this slow riff worship you see in stoner/doom.
Pallbearer and Ahab are both pretty good for funeral doom or death/doom (depending on who you ask).
I like a little bit of “epic” doom themes but trad doom, power metal, and actual epic doom are a little too cheesy for me, so I lean toward Conan (very heavy, approaching a sludge-drone hybrid) and Khemmis (who describe their sound as “doomed heavy metal”)
I actually usually skew more psychedelic doom or stoner/prog doom, which has a lot of great stuff in the past few decades. Sleep’s Holy Mountain (classic stoner metal), Grief’s Infernal Flower by Windhand (psych doom), Clearing the Path to Ascend by YOB (heavy stoner/prog), Lore by Elder (very proggy but still catchy).
Also, I assume you’ve seen the most common recommendations for classic sludge, The Melvins (especially Houdini and Bullhead), Eyehategod, and Side B of My War by Black Flag. If not, get started there
edit: Obviously I’ve got lots of other fun options in each of these veins, so hmu if you want more
The music is all written by a member of ISIS, which is pretty heavy, but in an “atmospheric sludge/post-metal” way. So I can see how you’d think that if you’re looking for something more death metal (which would fit in the fight scenes, although atmospheric sludge or funeral doom would go pretty well in the rest of the game)
Except then you eat it and your mouth is numb for a bit and it helps the hangover
Watching the She-Ra reboot for the first time with my son and daughter when they were 6 and 4 respectively is one of the best media memories of my life.