DOOM CHARTS
JULY 2026
“I’m a cold heartbreaker, fit to burn
~ misheard Guns ‘n Roses lyrics
And I’ll rip your heart in two
And I’ll leave you lyin’ on the bed
I’ll be out the door before you wake
It’s nothin’ new to you
‘Cause I think we’ve seen that Doom Charts, too, aw…”
One of our contributors had the audacity to ask an AI program to predict this month’s Doom Charts Top 5. It got the order wrong, but remarkably, every single one of its predicted albums made the chart. Even more unsettling, three of them landed in the actual Top 5. Scary stuff. I think it’s time to break Sarah Connor out of Pescadero State Hospital. She tried to warn us about this sort of thing. We just assumed she was talking about killer robots. Turns out she might have meant doom metal prediction algorithms…
Scary stuff indeed. There’s an ominous feeling in the air, an uneasy current, a lingering sense of dread. It seems to have become the soundtrack all year round. Ever present, impossible to ignore, yet strangely difficult to put your finger on. Zeitgeist on the Run, as the new Iron Jinn album is aptly titled. The spirit of the age itself appears rattled, looking for somewhere, anywhere, to escape to…
Luckily we can
escape into the Heavy Underground. Still, beyond the Top 40 albums
below, there might still be a small glimmer of hope. For if an AI can
learn to understand the Doom Charts, perhaps it can also come to
understand the heavy underground… And the people who pour their heart
and soul into keeping this beautiful thing alive. Absolutely not for the
algorithms or statistics, but because of the strange, stubborn,
irrational passion that keeps it alive. All of us, all over the world,
creating, writing, recording, promoting, buying records, filling venues,
dubious watering holes and bars, and keeping this music alive simply
because we all believe it matters. And maybe, in doing so, it can begin
to make sense of us. Of humanity. Of why music matters so much to so
many of us. Of why life matters. Right? And well… Because if a machine can learn the value of human life… perhaps we can, too…
Welcome to Doom Charts, representing some of the finest bloggers, journalists, radio, podcasters and reviewers from the heavy underground around the globe. Each month, our critics submit their picks for the best new doom, sludge, metal, stoner, psychedelic, progressive and heavy rock albums. The results are compiled and tabulated into the chart below. This is a one-stop shop for the best new albums in the world…
