Gothic Doom

Gothic doom is the branch of doom metal that grew from the early-1990s British doom-death scene when bands such as *Paradise Lost* and *My Dying Bride* slowed their riffs further and admitted gothic rock's atmosphere — keyboards, clean and female vocals, romantic melancholy — into the music. Its sound pairs funereal tempos and downtuned guitars with orchestral colouring, beauty-and-the-beast vocal contrasts and lyrics of doomed love and religious despair. *Paradise Lost*'s album "Gothic" (1991) gave the style its name and its template.