12 Most Underrated Metal Albums

The aesthetics of doom metal are well-known to any metalhead. Down-tuned guitars, lengthy songs and weighty atmospherics are all among the signifiers of this most funereal of music genres. Florida’s Floor, however, threw all of these out of the window in their quest to find a new spin on the iconic sound.

Everything about Floor’s ‘Self-Titled + Outtakes’ screams 'idiosyncratic’. The band hail from sunny Miami, not a location particularly conducive to doom metal’s gloomy worldview. Only one song on the album exceeds three minutes, the band keep each one tight and focused, in keeping with their self-defined ‘doom-pop’ sound. There’s even little trace of doom metal’s usual lyrical preoccupations with the occult, drugs and nihilism, in its place instead are cheeky, irreverent and often joyous melodies.

Guitarist and vocalist Steve Brooks went on to form Torche, who have achieved much wider success and further refined Floor’s doom-pop aesthetic. However Floor deserve a lot of credit for laying down the foundations and for influencing a whole string of bands who wanted to play down-tuned, sludgy riffs, but without the requisite self-seriousness and apocalyptic despair.