Spotify Pie Chartby Trackify

  1. Genres
  2. Metal

Sludge Metal

Sludge metal mixes the slow, heavy riffs of doom metal with the anger and rough edge of hardcore punk.

The guitars are thick, dirty and heavily distorted, the tempo is mostly slow, and the vocals are shouted or screamed. Lyrics are usually bleak. The sound grew out of slowed-down American hardcore punk in the 1980s, with the Melvins from Washington state as an important early band, and it is tied most closely to the Louisiana scene around New Orleans. It is harsher and more abrasive than doom or stoner metal.

Artists it is known for: Eyehategod, Crowbar, Melvins, Acid Bath.

Family
Metal
On Spotify
A current genre
What it is
A genre
From
United States, 1980s; Louisiana scene, late 1980s
Also called
sludge
Trackify listeners who play it
2%

About 1,800 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have sludge metal among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.

Sludge Metal artists

The sludge metal artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.

Sources

The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.