Doomed to Fail: The Incredibly Loud History of Doom, Sludge, and Post-Metal

Doomed to Fail explores the heaviest music the world has ever heard, tracing doom, sludge, and post-metal as their own distinct (and incredibly loud) traditions. Anselmi covers the bands and musicians that have impacted those styles most--Black Sabbath, Candlemass, Melvins, Eyehategod, Godflesh, Neurosis, Saint Vitus, and many others--while diving into the cultural doom that has spawned such music, from the bombing of Birmingham and hurricane devastation of New Orleans to glaring economic inequality, industrial alienation, climate change, and widespread addiction. Along the way, Anselmi interweaves the musical experiences that have led him to proudly identify as one of the doomed.

J. J. Anselmi is the author of Heavy: A Memoir of Wyoming, BMX, Drugs, and Heavy Fucking Music. His writing has been featured in Noisey, The A.V. Club, and Salon, and he's played drums for several heavy bands, including In the Company of Serpents and Former Worlds. He's currently the drummer of Drainage, a sludgy metalcore band from Long Beach, California.

Ever since Adam Lofbomm pressed "Record" on his Fisher-Price recorder back in 1984, he's been bringing worlds to life in words. Over the years, his passion for language inspired him to read broadly, write extensively, speak publicly, perform on-stage and on-camera, but when he stepped into the vocal booth for his first narration job in Seoul, Korea, back in 2006, all those many pieces just clicked into place. He realized then and there that voice acting was what he was made to do. Over the last eleven years working as a professional voice-over actor, Adam has had the great fortune to collaborate with some of the best publishers and organizations in the world. Whether or not Malcolm Gladwell was right when he said that ten-thousand hours will make you world-class at something, Adam did stop counting after he surpassed that milestone in 2016.