Church Of Misery

Church of Misery stands among the earliest doom metal acts to emerge from Tokyo. The ensemble took shape during the final years of the 1990s, forging a style that fused doomy psychedelic rock with stoner metal while centering its lyrics on mass murderers and serial killers. After the 2001 appearance of Master of Brutality, countless personnel shifts followed, leaving bassist Tatsu Mikami as the sole unbroken thread; his direction has sustained the group’s signature murder-doom approach across subsequent releases such as House of the Unholy (2009), And Then There Were None… (2014), and Born Under a Mad Sign (2023).

Mikami established the band in 1995 once his prior thrash metal group Salem had disbanded. The original roster featured Yoshiaki Negishi on vocals, Tomohiro Nishimura on guitar, Mikami on bass, and Hideki Shimizu on drums. That configuration produced two independent EPs—Taste the Pain in 1998 and Murder Company in 1999—before Nobukazu Chow replaced Negishi. The Chow-fronted lineup delivered the band’s debut full-length, Master of Brutality, issued by the American label Southern Lord in 2001. Second Coming arrived as the follow-up LP in 2004, succeeded by the Japan-only Early Works Compilation, a two-volume, triple-LP set of archival material released through Leaf Hound Records. Three split EPs came next: two shared with North Carolina-based doom metallers Sourvein and one with Colorado-based sludge rockers Deer Creek. Houses of the Unholy, the third studio album, surfaced on Rise Above in 2009.

In 2012 the group undertook its inaugural United States tour ahead of the fourth studio album, Thy Kingdom Scum, which appeared in 2013. That year also brought the exits of vocalist Hideki Fukasawa, guitarist Ikuma Kawabe, and drummer Junji Narita, leaving Tatsu Mikami the lone remaining member. The reconfigured lineup issued the aptly titled And Then There Were None... in early 2016. Mikami and his collaborators maintained their blend of crushing weight and dark themes on the 2023 album Born Under a Mad Sign.