“My friend told me I couldn’t even play a 6-string bass – so I had to learn it to prove him wrong!” Meet 7-string bass wizard Dylan Desmond, whose accidental two-handed tapping powers doom’s most adventurous low-end

Dylan Desmond.

Stygian Bough bassist and vocalist Dylan Desmond says there are some unexpected influences on their new album, Volume II. “I felt we were doing a weird mash-up of Thergothon or Mournful Congregation with the guitar harmonies of Thin Lizzy,” he says. “We wanted to focus on key moments, building drama with those melodic lines.”

Desmond has been half of funeral doom duo Bell Witch since 2010, wielding an Ibanez 7-string before a wall of tube amps. Their breakout third album, 2017’s Mirror Reaper – consisting of a single 84-minute track – distilled their sound: mournful, musically complex and very heavy.