Corvid Grin

Every piece I make—every dark art print, every occult-inspired t-shirt, every handmade relic—is born inside a storm of sound. Silence doesn’t work for me. It never has. My hands need noise. My mind needs riffs heavy enough to shake the walls. Without it, the process stalls. The void creeps in.

If the task is complex or demanding—a tricky cut on the table saw or a tight hand-stitched binding—my 3M WorkTunes hearing protection is cranked to the edge of distortion. What’s playing? Stoner doom—thick riffs, psychedelic haze, and a rhythm so deep it feels like it’s dragging me into the earth.

Ironically, I’m not much of a stoner. What I am is a maker who thrives on atmosphere, and stoner doom delivers exactly that. There’s something about low, slow fuzzed-out guitars that sharpens my focus to a razor’s edge. It’s hypnotic—each repetition of the riff becoming a mantra, a spell, a groove I can ride straight through the creative fog.

When the night stretches long and the shop smells like sawdust and ink, proper doom metal takes over. Slower, darker, heavier. These are the hours when time unravels, when the work slows down and the weight of the day starts to sink into my bones. That’s when I want my fuzz loud enough to rattle my ribcage, and I couldn’t care less if the riff doesn’t change for five straight minutes. Repetition is ritual.

But it’s not just the sound—it’s the stories buried inside. Wizards and goblins, murderers and kings, dark magics scrawled across ancient scrolls. The lyrics and imagery woven into doom and stoner metal hit the same nerve that pulls me into tabletop RPGs or dark fantasy art. It’s worldbuilding through distortion—a sonic version of the same things I try to carve into wood or hide in ink.

When the headphones come off, the fantasy doesn’t stop. If I’m not listening to doom metal, I’m likely knee-deep in a Lord of the Rings audiobook or some other dark fantasy epic. My creative process lives at the crossroads of doom metal soundscapes, dark fantasy storytelling, and handmade craft traditions—a strange but entirely natural intersection for Corvid Grin.

That’s why I wanted to share the playlist that fuels my work. It’s not polished or pretty. It’s gritty, heavy, and a little unhinged—just the way I like it. If you’re a maker, a dungeon master, a dark artist, or anyone else who works better under a wall of distortion, you’ll probably love it too.

So whether you’re carving wood, rolling dice, drawing sigils, or just surviving the modern world, throw this playlist on. Let the riffs carry you somewhere strange.