Doom metal is where to head if you want some dark and heavy, sorrowful tunes. Not "stoner doom", because while they do tend to get a little down sometimes, theyre overall just
too stoned to care! I personally cant stand stoner doom, outside of Pentagram's "Be Forewarned" because it's mostly occult-themed.
No, little chilluns, we dont want to hang w/ the stoners. That would be far too easy. We wish to wallow, and wallow we shall.
Dealing w/ women, you'll probably want to steer towards My Dying Bride, as they are pioneers of sort of the "romantic" doom, ultra-dramatic, dual mournful guitars,lots of keyboards and some violins and other such classical trappings, wrapped up in some awesome atmospheric sonic setpieces. Did that make sense?
The guy's clean voice might put you off at first, but he goes from moaningly sad to raging growls, to a whisper. He's got the tortured mentality thing down. They tend to plod along at least one time a song for a good run, but not confined to the entire song creeping pace characteristic of most doom.
If that sounds good, order "The Dreadful Hours", then once youre ready for something a little more advanced I'd go w/ "Turn Loose the Swans". Silly titles aside, theyre some of the best doom mainstays I know of.
Turn Loose the Swans
The Dreadful Hours
For some great (actually the best) gothic doom metal w/ male & female vocals, you need to get into Draconian, namely their first one "Where Lovers Mourn". Dont let the speed in some tunes fool you, they downshift quickly and go all depressed on ya in a heartbeat. This baby will make you reach for the razor, dont read the lyrics if youre blue.
Draconian - Where Lovers Mourn
Other good beauty/beast gothic doom, some would say pioneers of this type of stuff is Tristania, tho theirs is more the longing for lost loved ones beyond death's door done a' la dark poetic verse. Dont bother unless youre ready for lots of thees, thys, and thous proceeding hither from thine speakers.
Tristania's "Widow's Weeds"
& Theater of Tragedy
Theater of Tragedy "Velvet Darkness they Fear"
If you want the most crushing type of doom, the stuff that really sort of creeps you out and makes you think you may get bad luck or something by listening to it, then you want to hit the funeral doom crowd. Their stuff is generally dealing w/ misanthropy and self-loathing, and no belief in anything but some black void awaiting us all at the end of our days, forever more. There is no hope, period.
Shape of Despair
Evoken's "quietus"
You can actually leave Shape of Despair's Myspace page going and it'll pretty much cycle thru a lot of their "greatest hits". I didnt really quote the other band's pages, because they tend to put up a little more of their faster or newer stuff to attract the less-depressed. Get the ones I spoke of, I know what I'm talking about here.