Starting with muffled wah wah guitar in 3/4 time, “Doom City” explodes into a high energy microtonal rock song with cackling zurna and evil laughter, while the lyrics describe a city dominated by pollution. The contaminated air is the result of a godlike figure whose breath covers the area in a dangerous fog, destroying the narrator’s lungs. While his actions are no doubt harmful, the god finds humor in humanity’s suffering. The god in the song is not explicitly defined, though he’s described as “in Empyrean”, referring to the celestial sphere known for fire and light where Dante met God in Paradiso. Perhaps the god within “Doom City” is God himself. Genius annotations claim that in a now lost Triple J interview Stu mentioned that the song was inspired by a trip to Beijing, a city that had gained a reputation for its suffocating air quality. While the verses are a rhythmic 4/4 passage, the choruses revert back to the sinister 3/4 time signature of the intro while adding a doom metal influence, making for one of the heaviest sections on all of Flying Microtonal Banana.
The song was played by Ambrose (harmonica), Cavs (drums), Cook (guitar), Lucas (bass) and Stu (guitar/vocals/zurna). It was released on February 24th, 2017.
The earliest known performance was on 2017-03-19 at The Night Cat in Naarm (Melbourne). It would be played heavily throughout 2017 and given the “doom” outro of “Crumbling Castle” late that year. While it continued to be played often in 2018, the song slowly dropped off of sets in 2019. While it didn’t appear in 2020, it returned in 2021 for the band’s microtonal shows. Up to this point “Doom City” was primarily played as a standalone track. In 2022 this began to change, as “Doom City” began to be used as the start of a medley alongside tracks like “O.N.E.” (2022-03-07) and “Minimum Brain Size” (2022-10-31). The song is played close to the studio track with no major alterations.