Conan have some cool influences and ideas. There's those sludgy bits, but also stoner doom bits, and straight up heavy metal bits.
Yeah I love having conversations about music too, hoping this sub becomes a good place to do it!
There's a couple of funeral bands that lean more into the death metal influence for certain songs and can get faster. Ahab and Esoteric come to mind.
There's definitely different opinions out there on what to call different bands. I can see where someone would want to call Candlemass trad because of how foundational they were, but you'll find more similarities with other epic bands.
I'm sure me calling funeral a mix between death/doom and drone might be controversial to some, but especially with modern bands I think it is true.
Conan are weird. I'd say predominantly there is an aspect of Sludge to their sound, which if you came from metalcore and thrash I'd highly recommend looking into sludge bands. Sludge is doom + hardcore. Classics are bands like Crowbar, Eyehategod, Iron Monkey, Acid Bath.
If you want more Conan like bands I've always thought Slomatics had a similar vibe, that caveman type sound.
Funeral doom is a very very slow offshoot of death/doom, death/doom mixed with drone. Starting with bands like Thergothon, Skepticism, and Funeral, with modern bands like Bell Witch and Un carrying the torch.
Traditional doom is a call back to the roots of doom, think Black Sabbath/Pentagram/Saint Vitus. Typified by bands like Reverend Bizarre, some consider it a more "pure" form of doom because it generally seeks to remove influences that came into doom after those original bands. This is where I would class this era of Pallbearer.
While Trad can get cheesy, like Lamp of Thoth, I think you are more closely describing what is known as Epic Doom Metal. Pioneered by bands like Candlemass, and taking its name from their album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. Operatic vocals and a lot less slow.
I only find this useful to help find more music similar to what I like. For instance, if you asked me to show you more funeral doom I wouldn't show you anything like Pallbearer, so this is where I think the real value of sub genres is.
Almost 10 years old, which is wild to me. Where does the time go?
They are really solid. Like meat and potatoes doom
For guitar "feel" matters so much more than anything else so go with your heart/fingers.
I like humbuckers and they are the more standard choice for big fat doom tones, but single coil pickups are cool too especially with fuzz. I like Stringjoy strings personally so that I can get weird and specific with gauge/tension, but if you are going for D-C tuning somewhere between 52-56 is the range I would use. For reference I run 60's for my drop A non Gibson scale length guitar. As for what tuning to use I'd offer that with C# standard you can play so many great Sabbath riffs, and with the turn of a machine head you've got access to drop B.
Definitely get a Behringer SF300 pedal. It is a cheap copy of the Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz and will get you that Electric Wizard tone. The ProCo Rat itself is pretty cheap if you have those available. Other suggestions are anything in the big muff family, for a cheaper option there the TC Electronics Honey Pot is basically a green Russian muff to my ears.