Good metal has this effect on me: It seems like it hits some kind of family archetype or something, but sadly I think a lot of it to me is connected to imagery: I don't think I would get the same feeling for this album if it weren't for the evocative cover art, remembering history from the past generations of our family tree, like dark gothic corridors and thoughts of the dark ages. If the cover art were multi-colored bunnies I think it would fuck up a bit of the experience. The music would still be great, of course.
As above, so below: I think metal musicians sometimes may put a lot of effort into imprinting landscapes/images in the sound itself, and make it. Some sounds just hit that archetype, you know, and you know you get the same, or a similar, feeling that the musician intended. Beyond music. It may not be exactly the same thing the musician felt, but that's nature I guess, variation, unending creativity.
Sadly, there is also the "epoch feel illusion": The 90's, for example, are a dear time to me. So when I hear something from the 90's this mechanism automatically makes me feel the 90's atmosphere (without me ever having listened to the song in the 90's). Of course, if the song is from the 90's it probably manifests this atmosphere anyway, so the illusion only acts like a filter, adding memories from that epoch on top of the fact that the record already has the feeling/atmosphere of that epoch. I guess people who lived the 80's would understand what I say more about the 80's.