Getting Started with the Post-Metal Genre

An Overview of Thinking-Man's Metal and the Bands That Play It

May 18, 2009

Nearly twenty years ago, new sounds began to rumble form the amps of metal musicians. At the turn of the millennium, the post-metal have been nothing short of brilliant.

Using the sort of instrumentation and aggression found in metal with the atmospheric textures usually found in post-rock, bands in the post-metal genre have formed a style of music that eschews verse-chorus-verse in favor of unfolding, evolving structures and a focus on the avant-garde.

Putting on any one of these albums may surprise those listeners expecting lightning-fast guitar chugging, blast beats, or pentatonic-based solos. Regardless of those qualities being mostly absent, these bands are no less metal than an Iron Maiden or a Death Angel: dark, oppressive, and brutal.

The sadistic bursts of feedback found on the debut full length album by Godflesh make songs like “Christbait Rising” and “Devastator/Mighty Trust Krusher” vomit-inducing, feel-bad dirges from the gloomiest parts of England. Godflesh took the aggression of metal and removed the idiocy and conventionalities of it, revolutionizing industrial and post-metal music with one abrasive fracture.

Similar albums: Children of God by Swans, Vae Solis by Scorn, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by Black Sabbath

Tribal drums, haunting chants, and an evolving display of noises emerge from the most isolated areas of the psyche on Enemy of the Sun. Well-paced, grinding rhythms form a backdrop for the crescendos and hiccups from glass to sand, setting a new precedence for intelligent, brutal metal that wouldn’t be matched until subsequent Neurosis releases and the children that they’ve birthed.

Similar albums: Celestial by ISIS, Tides/Giants Split, F#A#Infinity by Godspeed You Black Emperor!

A mass of plodding, instrumental doom, the first LP by Pelican takes elements of the stretched-out feedback anthems of their self-titled EP and turns them into sweeping epics. With three songs clocking in at over ten minutes, the band uses riffs from a celestial place to make the songs soar. This is amplifier worship with hooks.

Similar albums: Forest of Equilibrium by Cathedral, Catharsis by YOB, One Step Closer and You Die by MONO

The third album from L.A.’s ISIS sees them move away from the harsh sounds that earned them the nickname “NeurISIS” and allowing a more subtle density to permeate atmospheres of paranoia, reality, and providence. The central theme of omniscience finds the band moderating a violent exorcism of ambient forces.

Similar albums: The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw by Pelican, Lateralus by Tool, At the Soundless Dawn by Red Sparowes

This debut from instrumental trio Russian Circles is all about texture. With looped guitars intertwining in a point/counterpoint exchange, the drums creating syncopated beats to work from, and the bass holding everything down, the band manages to be pretty without being sweet, delicate without crumbling, and devastating without running roughshod.

Similar albums: Flood by Boris, Come On Die Young by Mogwai, For Respect by Don Caballero

After disbanding Godflesh, leader Justin Broadrick formed Jesu and began a project that is no less heavy and no less imposing. Musically, Conqueror falls between the pounding of the first album and the shimmering, sludgy pop of the Silver EP. Guitars drone on simple chords while Broadrick’s uplifting vocals float between layers of ambient keys and cold, programmed drums.

Similar albums: Hymns by Godflesh, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós

Thinking-Man’s Metal

With a surge in the popularity over the last several years, bands like ISIS and Pelican are laying a musical foundation just as was laid for them by Godflesh and Neurosis. With guitars that are just as distorted, drums that are just as pulsating, and a bass sound that is just as murky and menacing, post-metal’s song structures and subtleties inject a level of intelligence not found in most metal music.

The copyright of the article Getting Started with the Post-Metal Genre in Metal Music is owned by Ryan Werner. Permission to republish Getting Started with the Post-Metal Genre in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Sep 29, 2009 10:17 AM

Chistopher Taylor :

Great article, I like the sub-genres coming out it combines something old and adds a little flavor into it. The genre that has most of my attention is Mathcore. When listening to it you feel a little bit of punk, noise (an actual genre) and some metal in it. Bands like the number 12 looks like you and between the buried and me had took and great big step into putting this into their music. Other local bands have also contributed into putting it their music like A Day of Violence and Fox Force Five you can hear a bit of mathcore in their metal music now bands want to be metal but you need to be different and add something you've never heard before. Thats why i take more notice into the locals their ready to prove something and possibly bring us something new.