This is the debut album from Canadian doom band Empress.
I enjoyed 2017’s Reminiscence, with its psychedelic grooves and rolling riffs. It set out a strong opening argument for the band, which Premonition now ably capitalises on. Combining elements of doom, sludge, progressive, and post-metal into 49 minutes of expressive, mood-focused music, Premonition is a thoroughly convincing affair. Continue reading
Pelican are a post-metal band from the US and this is their sixth album.
Pelican play an instrumental post-rock/metal hybrid, and have been crafting affecting and enjoyable material for 18 years at this point. As their first new album in six years, I think it’s fair to say that Nighttime Stories has been greatly anticipated by fans of the band’s work. Continue reading
This is the debut album from Khôrada, a progressive/doom/post-metal band from the US.
Featuring most of the members of the much-missed Agalloch coupled with the singer of Giant Squid, this album contains 55 minutes of contemplative, intelligently-composed music.
Now here’s an album with real emotive power. The music can be loosely termed as progressive post-metal, but there’s a multitude of different styles skilfully incorporated into this release. Continue reading
Below a Silent Sky are a German post-metal band and this is their second album.
I enjoy a good album cover, and this is one I very much like. Here we have an instrumental post-metal band that offers up 56 minutes of music that contains progressive and post-rock elements. Continue reading
This is the debut EP from Canadian doom band Empress.
Although classed as an EP, there’s still 29 minutes of material here to sink your teeth into.
I’ll say it straight away – Reminiscence is a massively enjoyable release. Continue reading
Zaius are an instrumental post-rock band from the US and this is their debut album.
This is a multifaceted release of progressive/post-rock, fusing elements of bands such as Russian Circles, Red Sparowes, Pelican, Scale the Summit, Cloudkicker, and Between the Buried and Me into a rich, textured journey. As I’ve opined Continue reading
The Sky Is are a Polish post-metal band and this is their second album.
Here we have a decent-length slab of post-metal with stoner and doom elements chucked in for good measure. At just under 30 minutes in duration, it fills a hole that you may not have realised needed filling. Continue reading
This is the debut EP from Irish post-metal/doom band Third Island.
Building atmosphere with steady grace and gentle insistence, Third Island take a subtle, almost-sensual approach to their post-metal explorations. That’s not to say that they don’t know how to ramp up Continue reading
This is the third album from Romanian instrumental Post-Metal band Valerinne.
Treading the same stylistic landscape as bands like Pelican and Russian Circles, Valerinne offer up 63 minutes of long, epic tracks that take the listener on a journey in sound and the many ways that it can be used to evoke certain feelings.
Post-Metal and Post-Rock are rightly known for bright, resplendent guitar melodies, shooting out of, (usually), darker music to create multi-faceted and rich compositions that aim to strike a chord with the listener. The music on Monumenta certainly meets that goal and these five songs have more than enough meaningful content to satisfy.
The guitars aren’t the only star of the show though, as not only is there an extremely solid rhythm section providing a firm backbone to the tracks, but added synths also make appearances, subtly enhancing the musical soundscapes and adding value whenever and wherever they’re used.
Deftly utilising the Post-Metal/Post-Rock tried-and-tested build/release mechanic, these tracks take their time exploring the various sounds and feelings of the world they find themselves in, building to crescendo before moving off in into other areas, repeatedly, as the nuances of the songs demand. These are frequently slow and gradual shifts, with the music having a glacial, unhurried feel, despite the sometimes upbeat drums and rhythms.
Albums like this are effortless to enjoy; it’s very easy to just put them on and slip out of the everyday world, getting lost in the exotic and enticing soundscapes created by a talented group such as Valerinne. Press play on this album and this is precisely what happens.
Sit back, take it all in and savour.
Hemelbestormer are a Post-Metal band from Belgium. This is their debut album.
Hemelbestormer are an instrumental band and they have created a sweeping epic of an album with four long, sprawling tracks lasting a total of 60 minutes.
Here we have an interesting and involved merging of different styles that are similar enough to get along well, resulting in the quite monolithic Aether.
Post-Metal, Doom and Sludge Metal are the main ingredients. The swirling Doom/Sludge claustrophobia of some of Neurosis’ more abrasive work is met by the expansive Post-Metal that the likes of Isis did so well. This is alongside elements of the heavier work of Pelican, with even some Post-Rock sensibilities of a band like Russian Circles getting a look in too.
The tracks take the listener on a journey through exploratory soundscapes and the Post-Metal build/release mechanic is artfully used throughout.
Aether is as heavily atmospheric as you can probably imagine, but in contrast to some bands that play this style, (especially, it seems, instrumental ones), Hemelbestormer are not afraid to let the distortion properly kick in and get really huge and heavy with the guitars. This pleases me greatly.
I love music that you can truly get lost and absorbed in and this is definitely one such album. Some instrumental bands can easily lose focus due to the lack of a singer, I find, but Hemelbestormer really don’t suffer from that problem. The music is detailed and nuanced enough to keep you coming back to it, but as mentioned previously, they know when to take things up a notch with the heavy guitars at just the right moments.
Very impressive. Take the time to listen to this.
