At this point, the subgenre’s trend level has crested and most of what the specific style of music has to offer has likely been explored, but although it gets the ol’ eye-roll “not this again” treatment these days, it’s worth remembering that post-metal has produced some great, landmark albums, and that the bands who came after had solid reasoning behind being influenced as they were.

Blending post-rock elements with heavier, often crushing guitar work, the classification post-metal is as amorphous as any genre term. I’ve heard everyone from High on Fire to Ulver referred to under its umbrella, but I want to be clear that when I talk about post-metal, I’m thinking of what’s also commonly called “metalgaze,” the specific branch of metal heavily inspired by the bands below.

I wanted to do this Where to Start post not just for those looking to expose themselves to the genre, but also in case anyone who maybe is tired of hearing bands that sound like this has forgotten how killer these records were. Here’s my starting five essential post-metal albums, ordered by year of release:

1. Godflesh, Godflesh (1988): I saw the album art on hoodies for years before I knew what it was. 1989’s Streetcleaner was better received critically at the time for its industrial leanings, but Justin Broadrick‘s first outing after leaving Napalm Death has grown over time to be the more influential album. At just 30 minutes long in its original form (subsequent reissues would add bonus material), it’s a pivotal moment in understanding modern post-metal that predates most of the genre’s major contributions by over a decade.

2. Neurosis, A Sun That Never Sets (2001): Take a listen to A Sun That Never Sets closer “Stones from the Sky,” then go put on just about any post-metal record, and you’ll see many of them trying to capture the same feel and progression — if not just blatantly transposing that riff onto their own material. Say what you want about Neurosis‘ earlier material, I think if everyone was honest about it, it would be A Sun That Never Sets mentioned even more. An awful lot of the modern wave of post-metal bands formed in 2001 and 2002, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

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Dude. As someone who’s listened to Ritual Abuse, the Relapse debut from Richmond‘s Cough, believe me, this shit is heavy. It’s like the omega-doom. They’re the Electric Wizard of the Virginia Colony. Very heavy, very riffy, very doom. Visceral. And the best part? Relapse has allowed The Obelisk to exclusively premiere the new track, “Crippled Wizard,” and I don’t mean “exclusive” like you can also go find it on a bunch of other sites. Hoist a doom claw; this one’s all ours.

Use the player below to bear witness. Cough‘s Ritual Abuse is out Oct. 26 on Relapse.

Cough, Crippled Wizard

Ritual Abuse will be on CD and in 2LP gatefold vinyl in an edition of 556 ashen gray marble and 108 clear records which aren’t for public consumption. Artwork comes courtesy of Glyn Smyth. Here’s what the label has to say about it:

Richmond‘s Cough delivers thoroughly massive, psychedelic doom on their aptly-titled Relapse debut Ritual Abuse. The album’s five epic tracks are impenetrable walls of sludge; at points suffocating and claustrophobic, at others warped and hallucinogenic. Ritual Abuse is an impressive monolith of sound and volume, and one of the finest moments yet of 21st Century doom.

Tour Dates:
Sept. 24 Harrisonburg, VA Crayola House
Sept. 25 Wilmington, DE Barcode (w/Might Could, Pagan Wolf Ritual)
Sept. 26 Philadelphia, PA Mill Creek Tavern (w/Gholas)
Nov. 7 Gainesville, FL Common Grounds
Nov. 8 Orlando, FL Will’s Pub
Nov. 9 Jacksonville, FL The Warehouse
Nov. 10 Miami, FL Churchill’s
Nov. 14 Tallahassee, FL The Farside Collective
Nov. 16 Athens, GA Caledonia Lounge
Nov. 17 Nashville, TN Little Hamilton
Nov. 19 Little Rock, AR Juanita’s Cantina Ballroom
Nov. 20 Vicksburg, MS The Doom Room
Nov. 21 New Orleans, LA Siberia
Nov. 23 Dallas, TX Nightmare
Nov. 24 Oklahoma City, OK The Conservatory
Nov. 27 Las Vegas, NV Meathead’s Bar
Nov. 29 San Francisco, CA The Elbo Room
Nov. 30 Chico, CA Monstro’s Pizza
Dec. 2 Seattle, WA The Highline
Dec. 9 Columbus, OH Carabar

Today I couldn’t be more thrilled to have the honor of premiering a new track from Brooklyn cosmonauts Titan‘s Relapse Records debut, Sweet Dreams. The song is called “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander,” and you can listen with the player below:

Titan, “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander” from Sweet Dreams:
Titan track

Special thanks to Relapse for letting me host this psychedelic monster of a track. Sweet Dreams was recorded at Translator Audio in Brooklyn by Brendan Tobin (Made Out of Babies) and streets Oct. 12. You can preorder the CD here and the gatefold vinyl here. Vinyl is pressed in an edition of 631 180 gram black and 337 coffee cream.

Titan play Kung Fu Necktie in Philly Oct. 22 with Serpent Throne, Snake Sustain and Royal Thunder, and their record release show is at Union Pool in Brooklyn Oct. 24 with Royal Thunder and Dark Vibes. More info at their MySpace.

If there’s a prevailing atmosphere on, V, the aptly-titled fifth album by New York City doomers Unearthly Trance, it is despair. No doubt Saint Vitus, who named their fifth full-length the same thing in 1989, were in mind for the trio, and on some levels it’s a fair comparison. If you look at it at just the right angle, Unearthly Trance play slow, are tortured, give a solid showing of aural anguish as did the West Coast doom progenitors, but where their V (absolutely nothing against it) reveled in its simplicity, Unearthly Trance seem bent on making their sound as complex and multi-faceted as possible.

For me, V finds its high point in “Adversaries Mask 1” and “Adversaries Mask 2.” Together, the pair run just a little longer than seven-minute opener “Unveiled” and “Solar Eye,” but the former’s semi-minimalist approach might represent the most brutal moment on V while also being the quietest, and the latter’s unbridled chaos shows a new side of Unearthly Trance the band has been able to incorporate into their sound. “Adversaries Mask 2” plays out like a more misanthropic take on Neurosis’ Given to the Rising; there’s no real structure other than that provided by the consistent tom work of drummer Darren Verni and the running lines of bassist Jay Newman, no riffs to speak of from guitarist/vocalist Ryan Lipynsky, whose screams are also perhaps at their most brutal, and a pervading sense of the deranged often neglected when bands “go off” in such ways. As “Adversaries Mask 2” gives way to the more riff-driven “The Tesla Effect” — on which Lipynsky shows his time has been well spent in black metal outfit The Howling Wind — the adrenaline level of the whole album rises and the contrast between the songs only heightens the appeal of both.

“The Tesla Effect” is something of a return to normality for Unearthly Trance after the suckerpunch duo of tracks, getting back to the plodding, crashing, tonal heft of earlier material like “The Horsemen Arrive in the Night” without aping it or sounding formulaic. If anything V is the opposite, too much all over the place, but that’s a superficial judgment. The more time you spend with the record, the more you’re going to understand its flow and when the cymbal-driven groove of “Sleeping While They Feast” moves into the lumbering crash/scream-fest “Submerged Metropolis” — like a more filled-out Khanate — the transition won’t be so much like slamming into a wall as, well, it’s still kind of like slamming into a wall, but in a more understandable way.

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With their issue of Horseback’s The Invisible Mountain full-length, Relapse gets a shot at exposing a vital and relative newcomer to a wider audience. First released through Utech Records last year, The Invisible Mountain is a stylistic amalgamation pulled off with striking poise by Horseback, the band moniker taken on by Chapel Hill, North Carolina, artist Jenks Miller, who combines ambient drone and the occasional bout of stoner riffing with harsh black metal vocals. The Invisible Mountain is Horseback’s second full-length (Miller also releases material under his own name), and with four tracks all over six minutes long, it’s an album that takes its time unfolding but has a sense of immediacy nonetheless.

In many ways, it’s saved by the mix. Were Miller’s vocals not relatively buried and were the ambient guitar layers not brought to the fore, The Invisible Mountain would be completely intolerable. As it is, fans of Grails and post-metal types will find plenty to latch onto with Horseback. I wouldn’t go as far as to call the music experimental, because Miller isn’t really doing anything that hasn’t been done in any of the styles he’s toying with and melding, but on a conceptual level, Horseback could be breaking new ground. Opener “Invokation” doesn’t seem to be anything special, just a doomy riffer with some thick bottom end and rolling drums, but when Miller comes in with the vocals, it gets obvious real quick that Horseback isn’t just another post-doom outfit. Think darker Wino guitars with Attila Csihar singing over them and you’ll have some idea of where “Invokation” is going.

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News to me they were reuniting at all, but Kirk Fisher of North Carolina sludgers Buzzov*en issued an update in April and there were recently some tour dates posted, so it’s on. Can a Buzzov*en reunion ever live up to the chaos and volatility that has by now become the legend of their shows? I suppose we’ll all have to find out together.

Here’s the news from Fisher (who these days goes by Kirk Lloyd) and the dates, as found on the Tone Deaf Touring site:

So as time flies by as it does so often these days we are coming closer to the preparation of the upcoming US tour this fall. Guitar player from the EP The Gospel According to… Craig Baker recently appeared after I had presumed him dead or lost for good and it’s possible he may be playing on the Fall gigs. At a Loss is almost ready to hit the shelves again but this time with the addition of vinyl. Emetic Records is reissuing it. And on another note Hydra Head Records is finally gonna officially release Revelation:Sick again hopefully by the time we do our first shows in September. Things are coming together and I will also be doing some k.lloyd shows during some of these outings with Buzzov*en so stay tuned as dates should be announced here very soon. Also new merch is coming under a new merch company run by us. This should be up and new designs available within the next month or so. Thanks to everyone for their support and I’m hoping to see all of you this fall out on the road. Later, Kirk Lloyd

09/25 Tremont Music Hall, Charlotte NC
09/29 Reggies Rock Club, Chicago IL
09/30 Rocks Off Concert Cruise Aboard the Temptress, New York NY
10/01 Ottobar, Baltimore MD
10/02 Emo’s, Austin TX

As I do with most records that come my way bearing some measure of hype – because, as I’ve been told, I’m a prick and once someone else decides they like something I have to not like it – I put off reviewing Taste the Sin, the sophomore full-length outing and Relapse Records debut of the trio Black Tusk. Culled from the metallically fertile fields of Georgia which have already given rise to Kylesa, Baroness and a little band called Mastodon, Black Tusk maintain strong sonic connections to the definition of progressive whereby trapeze riffs and tempo changes meet with heady drum fills, but set themselves apart when it comes to attitude. A song like Taste the Sin opener “Embrace the Madness” has no obvious connections to classic literature. In fact, if you pay attention to the words, it’s kind of dumb, and I think that’s what Black Tusk are going for.

It works to some degree, but even taking the attitude shift into consideration, Black Tusk, who formed in 2005 and issued their first album, Passage Through Purgatory, on Hyperrealist in 2008, aren’t really bringing in anything we haven’t already heard, despite skillfully incorporating thrashing elements from the likes of High on Fire. That said, it’s easy to see why many listeners would latch onto them as a candidate for the vaulted “Next Big Thing” in underground metal. Baroness won’t have an album out this year, and Black Tusk fill that void nicely, constructed as they are of familiar parts with just enough individuality behind them to stamp out any bitchy critic-types who might say, “They sound just like whoever.” Basically, Taste the Sin is thinky-thinky sub-prog stoner metal you don’t actually have to think all that hard about. The riffs of guitarist/vocalist Andrew, while too busy to be memorable in the Sabbathian sense, do what they’re supposed to do, and a song like “Way of Horse and Bow” has more than enough edge to get by.

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As the follow-up EP to their Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep debut Relapse full-length, Culted’s four-track excursion Of Death and Ritual is nothing if not aptly named. In the three originals – the closer is a cover of Swans’ “Whore” – the word “dead” or some variation thereof makes no fewer than 11 appearances. Interestingly, “ritual” only shows up once. I wonder if that’s why they ordered them thusly in the title. Otherwise, Of Ritual and Death would have worked just as well.

Much like they did on the full-length, on Of Death and Ritual Culted dwell in the bleak, dreary realms of blackened doom, like Khanate with a noise fetish. With the instrumental portion of the band located in Winnipeg, Canada, and vocalist Daniel Jansson in Gothenburg, Sweden, you might think there’d be some discrepancy or lack of cohesion in the execution of the material, but really it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. I don’t think “Spirituosa,” “Black Cough, Black Coffin” and “Dissent” would be any better off had Jansson been in the room while guitarists/bassists Michael Klassen and Matthew Friesen and percussionist Kevin Stevenson were developing the instrumental basis for the songs and adding sundry noises and percussions. The trio, who also operate as the black metal band Of Human Bondage, seem to have a pretty good handle on what they’re doing, and I doubt the files had to do much back and forth before the songs were finished.

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