In this modern age of music, it seems that new sub-genres and tags are being created by the week to match a somewhat constant push towards innovation. Much to the chagrin of elitists and the conservative-minded that are, for some reason or another, afraid and enraged by evolving sounds. Every time a new buzzword of a genre is created, you have a flock of early adapters as well as an army of nay-sayers that scoff at passing trends. I saw it happen with nu-metal in the 90s, metalcore back in the early 2000′s, deathcore in its rise, and with the current state of the djent scene. We at Heavy Blog have always sort of held a magnifying glass at emerging trends and gave it its fair shake, and more often than not we like to roll with where the tides carry us (save for that whole crabcore and autotuned crap, of course).

So yes, I tend to pick up on fringe movements. From Sumeriancore to Post-Black Metal, I just enjoy hearing fresh ideas. Some call that trend-hopping, and I can sort of see where these people are getting at, but that’s not it at all. I sincerely dig hearing and partaking in what could very well be the next wave of metal. I just don’t enjoy sticking to just a handful of genres, and I certainly don’t intend on staying that way for the rest of my life. Music and music taste, ideally, is constantly evolving. I mean, I intend to be a listener of more extreme and underground genres when I’m, say, 50, but I’ll probably be following whatever sort of futuristic concoction happens to be going strong, and not clinging to djent and progressive metal for dear life and ramble about how “kids these days don’t understand the magic that was djent!” while shaking my fists in anger at kids who happen to be getting a little to close to my lawn.

These so-called ridiculous subgenres are seriously interesting to me, and over the past year or so, my attention has slowly been turning towards something I’m going to call “Post-Death Metal.” I can hear the anger emanating from within the elite hivemind right now at the mere mention of it. Most readers of HBIH are pretty open minded, and this isn’t so much about you regular readers, but there are some people out there that still deny that Post-Metal isn’t a genre. Seriously?! But back on point, Post-Death Metal is slowly emerging from the murky depths of metal, and in a year or so, it might just be commonplace. It’s so new and there’s so few bands doing it right now that the genre is sort of like an amorphous blob that hasn’t really been fully taken shape or even defined, from what I can gather. Today, I’m going to make an argument for its existence, and offer up a few qualifiers.

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