Sludge tends to be a catch-all genre term these days. I find it seems to apply to a whole lot of different sounds that aren’t quite alike but there’s nowhere else to put them. Does your band make big riffs but not at a snail’s pace? You’re sludge now. Do…
Something, something, the sum of its parts, or whatever. Anyone coming to END and asking “what do you get if you cross Counterparts with Fit For An Autopsy and Dillinger…” is already doing themselves a disservice. They’re loaded with preconceptions and they’re not asking the right question. The question actually…
As we deepen our exploration of different genres, expectations form alongside our opinions. This allows us to better curate and analyze music within a constant, torrential downpour of new releases. With bands like Bolt Gun in the broader “post-metal” landscape, we expect powerful themes with a cinematic delivery, something the…
Six albums deep into their discography, with nary a dud in the bunch, New Zealand’s Ulcerate hardly requires introduction. The extreme metal three-piece carries an unlikely musical lineage from both Neurosis and Gorguts, specializing in technical and brutal post-death that has pushed Ulcerate into the cutting edge of extreme metal that we’ve only just begun to see the influence of in the genre’s continued evolution. The band’s distinctive sound pairs an incredibly technical and intricate rhythm section with swarming, chaotic guitars that lend well to both suffocating walls of sound and passages of contemplative post-metal, often within the context of a single track. It’s a formula that the band have been perfecting since their 2007 debut Of Fracture and Failure and seemingly mastering by their watershed third album. 2011’s Destroyers of All.
Drama. It’s one of those things that, in the context of metal or extreme music, often feels clichéd like some sad self-parody, or just hackneyed and predictable. Things like the demonstrative highs and lows of symphonic or power metal and the cinematic tension of post-metal immediately come to mind, but…
In their much anticipated follow-up to Mariner, the band returned to their core writing mode free of outside collaborators for their Metal Blade debut A Dawn To Fear, and have simplified their songwriting process to eschew a full-album concept, instead offering a collection of independent songs without preconceptions in the writing process. The result of this experiment is a record that is massive, plodding, expansive, and pensive, if not daunting and exhausting for those who aren’t too keen on The Big Slow™
The historical significance of 1999 will be remembered for a long time now. It was a cultural moment that far exceeded any other “decade closer” in the 20th century. Events like Y2K or The Matrix seemed to bring to fever pitch the technological explosion, and the subsequent mark it left…
Even if you took a group of the most scholarly sludge punks and fed them a steady diet of Lightning Bolt, Neurosis, and Sonic Youth for years and years, it’s not likely they’d produce anything as unconventional as Wizard Rifle. Their tone and style is the connective tissue that convincingly…
It’s been a long four years since the sophomore release from Australian post-black metal outfit Hope Drone. Cloak of Ash, released July 2015 through Relapse Records, was the group’s shot at a breakout, and it was certainly a devastating and compelling release, earning a four-out-of-five score from us back when…
Many words have been spilled around these parts in service of post-rock and post-metal. Yet – outside of more expansive, god-tier, genre heavyweights; such as Isis and Neurosis – I’ve never found myself particularly captivated by the genre(s). Lush soundscapes building to cathartic crescendos are all well and good, but…
