(written by Islander)
To be honest, “post metal” is an amorphous term (though maybe not as amorphous as metal genre labels such as “avant-garde” or “dark metal”). As such, it probably brings to mind different things to different listeners, in part because bands who helped spawn the term and others since then have often engaged in experimentation.
In my case, I tend to think of :post metal” as music that’s expansive, heavy, and atmospherically dark, with a tendency to build upon repeating cycles of sound, though I recognize that bands grouped under the post-metal label often sound very, very different from each other, in part because they draw upon differing ingredients from other recognized metallic genres, including sludge, doom, and black metal.
And that brings me to One With the Riverbed, a quintet from Kalamazoo, Michigan that first came together in 2017. Their discography to date, including their 2021 debut album Absence, has attracted the “post metal” label, and that will probably be true of their forthcoming second album Succumb, which is set for release on October 25th by the Dusktone label. Yet, for reasons explained above, that leaves questions about the nature of their new music unanswered.
But we have some answers today through our premiere of a visualizer for the new album’s opening track, “Infested“, for which the term “post-black metal” seems more specific. Continue reading »
