Thread discussing recommendations and genre specifics of post-black metal.

Bands that actually have black in their sound will always be regarded as black metal. So to me the post-black bands sounds like post-metal done a bit harsher. Black-post would probably been a more accurate description on this style.

I feel like there are two meanings for post-black metal.

One of them is the obvious post-rock + black metal combination, referring to bands like Entropia, Fen, WitTR, etc.

And the other one would be referring to bands post second wave era (hence "post"), basically any band which has something fundamentally different from the roots, so that would include any band like DsO (or the whole dissonant bm movement), Ihsahn, Oranssi Pazuzu, etc. And I'm not inventing this, it is actually an established terminology (ex1, ex2)

So that's why there is so much confusion regarding the tag...

Personally I think the later meaning is too broad for the purposes of nowadays, since so many subgenres have rised since the downfall of the second wave. I like to think post black is post rock+black metal and simply try to describe post-second era bands depending on each case.

This is something entirely separate from post metal (the - mostly - sludge oriented one) and you're not gonna change my mind.

Post-black = black+ post rock elements/ideas (like "post metal" is sludge + post rock/hardcore). The discussion came up in light of bands like Au-Dessus, who combine post metal and black metal (which to me is somewhat artificial of a mix - there are post metal bands that have passages that sound like black metal anyways). At best blackened post metal. We don't need to redefine the already much used term of "post-black" for what hardly amounts to a few bands

I guess it's the issue in using a term like post- as a genre description, it seems to fulfil a similar role to 'avant-garde' or 'experimental' in terms of indicating that it's taking an established sound and advancing or experimenting with it. Now that time has progressed, a lot of the bands falling under that second category would be classified under different genre tags (Ihsahn as progressive black, Oranssi Pazuzu as psychedelic black, Deafheaven as blackgaze). Post-rock and post-metal ended up becoming established genres in their own rights with signature elements.

Post-black being defined as a combination of black metal and post-metal or post-rock elements would be an identifiable sub-classification that bands exhibiting those traits could be grouped under, whilst post-black as defined by wikipedia seems like such a nebulous term that is doesn't really mean all that much (Alcest, Deathspell Omega, and Altar Of Plagues all sound completely different from one another). Black metal has diverged in so many different directions since the turn of the millenium that post-black doesn't seem like it's much more of a useful indicator of style than black metal is itself. The bands I'm used to seeing be referred to as post-black are the likes of Au-Dessus, Regarde Les Hommer Tomber, Fen, Redwood Hill (Albedo by Redwood Hill seems like a quintessential demonstration of combining post-metal dynamics with black metal tremolo riffing and croaky vox), Altar Of Plagues, and so on. I mean I guess it ultimately comes down to whether people want it to be a term that indicates the sound of a band to a certain level of confidence that you can predict what you'll encounter, or just identifies it as diverging from the fundamentals of the genre established by the first wave, which ultimately would probably cover a large proportion of reputable BM bands currently active.

Written by Karlabos on 14.07.2018 at 16:07

And the other one would be referring to bands post second wave era (hence "post"), basically any band which has something fundamentally different from the roots, so that would include any band like DsO (or the whole dissonant bm movement), Ihsahn, Oranssi Pazuzu, etc. And I'm not inventing this, it is actually an established terminology (ex1, ex2)

Interesting. I have never heard of this description before, but thinking about it it does make sense.

It annoys me when post-black metal is used for post-rock + black metal as that as mostly been absorbed by blackgaze, while there is much more to post-black metal than that scene. I'd use it more for bands like Liturgy, Solefald, Ulver, Ihsahn, Kekal, Sigh ect. Bands whose roots are clearly black metal, but they don't really fit in any genre. I'd also include Alcest, because when they started they were doing something new, but nowadays they are considered blackgaze because it became a genre of it's own. Deathspell I'm iffy on, maybe I just haven't heard enough of them, but to me they can't be categorized as anything but black metal, so despite being innovators they aren't really post-black where they would need to transcend the genre.

Written by musclassia on 14.07.2018 at 16:34

Post-rock and post-metal ended up becoming established genres in their own rights with signature elements.

While what you are saying is generally correct, post-metal is a bit of an anomaly. I don't think that as a genre it was ever actually a derivative of metal moving away from the essence of metal (like all the other post genres, whether post-rock, post-hardcore, post-punk, post-grunge, or post-black), but just a fusion of post-rock and metal. Yeah, the term post-metal was used to describe Tool before the term post-rock was coined and to some extent the genres evolved alongside each other, but in practice when people think post-metal they think of heavier post-rock, and it was the alternative rock side that did more to establish the genre (post-rock and post-metal together) than the metal side. The fact that post-metal is sometimes equated with metalgaze shows that post-metal refers more to a specific fusion.

The new Hegemone is one of the genre's finest achievements: