At one time in possession of a distinctive sound that brought together hardcore, noise rock, and sludge metal, Death Engine have come out of the other side of a brief hiatus and line-up overhaul with a new musical vision. On Ocean, post-metal has moved to the forefront of a compositional approach that is insidious and subtly atmospheric, yet still bleak and uncompromising in its heaviness. Towering walls of distortion rendered into imposing mid-tempo riffs are contrasted in either direction by more subdued cleanliness or more visceral aggression, while session drummer Joris Saïdani (Birds In Row) shapes the album’s tone with a versatile and emphatic performance.

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Still as hard to place under a single genre as ever, but tipping the scales slightly more towards atmospheric black metal on this specific one, Downfall Of Gaia still make something that's more not-black metal than black metal. Moments full of shrieks and blast beats and tremolo picking aside, it's brandished with hardcore aggression, a slab of sludge enormousness, and a dash of mellowness to contrast the heaviness, which does take it closer to post-rock/metalgaze at times. Silhouettes Of Disgust might not deviate too much from Downfall Of Gaia's established post-/black/hardcore/sludge established sound, but there are some twists here to make things interesting, from guest clean vocals, to a larger presence of keyboards in the atmosphere, to how much the drums feel like they take center stage in the mix.

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Ikarie speedran their way into the Metal Storm staff’s hearts in 2021, turning an appearance in Clandestine Cuts in early 2021 into nominations for Best Post-Metal Album and Best Debut Album by the end of the year. Their combination of post-metal and Peaceville-era death/doom may be tailor-made to appeal to some of the staff, but a nice concept isn’t worth much unless it’s executed well, and early in their career, the Spanish group have shown that they’ve already got a strong handle on their intended sound. The doom is perhaps dialled down slightly on sophomore release Arde, but their music remains densely atmospheric and emotional on this release, with bleak, brooding tones, melancholic melodies, and intelligent song structures resulting in an incredibly effective outcome.

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Having a name that’s a short exclamation doesn’t really fit the vibe of the Pelagic roster: these are all bands with gargantuan riffscapes, tidal incursions of instrumental storms. Big, slow, deep, and heavy. Even so, that’s Lo! to a T, aside from the name… and the speed. Buffeting bass, morose clean vocals, thick and eerie riffs, it’s all here, the ponderous presence of post-metal, and then there’s the super-crusty assaults of blistering chords and vitriolic growls played at triple the tempo. Lo! moves at such a swift pace so much of the time, and with such aggressive momentum, that they seem trapped between hardcore and death metal much of the time – but it always comes back to that classic atmospheric sludge. When they do get slow, then you know how much they really mean business.

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Sophomore release De Lumière, the second part of a duology, comes 7 years after the debut of Belarus’ Nebulae Come Sweet, but it makes up for all that time by firing on all cylinders with a sound that strays beyond the confines of post-metal. Strings instrumentalist Anastasiya Vashkevich plays a key role in adding an Ode And Elegy-esque chamber touch to the evocative, brooding metallic base of this record, but Nebulae Come Sweet is an all-round versatile album, dabbling with more extreme metal sounds, emotional clean vocal harmonies, and prog-influenced rhythms and structures. With a dynamic range that reaches for tortured dark ambience to aggressive sludge, De Lumière offers a grand vision and a stirring experience.

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The song “Holocene” from 2020’s Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic / Cenozoic was a surprisingly muted, electronics-heavy song for The Ocean, but it was just the prelude for the album Holocene, which concludes The Ocean’s palaeontology-inspired quadrilogy in unexpected but remarkable fashion. In some ways, the gradually escalating heaviness of Holocene across its runtime echoes a similar pattern on Pelagial, but the relative heaviness is substantially shifted, as the album opens with synths and slowly incorporates the metal, giving keyboardist Peter Voigtmann a key role in the album’s infrastructure. It’s a bold move, but The Ocean pull it off, vocalist Loïc Rossetti and drummer Paul Seidel in particular delivering in style to make the atmospheric journey across Holocene compelling. Capped off by an outstanding cameo from Årabrot’s Karin Park on the album’s centrepiece, Holocene is both a fitting conclusion to the quadrilogy and a successful display of novel experimentation from one of post-metal’s most iconic acts.

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Post-metal as a rule is known for placing some kind of significance on atmosphere and scale: it’s a subgenre that’s all about making a big impact, usually slowly and introspectively. It’s usually not this… destructive. Torpor possess the monstrous brutality of a much more violent band despite adhering to the expected pace and compositional bareness; you can feel all the doom and the sludge and the… post that went into the creation of Abscission. There are moments of quietude throughout, the classic ebb and flow where piano fades in and the guitars fade out and the world settles underneath the rubble for a few minutes – all to accentuate the pummeling earthquakes of riffage when the volume kicks back in. There’s always a sense of unease in those softer respites, and absolute earth-shaking hellfire once they evaporate. Maybe there’s a funeral doom album in Torpor yet.

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