Defining Some Terms

Given that I'm doing this series on heavy music this summer I thought it might be useful to explain what I'm talking about, given that there's not really a good genre name for it. I've seen the kind of music I'm talking about called post-rock (good term, used to the point where it has no meaning), post-metal (but how can you call a band that's STILL metal "post-metal"?), and "avant-garde metal" (I'm not even going to touch that one) so there's obviously some disagreement on what, exactly, we're talking about.

In academic writing your supposed to define your terms at the beginning of your paper, so I'm going to go ahead and define my terms.

Feel free to skip this if you don't care and just want to get to the reviews.

The kind of music I'm talking about is the generally heavy, generally slow music which draws from doom metal, stoner rock, hardcore, crust punk, and traditional metal which is often lumped together based on superficial characteristics such as a long song length and a tendency to move between light and heavy parts. By "heavy" I mean shit that's low, thick, and distorted, which, if turned up loud enough, makes you feel like you're being punched in the gut. Heavy isn't just any music with some distortion. It's got to have that punched in the gut quality to it.

I think there are three main strands of the kind of music I'm talking about, most of which get glossed over in discussions of this genre in favor of creating a sort of artificial homogeneity among the bands. I'm going to call them "type 1," "type 2," and "type 3."

***Type 1 draws predominantly from doom metal, mixing it with some ambient atmosphere, some stoner/sludge type stuff, creating soundscapes that are often repetitive and hypnotic. Exemplars of this style who are currently playing include Neurosis, Minsk, Rwake, Ufomammut, Tides, Rosetta, and Buried at Sea. At the outer end of this type would be bands like God's Temple of Family Deliverance, Deadbird and Esoteric, who are probably closer to established other genres.

***Type 2 draws predominantly from late 90s-hardcore, applying a sort of heaviness to it which is borrowed from sludgey stuff. Early Isis would probably fit this category. It's worth remembering that the first Isis fans were hardcore kids who were probably more likely to have Coalesce shirts than Tool shirts in their closet. Other exemplars would include Mouth of the Architect, Year of No Light, Tephra, Amenra, Battlefields, Giant Squid, Ganon, Three Steps to the Ocean, From Oceans to Autumn, and maybe Adrift.

***Type 3 draws from prog-rock kind of stuff (Tool?), as well as traditional, technical, heavy metal, and mixes it with a sort of riffy heaviness. I think later Isis (i.e. the new record), later pelican (the last two records), Russian Circles exemplify this type.

Okay. Now we're all hopefully on the same page. My first review of the series, a review of the ToMyDeepestEgo's recent record "Odyssea" will follow.

Edit: I just wanted to bring up two quick things:

1) I don't mean my list above to be exhaustive or perfect. Lots of bands straddle different types up there (I think my own band is probably between types 1 and 2, a little closer to 2) and some bands don't really fit into any of them at all. I just wanted to make sure I was on the same page as everyone reading this when I reviewed these records.

2) As some people have already started doing, if you want to recommend a record, please do.