As much as I love post metal, I won’t deny that the genre has no shortage of color-by-numbers acts that regurgitate the same few influences. I’ll admit, this isn’t always a dealbreaker for me. I’ve heard and enjoyed a number of albums that might as well have been subtitled “A Study in Russian Circles,” and even purchased a number of them—such is my hunger for heavy guitars and dark atmospheres.
With that in mind, when a post metal act releases something that looks beyond the scope of the overworked soil tilled up by Isis, Cult of Luna, and Russian Circles and replanted by just about every other band in the genre since, the results are truly fresh.
Take for instance Migration, the second full length from Kent, England’s Bossk. It draws enough from the conventions of post metal to pass the smell test, but it infuses those flavors with generous bits of seasoning from trip hop, industrial, and hardcore.
The results is one of the most inventive and rewarding post metal albums of the last few years.
2021 was a spectacularly immense year for music. It felt like all of the bands who weren’t able to tour last year spent 2020 writing and recording new albums. Then this year, they released them.