Post Rock

Record #963: MONO – The Last Dawn & Rays of Darkness (2014)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Throughout their twenty-five year career, MONO have demonstrated time and time again that they are masters of duality. Their best material finds them unifying the gorgeous orchestration of their “neo-classical” brand of post rock and bombastic catharsis that sometimes stretches into metal territory. Their tours have found them accompanied by a full orchestra while sharing bills with the likes of envy and Boris, and those facts never seem to contradict eachother.

On 2014’s two-part release of The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness, the Japanese masters give each element of their sound a little more room to breathe, spending one album prioritizing their more orchestral ambitions and the other indulging their most fiery impulses. Continue reading →

Record #959: Holy Fawn – Realms (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When Holy Fawn’s Death Spells made them the It Band of 2019, they were given a lot of praise for being one of the best new bands in the scene.

Problem there is that they weren’t exactly new. In fact, they had released their first album four years prior. But Realms sat in relative obscurity—even as Death Spells gathered them new fans. It sat as a sort of curiosity on their Spotify page, failing to offer the same crushing heaviness as the record we all came for.

However, as their star has continued to rise—thanks to tours with the likes of Thrice and Deafheaven—more and more fans found their way back to their debut. And while it might indeed lack the moments of black metal catharsis they’ve come to be known for, their trademark dazzling atmospheres and lush sonics were already in full bloom.

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Record #953: Lift to Experience – The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It seems no matter how deep I dig (and boy, do I dig deep sometimes), there’s always some seminal release I’ve missed—even in the exact scenes I’ve been trudging through. Take for example Lift to Experience, whom I had never heard of before a review referred to my own band as “We have Lift to Experience at home” (a favorable comparison, I hope).

I’m constantly fascinated by the points of reference other people have when they hear us, so I checked out this band that we were purportedly ripping off. Truth be told, it seems like the only immediate comparison is our shared devotion to overdriven guitars and reverb pedals. But when I divorced them from the comparison, I found a wonderfully idiosyncratic record that lands directly in that sweet spot between shoegaze and post rock that I love so much—bad hip hop parody artwork aside.

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Record #933: Aussitôt Mort – Discographie (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you’ve been following along at home, you’ll remember that I recently realized that I like skramz. That brings up a problem though: there’s an awful lot for me to catch up on.

Luckily, most albums in the genre don’t get past the thirty-minute mark. Double luckily, French outfit Aussitôt Mort (translation: As Soon as Dead) released this compilation of their first two releases in a handy package that clocks in just over an hour. While compilations aren’t my first choice (especially when the album art for Montuenga is so good), it’s hard to complain about this collection of songs that combine the blistering passion of screamo with elements of post rock and sludge metal.

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Record #890: Esben and the Witch – Wash the Sins Not Only the Face (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

At this point, I should just ignore my Spotify Daily Mixes. They’re becoming financially ruinous. Almost every time I skim through one, I find something that immediately grabs my attention (see also: Life on Venus, Grivo, Locrian…).

A few weeks ago, I was looking through one of these playlists and was fascinated by the delay-heavy guitar and ethereal alto vocals of “Slow Wave,” so I dug further. What I found was an album that felt like Warpaint had been listening to a lot more goth, post rock, and black metal. Which hit my sensibilities right on the button—which in turn saw me pressing the “order now” button on a copy on Discogs.

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Record #888: Blankenberge – Everything (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Everyone talks about how the internet has made the world smaller, but less attention has been given to how it has expanded microcosms into galaxies. Microgenres have become scenes unto themselves, with legions of bands offering sonic homage to a handful of albums.

Where the term “shoegaze” originally referred to a dozen or so bands around London, the sonic explorations they pioneered have created hosts of acolytes making their own pilgrimages through reverb-and-fuzz-drenched guitars. This scene has further bifurcated itself, with further microscenes forming within the context of an already niche genre (see: dreamgaze, heavy shoegaze, blackgaze, doomgaze, dreamo and more).

One of the more fascinating microscenes I’ve discovered is the Russian shoegaze scene, which is comprised of bands like Life on Venus, Pinkshinyultrablast, and Blankenberge, whose album Everything is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.

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Record #883: Holy Fawn – Dimensional Bleed (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It’s hard to tell whether social media and streaming have been a net positive or negative for music in general. On the one hand, anyone with an internet connection and the most basic recording setup can distribute their music onto the internet within minutes. But on the other hand, it’s relegated musicians to the roles of Content Creators, requiring them to keep releasing a constant stream of new music to keep their audience’s attention.

But somehow, Holy Fawn has more or less managed to escape that trap. Their 2018 full-length Death Spells still feels as fresh and hype-worthy as it did when it first exploded across the internet. There were some other releases in their catalog—a 2015 EP that no one really paid attention to (myself until recently), a three-track EP in early 2020, and a couple remixes and covers, but Death Spells has remained the standard bearer for the band—and the entire heavy, moody shoegaze scene since, it seems .

I say all of this to point out that we didn’t need another Holy Fawn record. But damn, am I glad we got it, because Dimensional Bleed is proof that the Arizona quartet can conjure lightning to strike at least twice.

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Record #867: BRUIT≤ – The Machine is burning and now everyone knows it can happen again (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As a post rock fan, I’ve heard a lot of my fellow fans complaining the last several years about how there aren’t any good post rock albums coming out. I have generally dismissed this as your typical “old man yells at cloud” grumpiness. After all, there’s been tons of recent post rock that I’ve absolutely loved.

But then, I heard The Machine is burning and now everyone knows it can happen again by French post rock/modern classical quartet BRUIT≤ (French for “noise”). This record is so great that for a second, I understood what they might have been talking about.

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Record #863: Mountaineer – Giving Up the Ghost (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When I was first introduced to Mountaineer through their 2020 record Bloodletting, I was instantly enamored. That record is an inspiring bit of gorgeous sludge metal that transcends the emotional resonance of the genre without stretching beyond the sonic conventions laid down by Isis, Cult of Luna, and others.

So when Giving Up the Ghost was announced, I was equal parts excited and apprehensive. Bloodletting felt so singular that it might be impossible to follow up in a satisfying way. Either they make the same record and it winds up boring or they shift the formula of their careful chemistry and it doesn’t reach the same reaction. I actually waited a few weeks after it was released to listen to it because I was so nervous that it wouldn’t live up.

Since I’m reviewing my personal vinyl copy, you could probably deduce that my worries were unfounded.

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Record #855: A Hope For Home – In Abstraction (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald


On 4/20 this past year, I was working on a joke article for Tuned Up called “Blaze It and Praise It: The Stoner-iest Christian(ish) Albums Ever Released.” While brainstorming in the staff Discord, one of the other writers mentioned that A Hope For Home’s last record was basically just a sludge metal record. I hadn’t heard it, so in the spirit of doing good research, I put it on.

In about ten minutes, I was scouring Discogs for a copy, yadda yadda yadda, and here we are.

In Abstraction isn’t just “basically a sludge metal record.” It’s a rich blend of sludge heaviness, post rock atmosphere, and post-hardcore energy that is still fresh.

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