For a while there in the 00s, I was heavily into the post-rock/post-metal genre. I mean heavily. After discovering Isis’ Oceanic, I was looking for everything and anything in the genre: The big ones like Cult of Luna, The Ocean, Rosetta, Callisto, Transmission0, and Burst, as well as more obscure ones like Impure Wilhelmina, Iron Thrones, Herod, Vygr, Hegemone, At the Soundawn, Northless, etc.
But then, I sorta went off it, much like many genres that experience rapid growth, it became stale, saturated, overidden by clones, and the forebearers changed thier sound a bit. I can safely say the last band in the style I truly enjoyed was the UK’s Lightbearer.
This brings me to another UK (Scotland) post-metal act, Void of Light, and their debut, Asymmetries, an album I grabbed to see if the genre interest could be reignited after some time away.
5 songs, 48 minutes, and all the hallmarks of the genre’s classics are here in spades; sumptuous yet atmospheric builds, big, shimmery, emotive riffs, crumbling crescendos of mountainous heft and pained bellows and screams, with introspective moments, and croons/whispers. It’s all here and well done as the opening duo of “The Passing Hours” and “Silver Mask” and lumbering but suitably climactic closer “Mirrorings” demonstrates admirably.
A couple of more urgent, almost blacker metal explosions inject a little pacing here and there, such as “Ends”, and otherwise more controlled “Still The Night Skies”.
Asymmetries hasn’t completely reinvigorated my love of the genre, but it has at least had me searching for some newer bands in the style as well as revisiting the classic bands mentioned above, too.
