Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd.

Here's me posting about metal, specifically, post-metal. Hitting you guys with another starter pack, a bunch of artists and records from within a certain genre or music niche. Maybe one that you're not that well familiar with, and we will kick you off with some good solid recommendations in that style, in that sound, to get you, hopefully, diving into things a little bit further.

Like I have in recent videos, I am bringing on a guest to hand over some recommendations as well. In this instance, that is none other than Ebonie Butler, aka Metal and Coffee, who we had before on the main channel doing a review. She came by once again to give us some post-metal recommendations as well. She picked three records, I picked three records. We are going to go over each them and talk about why we chose them and why we think they are good representations of the post-metal genre, why you should check them out.

Without any further ado, here is the conversation.

AF: Let's go. Okay, we're here and ready to do those recommendations. It's me. It's Metal and Coffee. Before we rip into the first record, I wanted to ask you off the bat, because I allowed to choose the direction that we were going to go in with this video, and wanted to know what drove you to post Metal, first off, and then from there, because it is such an all-encompassing genre that can potentially bring in a lot of elements, what makes a post-metal album for you as a fan of the genre?

EB: Well, first off, post-metal is actually one of my gateway drugs into metal. I started out in college as a big Post-Rock fan. Mogwai, Caspian, God is an Astronaut.

AF: Hell, yeah. Mogwai, hell, yeah. Hell, yeah.

EB: Explosions in the Sky.

AF: Hell, yeah. You're talking my fucking language. You're talking my fucking language. I see you. I see you. Talking my language. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Okay.

EB: Basically, after experiencing the beauty, the amazingness in post-rock and and how much it invokes your feelings and how you can get emotional and just cry your eyes out to some. I decided to check out some post-metal after already being a metalhead to begin with. I was super into the path. I was really into the Damnation album of Opeth, which is their non-metal album, basically. In order to see if I wanted to branch out into more metal, I discovered post-metal, and that's where Isis came in. Aaron Turner of Isis is a big pioneer of the genre, along with people from Neurosis and Godflesh and Jesu.

Basically, it was that moment where I figured out, 'Oh, you can balance calm with chaos, and it could be a really beautiful thing.' Like you were mentioning earlier, post-metal is expansive. No band sounds the same because it's all about expanding the boundaries of extreme music and finding whatever you define as stillness and atmosphere and emotion, however you define that and balancing that with stillness. That's basically what I would define post-metal. It's actually what it means to me, and that's my number one sub-genre of metal, honestly.

Isis - Panopticon

AF: As you alluded to earlier, big, massive a pioneer and influence on the genre, Aaron Turner, his most well-known band, Isis. And you decided off the bat, when I asked you for your recommendations, to hit me with this record, which is pretty much like the granddaddy of all post-metal. You picked the big one. You were like, I'm going for it. I'm not going to shy away. I'm going to pick the post-metal album of all post-metal albums, Isis's Panopticon. I figured you must have a lot to say about it. What do you feel makes this a post-metal album? What do you feel makes this a great post-metal album? And maybe most importantly, a good introduction to the genre for somebody who's just trying to get a grasp of it and try something new.

EB: Gosh, there's so many thoughts I have. In terms of the album itself, Panopticon, it's the band's first step into embracing a lot of ambient sounds and a lot of general post-rock vibes, because earlier, I assess, there wasn't really that much variation in terms of experimenting with those soundscapes and scents and just long lulls in music. With Panopticon, they pretty much started the post-metal sub-genre with this record and started making people think about music differently and breaking away from the typical song structure of song-verse. There is no structure to any of these songs. It's literally however they decide. If they want to have a long where they're just whamming on the instruments and it's distortion for three minutes, they do that. If they want to have a lonely guitar for five minutes, they do that, too.

AF: A lot of open spaces, a lot of tension building, a lot of instrumental passages, too. But usually there is usually a payoff involved at some point. It does go somewhere. There is a direction.

EB: There's a lot of crescendos in post-metal, of course, and also in a post-rock.

AF: Just like post-rock. But it's in a metal context.

EB: In a metal context. For me, personally, this is what made me realize that metal is not just screaming into the mic, fast picking and whamming on blast beats. That's not only what metal could be. I realized that metal could be very, very beautiful if you are into that expansion of your mind and self-reflection, and you're willing to just sit there and let the music embrace you.

AF: I think as you mentioned, there's a lot of diversity in the world of post-metal, but I think one of the major common threads that links all of it together is that you have a lot of long, dramatic, meditative, almost, song structures and progressions that really, in parts, will put you into a bit of a lull, but eventually will bring you to that place of total bliss and emotional overwhelming, whatever the hell you want to say, because it really does build to that epic place. Isis is the band with this record that really laid out the blueprint for that because it does that. It does it very simply. It does it without too much in the way of any crazy, weird genre combinations. It's just very straightforward. In a way, they're almost reminiscent of Mogwai, who you mentioned earlier. But again, with a lot more clear metal influence in the guitar tones and the rift style and so on and so forth. Obviously good and very strong pick at the start of this.

Boris - Feedbacker

AF: Next I'm going to throw down on one and that's going to be the Boris album Feedbacker.

As far as their 2000s output, this is something that is still pretty early on in the decade, still pretty early on in their career. Boris is one of those metal bands that no two or three albums sound all that much the same. They're such a diverse and versatile band. They've really tried almost every type of metal across their career at some point, and even have made records that are more pop-centric here and there. They're a wild band.

Diving throughout their catalog is a really gratifying experience. Feedbacker is probably the most prominent record in their catalog that you could say, in a way, is a contribution to the post-metal style. I mean, in this era of their career, they were still really big into drones and noise and so on and so forth. That most definitely is laced into this record, too. But you have a lot of heavier metal passages, and you have, especially on "Feedbacker, Pt. 2" a lot of super dramatic, spaced out guitars and guitar cord passages that almost sound like they could be on a Godspeed record.

To me, what Boris was doing on this record is not only, again, engaging fully and intensely in their drone shit, but also on top of it paying a little bit of homage to some of the prevailing sounds and trends in post-rock at the time, and what's more post-metal than that? Because obviously, they're applying some of those ideas, some of those linear structures, some of those epic and very layered builds in a metal context that works specifically for them, being the drone metal outsiders that they were at the time when they made this record. That's essentially why I chose this album.

I would say as far as post-metal goes, if you're looking for something that is more of a purist listen, that Isis record is more going to fit the bill. This is more of a bunch of things, but there's definitely some clear post-metal. What you could categorize as that in the mix here and there on a couple of the pieces. Another defining characteristic is that the record is literally five tracks. All of them are Feedback part one, two, or three. Another defining characteristic, a lot of these post-metal and post-rock bands is they structure their albums out like their classical pieces.

EB: Compositions, yeah.

AF: It's not just a bunch of random song titles. This is a Movement One, Movement good, too. You know what I mean? That's how it works. You're almost like taking an orchestral approach to the way that you're building up the sounds and structuring out the tracks. Boris most definitely checks all those boxes on Feedbacker, which is why I went with this one. Before we move on to your next pick, do you have any general thoughts on Boris? Have you messed with them much as a band in the past?

EB: I've seen them a couple of times. It's just all smoke, basically. You barely see them. But absolutely love Boris. I do not think I actually listen to that album.

AF: They have a huge discography. I haven't even heard every Boris record, honestly.

EB: I think the last one I really like was Heavy Rocks. Yeah. And I think that was more of their poppy side.

AF: Was that the second Heavy Rocks? Because they have two Heavy Rocks, I believe, minimum in their catalog. They may even have a few.

EB: Are they both pink?

AF: There's a pink one. There's an orange one. It was like a purple one, an orange one. No, there's actually a third one that has a leopard print on it.

EB: Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.

AF: And the thing is, they're all going for the same vibe. So it's funny that you bring that up because that's actually one of the few exceptions in their catalog where they're like, 'We're actually going to go back and do a thing that we had success doing in the past.; And it's so funny because they don't even have the decency to name it Heavy Rocks one, two, or three. It's like, 'We're naming all these shits the same shit. We're not even going to be able to tell. You're just going to tell by the cover.'

EB: You can do that, your Boris.

AF: It's so Weezer of them, so Weezer of them to go about it that way. But yeah, Heavy Rocks is definitely a really cool series in their catalog, which, again, is another avenue that you could go down with the Boris flow chart in terms of what avenue of their sound, which that is so much more like sludge metal and heavy metal and stuff like that on those records that you could potentially go down with their catalog.

Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway

AF: Next on the list, or another recommendation that you brought to the table is Cult of Luna's, Somewhere Along the Highway, which came out in 2006. What made you go with this record as far as a strong introduction to post-metal?

EB: So this one is probably in my top five albums ever.

AF: Wow.

EB: Yeah, I rate it really, really high because the instrumentation on this record is probably one of the most amazing you'll ever hear from any post-metal band. I know we established earlier that post-metal encompasses a lot of stuff. I'm going to say outright, Isis is not comparable to Cult of Luna. They're both different kinds of post-metal. Isis is more raw in production, and it's almost like they record their stuff in one take. It's very, very instrumentation-focused. Cult of Luna, you are getting a very ethereal experience with every track on this record. They make great use of synths that create this really dark and gloomy atmosphere. It's also one of those records. It's only six songs long. I forgot, another post-metal thing, all the songs are over eight minutes. Some are 25 minutes. You got to be locked in.

AF: You got to be locked in. How long does this album in total?

EB: It's an hour and five minutes. Not the longest post-metal album.

AF: Right. Or the longest post-rock album. But I mean, five or six tracks spread across an hour. Sounds about right.

EB: Yeah, exactly. So you really got to be locked in. But I will say this album is an amazing start to Cult of Luna, if you're interested in post-metal in general, because this is one of the few albums I'll put on start to finish. The hour and five minutes goes so fast. I'm completely locked into the journey, and the vocals are just so gargly and grimy. There are vocals in this record. They balance it out with moments of calm, and then when things crescendo up, it gets really gargly and grimy, and all the darkness is coming out of the soul. I would put this not only under post-metal, they're a prog-metal band as well, because they do really well at taking you on a journey and really making you feel like crap. Because that's really what these albums are, they're so dark.

AF: Instead of bringing you to a place where it's inspiring and high and epic, like on a normal post-rock album or some post-rock albums, they're taking you down to the worst place. They're intensifying negative feelings.

EB: The only exception, possibly, is Alcest. They make happy metal. But Cult of Luna, and their themes tend to be extremely dim. The last song on the album is "Dark City, Dead Man", and it's 15 minutes long. When I tell you that 15 minutes has me and my feelings and it goes so fast, I just highly recommend it. I think you should experience this dreadfulness.

AF: What you said in terms of the instrumentation and to compare it with a record that's more blunt and direct like the Isis album earlier. We're not just talking about just a regular guitar, drums, sound palette here. There's also the synths. And is there anything else being added on top of that to sweeten the deal as well?

EB: I think it's mostly the way they produce the album. A lot of ambience, a lot of atmosphere, and a lot of really... I wouldn't say super clean production. It is clean, though. It's not something where you can actually hear the movements of the drums and the reverb and all that stuff, but it's just super clean, and it comes off as very well-crafted.

Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye

AF: Alright, I'm going to throw down on the next one. That is going to be Kayo Dot's Choirs of the Eye, the groups' 2003 record. Though the band is and has always been masterminded by the one and only singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, a guy who has fronted many different left-field and avant-garde metal projects and bands throughout the years, Mr. Tobey Driver.

It's cool and interesting that earlier that you mentioned with Cult of Luna, the band's parallels to prog rock and prog metal, because that is the case very much for a lot of different post-metal bands, because when you are a group dealing in such long song structures, especially in the metal world, the likelihood that you're probably also going to be massively influenced by progressive rock to some degree is going to be high. It almost comes hand in hand to a degree. And that's most definitely the case also for the Boris album I mentioned earlier, some of the dramatic guitar bits are almost like Pink Floyd reminiscent here and there. And I would say those influences are even clearer, and in a lot of cases, more modern on this Tobey Driver record as well.

For sure, you could pick up some elements of post-rock with the epic and dramatic builds and the lengthy songs throughout this record. But also, of the bunch of all the albums that we've mended here, this one's probably one of the more instrumentally intricate and showy. If you're really looking for something that is going to layer on the instrumentation and be a little avant-garde and be a little out there, because this also comes off of John Zorn's Tzadik label. So I mean, obviously, anything that comes out on that label is going to reach a certain standard of like, it's got to be fucking weird, it's got to be pretentious, it's got to be progressive, and it's got to be super heady to some degree. And that is most definitely the case for this album.

But again, I would say in comparison, the Isis record is a lot more straightforward. This is also dealing and dabbling in a lot of that, but in a way that is a bit more avant-garde, a bit more experimental. Somebody who is very into the New York weirdo scene, bands like Naked City and stuff like that are going to find things to like in this album while it still fits pretty snuggly into the whole post-metal deal.

Amenra - Mass VI

AF: We have a couple more over here. We have Amenra's Mass VI, that you brought to the table. This is the newest and most contemporary of all the records that you've brought up. This dropped in 2017. What made you add this to the list? And with it being as recent as it is, is there anything about it that sets it apart from a lot of these records that came out more in the 2000s when the genre was really getting more of its footing?

EB: That is actually a very interesting question. So this Amenra record I actually perceive this as a nice in between between Isis and Cult of Luna because you're getting the rawness of the production, but at the same time, you're getting the intricacies and atmosphere and strong ambience. The reason why I chose this record was because this is the record that actually turned me on to Amenra. The thing that sticks out about them the most is the vocals. I'm not really sure if you heard the vocalist, I think his name is Colin, but he literally makes it seem like he's in pain,

AF: I actually have not heard this record. I'm trying to think of a comparison. Is it like a Weakling album where the guy's like, or like a The Body album? Something along those lines or even different?

EB: I think it's even different. You legit have to hear it. It literally sounds like someone is... I won't even go as far to say it sounds like they're dying, but it sounds like they're on the verge of dying. It's not even like a full-on textbook harsh vocal. He's mixing a high breach with a cry for help.

AF: That actually sounds sick as hell.

EB: And that's what really drew me to Amenra because I definitely am really drawn towards sad music, I have to say. Obviously, post-metal. I'm really drawn towards sad, depressing shit.

AF: That's so shocking. You're such an upbeat. I know. You're such a suddenly upbeat individual. I'm blown away.

EB: Yeah, but you know what? I got to be in my feelings sometimes. And so this record is probably my favorite Amenra record. And not only because of the cry for help vocals and how much it literally stabs you in your soul, it has a really beautiful way of not only communicating that sadness through the vocals, but also through the musicality. There are songs that, honestly, they don't even… I think vocals are even quite scarce on their record on some songs. Sometimes it's literally just an instrumental most of the song. And you're sitting there, you're like, 'Why do I feel like I just need to go into the covers and never come out?' It's just really ridiculous. And so this is a great record to have an emotional breakdown, too. I'll say that.

Agalloch - Marrow of the Spirit

AF: Let's hit them with one more recommendation. This is an album that also dropped in the 2010s, though earlier on in the decade. It's one of my favorite contributions to the genre that's more on the black metal side. As you were saying earlier, there are some of those bands that are in post-metal or post-metal adjacent, but they're more influenced by more of a black metal style than they are predominantly another style or another genre.

This Marrow of the Spirit, I just think, is absolutely incredible. Usually, black metal is known for how harsh it is and how brutal it is and just how unforgiving it is in terms of its sound and in terms of just how relentless the drums are, and how averse it can be to giving you anything truly groovy or sweet to go off of. It's really going to challenge you and put you in a dark place as well.

Marrow of the Spirit borrows from a lot of those tremolopic guitars and a lot of that blast beat drumming, and obviously the harsh lead vocals, too, but embraces more cleanly production, more dramatic builds, more folk instrumentation, too, here and there on certain tracks. Especially on the last song on the record as well. You're getting a crescendo point that is very obviously pulled out of the classic post-rock playbook.

It's just like we were talking about, just five tracks or so spread across the length of an entire album. You do have a couple of 10-minute plus songs on there that are really going to take you for a ride and are very linear. But it's not necessarily a progressive rock thing, it's just an epic gradual journey that you're being taken on that's very cinematic, and it's very dramatic. It's more about the emotions being expressed than it is about any technical proficiency or flashiness that you might get on a more prog-adjacent record, even that Kayo record that I was talking about earlier.

Very dramatic, very powerful, and completely black metal influenced from front to back. It's just like a lot of those core elements being spread out across something that is just lengthier, linear, and more epic.

AF: Those are going to be our six recommendations for all things post-metal and post-metal-adjacent. Metal & Coffee, thank you very much for coming through with your picks and telling me why we need to hear them.

Do you want to let everybody know where they can find you and check out more of your stuff?

EB: Thanks so much for having me, Anthony. I'm Ebonie of Metal & Coffee. You can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it. Thanks so much!

AF: There you have it. Thank you very much for reading. Everyone have a good day, evening, morning, good night. Let me know if you have any sick post-metal recommendations down in the comments.

Anthony Fantano, Post-Metal, Forever.