Post-Metal

Examples: ISIS, Don Caballero, If These Trees Could Talk

Preferably no vocals, but I don't mind some singing/growling here and there.

Spoken word goes especially well with a lot of post-rock, so why not post-metal too?

Can't wait to listen to some great new albums!

I recently discovered post-metal (among other other genres and subgenres). It is really different and can often be confused between different subgenres that are located next to each other. For example, now I listen to different instrumental music, and I’m not always sure whether it’s post-metal or not. Moreover, one artist may have tracks in different subgenres. The example with EXISTENTIAL DEAD taught me something 

Here's something that bothered me about the whole Post-Metal thing that only added to my own similar confusion: before RYM added a Post-Metal tag in its own right, Post-Metal was considered an AKA for Atmospheric Sludge Metal. But when Post-Metal got added to RYM many releases that had had Atmo Sludge voted down on seemed to become Post-Metal overnight even when they weren't previously tagged as anything metal. To me that sent the message that if Post-Metal is just another name for Atmo Sludge then those releases weren't actually metal, but if Post-Metal was its own thing, they were metal. 

They weren't, that was the point. The community said those releases weren't Atmo Sludge. 

It's not the only weird thing they have with tagging. I still have not got over deciding to move Speed Metal to be merely a subset of Heavy Metal so now all the Speed Metal albums appear on the Heavy Metal charts even when it's obvious those albums if anything have more to do with Thrash or Power Metal. 

And they really buggered themselves years ago now by rushing through a vote to remove a Progressive Death Metal tag - a change that I perhaps would agree with in theory but would have hesitated to do because of the damage to the site's data such a removal would (and did) cause. To this day only one Opeth album has managed to regain a death metal primary (MA,YH); as much as I support in MMA terms Opeth being in Prog over Death, on a site that allows more than one tag not calling at least the earliest ones out as death metal is ridiculous. I feel the only reason this hasn't happened is because people voted those albums as Progressive Death Metal for years and voted Death Metal down as redundant; downvotes which remained in place after the prog death tag was removed. 

They also have a number of tags I haven't got my head around yet like Black Noise or Doomgaze. 

It feels like these days that if they identify the slightest difference in sound or approach they'll come out with a new genre tag. 

RYM are also really anally retentive about the smallest of details that actually makes trying to add anything to that site a real fucking chore. Like they'd rather an album was illustrated by no image at all rather than one where the dimensions aren't acceptable such as uploading something square for a digipak release. 

We would also love to have Blackgaze but for it to be included correctly it would need to be implemented as a sub-sub-genre under Atmospheric Black Metal which the MMA system wasn't designed to allow for. M@X did try to add it once before but we hit this very hurdle. For now we're keeping it as an inclusive genre in Atmo Black although of course if we had Post-Metal as its own sub any releases that were that far removed from black metal could go there instead. 

Blackgaze as a regular sub-genre is certainly a compromise that has been discussed. The main concern for me is that compared to other sub-genres of BM it's more directly descended from Atmo Black so we have to weigh up whether having the term there adds more value to the site than would be lost due to many releases or whole artists no longer being filed under Atmo Black.

Dissonant death metal is another one that has the same issue since it's typically considered to be a subset of tech death. 

Personally speaking I would love to see this site have an overhaul so that even if the core tagging system remains we could apply at least one secondary tag to a release where appropriate that would allow that release and by extension the artist to be listed in two sub-genres. The primary tag would still be the one that is displayed with the album but like this we could have those albums that straddle the line between sub-genres included in both, for example 'brutal technical death metal' albums like Nile's or early Opeth's in both prog and death metal etc. There are many power metal releases that could equally be tagged as heavy or speed metal too. 

Unfortunately this feels like a pipe dream at this point, unless we can get M@X re-engaged with MMA and willing to actively keep developing. If he did that many of us who were once very active collabs would most likely be inspired to do more on the site ourselves. As it is, I don't suppose you've failed to notice that many of the old crowd have drifted away, past admins included.