Top Post-Rock/Metal

Here are some of my types for post-metal and post-rock, one album per band.

Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway (2006)

Neurosis - Times of Grace (1999)

Isis - Oceanic (2002)

Pelican - The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw (2006)

Omega Massif - Karpatia (2011)

Mouth of the Architect - The Ties That Blind (2006)

Rosetta - The Galilean Satellites (2005)

Fall of Efrafa - Owlsa (2006)

Year of No Light - Nord (2006)

Callisto - Noir (2006)

Minsk - The Ritual Fires of Abandonment (2007)

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lots of very similar albums

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And, of course, early GY!BE holds up very well. The Evpatoria Report was also dope.

Nice! I spent the summer of 2018 coming up with my Post Rock list just re listening to favourites plus spending time with the ones I hadn't got to yet at the time. My Post Rock summer. I'm done collecting music so keep me posted on the new stuff.

I got to this genre very recently, so I didnt listen to a lot albums yet. But here some of my favorite:

Mogwai - As the Love Continues

Anathima - The Optimist

This Will Destroy You - Young Moutain

Explosions In the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place

Long Distence Calling - How Do We Want to Live?

There are a lot of great bands on the Pelagic label, so this is a bit of a treasure trove. For patriotic reasons I am duty bound to point out New Zealand band, Spook the Horses. 😜🇳🇿🥝

I think perhaps you have mis-interpreted the title? I read it as “Top Post-Rock / (Post-)Metal”. There is no real connection between post rock and metal.

There is a connection between post-rock and post-metal, in the sense that both approach and explore beyond the genre conventions they come from. So post-rock stretches rock’s conventions, and post-metal stretches metal’s conventions. Obviously a lot of the “stretching” was by the originators of the new genres, so that often newer bands are doing nothing new or unique, so much as repeating what has since become almost a formula for the new style. (Therefore not greatly different from how prog was progressive, but a lot of prog these days is anything but.)

The most obvious and simplistic way of defining the difference between rock and post-rock, and between metal and post-metal, is to say that the conventional genres are about structure, and the post genres are about texture. There tends to be a greater reliance on atmospherics and dynamics. Both post genres often incorporate alternative and/or shoegaze sounds into their mix; and/or industrial/ambient sounds. Instead of a verse-chorus-verse structure there are waves of crescendos, and the music often relies on the building and breaking of tension.

That’s an overly simplistic “definition”, but I hope it helps explain why the OP has grouped together post rock and post metal. Or, at least, why I assume they have. 🤷🏻‍♂️