WuW - L'Orchaostre (2023)

Inspired by "classical music, free jazz and drone", WuW is a French duo made up of two brothers Colins who together create an exceptionally interesting take on heavy post-rock/post-metal music. The new instance of their work is their third album called L'orchestre.

This is an orchestra that is based on heavy and crunchy sounds of guitars. The list of the band's inspirations include Year of No Light, Dirge and Omega Massif and it's no surprise as this slow at first, but gradually faster and faster music is headed towards very guitar-oriented self-expression. It's tad heavier than post-rock and way more similar to stoner metal than rock music, but it lacks any kind of post-metal vocals so I'd put it on the very border of the genres. No matter the genre, this is this kind of music that is meant to overwhelm the audience with the sheer weight of the sound: the slower, stoner riffs and the pretty minimalist vibes of this music can be felt in every inch of your body.

L'Orchaostre costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Orchaostre 5

Country: France

Genre: guitar post-metal

Label: Pelagic Records

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Somali Yacht Club - The Space (2022)

After Sun and The Sea, there comes The Space. The third album by the Ukrainian post-metal/stoner rock big names makes an amazing and very heavy experience. It is also pretty amazing that it could get released at all.

The band's modus operandi is to explore the "boundless, wide-open, quiet/loud spaces that atmospheric post-rock and metal occupy". Their music is build on the stoner-like heavy guitar sound with its relatively slow pace and thick atmosphere. This creates a literal sea of noise with drums being the waves on the surface and the vocals the wind traveling over. There's such a clear nostalgic vibes here, the vocals sound tearful at some places, the music deep and mesmerizingly noisy. Especially when the vocals turn more towards choral chanting in Echo of Direction. Powerful stuff.

I find the album even more significant as it was released while the band's country is literally on fire and the bombs are falling down around their homes. The album is a sign that there's still place for art in hell and it is also used for good cause as the band is going "to donate all profits made in 2022 (till the end of the year) to various charities to help Ukraine and Ukrainians now". 

The Space costs 9.99 USD.

Somali Yacht Club - The Sea (2018)

Check: Silver

Country: Ukraine

Genre: stoner post-metal

Label: Season of Mist

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DEAD HORSE ONE - WHEN LOVE RUNS DRY (2022)

"Shoegaze on steroids" from the French Dead Horse One is having a great time and doesn't seem to slow down. After their fantastic album The West Is the Best from 2019, they are topping it with the crunchy and overwhelming sound of their new EP called WHEN LOVE RUNS DRY.

What I love about the Frenchmen is definitely their heavier approach to, let's say, dream pop. The vocals are perfectly dispersed and heavenly airy but apart from that, it's very much a heavy kind of guitar rock bordering with shoegaze and post-rock. It's Nothing, it's Asteroid, it's SOM but with this indie rock meets stoner metal and grunge twist. You can feel in your bones how crushing the guitars are; never mind the Slowdive-like vocals, it's a real avalanche of loud guitar-focused noise with clear and show-stealing drums on top of that.

The short EP, however, has also slower, moodier fragments. It's not only the lyrical ballad Mentally Homeless but also the piano version of the album's biggest banger, Static King. Whatever they do, the artists are so much on fire that everything works for them and I can't wait for more music coming from their direction.

WHEN LOVE RUNS DRY costs 6 EUR.

Dead Horse One - The West Is the Best (2019)

Check: Static King

Country: France

Genre: heavy dream pop

Label: Requiem pour un Twister / Modulor

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E-L-R - Vexier (2022)

I was lucky enough to witness E-L-R's beginnings when back in 2019 they performed live during the Bergmal Festival in Zurych with their very fresh debut album Mænad. It was quite mind-blowing so I couldn't wait for the continuation of their career. The struggle is over with the band's new album called Vexier.

The combination of very heavy guitar riffs from the sludge/post-metal musical area with the dispersed and airy but also very psychedelic vocals is the core of the Swiss band's work. The said vocals express extremely ethereal lyrics ("opiate the Sun" sounds like something taken from a braver, lyrics-wise, version of the old Slowdive or MBV) divided into short phrases that make them feel like tribal-esque mesmerizing chanting. All of this makes this sophomore album a very literal continuation of the debut, including such an interesting detail as longer pauses between tracks filled with subtle sound samples of cracking fire and other nature-originating moody tunes.

The mesmerizing features of the band's works are present also in the music itself: its slow, doom-like pace and psychedelic guitars make it easy to get lost within the sounds. As their Bandcamp page describes it, they "oscillates elegantly between velvet darkness and flaring bursts of high energy" but the bursts are always toned down, covered by the layers of post-metal noise that makes everything a very homogeneous and smooth (the velvet reference is on point!) sound.

Vexier costs 6.99 USD.

E-L-R - Mænad (2019)

Check: Seeds

Country: Switzerland

Genre: ethereal post-metal

Label: Prophecy Productions

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