Knoxify

What do you think of when you hear the term “post-metal”? My best guess is that 99.9999999999% will retort a truly eso­teric “huh? Whuz­zat?” Accord­ing to the bas­tion of truth that is Wikipedia, post-metal is “…broadly char­ac­ter­ized by dis­torted gui­tar, heavy atmos­pher­ics, grad­ual evo­lu­tion of song struc­ture, and a min­i­mal empha­sis on vocals.” Yup, that about fits.

Gen­er­a­tion of Vipers is not only the best post-metal band ’round these parts, but also one of the best metal bands. Period, no fur­ther dis­cus­sion. Their sound, epic in width and breadth, is truly unique, whilst still retain­ing an ear for what’s rel­e­vant in the scene.

Epic. That’s a pretty good descrip­tor. Their lat­est album, Dead Cir­cle, is a bit deceiv­ing. You’ll glance at the back, see there’s only five tracks, and pon­der why “that fool online” said it was a grandiose album. Deceiv­ing, I say, because the album clocks in at a whop­ping 48 min­utes and 19 sec­onds. Hell, that’s longer than the lat­est Pearl Jam album.

Typ­i­cally, I break down the ‘shin­ing gems’ on each album, but I’m not going to do that this time. Dead Cir­cle is an album that you should put in your stereo / iPod / your­mu­sicves­selof­choice, plug in your head­phones, and focus on the music.

Photo cour­tesy of the band’s web­site.