Fleshwater

Ikd-sj is a Japanese avant-garde/nu/alternative metal act based in Tokyo, active since the 2000s with releases including The Mortuary (2006), World's End Fruit Basket (2009), Eternal Vacation (2016) and 死んだ雪白中毒者にキスを (2023). Reviewers describe a genre-hopping sound fusing post-hardcore, noise rock, industrial textures, shoegaze haze and djent-adjacent riffing under trance-like harsh vocals. The project has stayed active into 2025 with new singles.

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Tokyo four-piece formed around 2017 by guitarist Adel and drummer Kazuma, later completed by vocalist Nana Yokota and bassist Junichi, fusing black metal blast beats and screamo intensity with a blurred, melodic shoegaze wall of sound (blackgaze). Debut album Doukei (2020) and follow-up Reikoku (2023) were both reissued for European/vinyl distribution via Gerpfast Record in 2025. Reviewers describe an intentionally raw, unpolished production framing gloomy, emotionally introspective post-metal songwriting.

胎海 (Taikai)play in the dock

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Envy are a Japanese band formed in Tokyo in 1992, pioneers of a cinematic strain of screamo that gradually absorbed the crescendo dynamics of post-rock. Fronted by Tetsuya Fukagawa's cathartic screamed and spoken vocals, they became one of Japan's foremost exports to the international post-hardcore scene across eight studio albums through Eunoia (2024). They have recorded for Level Plane, Temporary Residence and Rock Action, and are known for high-profile splits with Jesu and Thursday.

Palms is an American post-metal and dream-pop band formed in 2011 by three former members of Isis — bassist Jeff Caxide, drummer Aaron Harris, and guitarist/keyboardist Bryant Clifford Meyer — together with Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno. Their self-titled debut album was released on June 25, 2013 through Mike Patton's Ipecac Recordings, trading Isis's sludgy heaviness for lush, shoegaze-inflected atmospheres. A 10th-anniversary edition in 2023 added the previously unreleased tracks "Opening Titles" and "End Credits".

A UK bedroom-solo prog/avant-garde metal project by Leia Camilla that started as a full cover of Metallica's St. Anger before sprawling into mathcore, grindcore, metalcore, blackgaze, atmospheric metal, and ambient free improvisation. Related side-outlets DXO (ambient/noise/improv) and the short-lived black metal project Ljós extend the same restless, genre-hopping approach.

Cave In is an American rock band formed in 1995 in Methuen, Massachusetts, whose 1998 debut Until Your Heart Stops established them in the metalcore scene before they shifted toward space rock with 2000's Jupiter. Founding vocalist/guitarist Stephen Brodsky leads the band alongside guitarist/vocalist Adam McGrath and drummer John-Robert Conners. Bassist Caleb Scofield died in a car accident on March 28, 2018, after which Nate Newton of Converge joined on bass and backing vocals. Much of their core catalog was released through Hydra Head Records.

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Caspian are an instrumental band from Beverly, Massachusetts, formed in 2003, and they use post-rock's crescendo shape as a container for far more than post-rock. Three guitars, pedal steel, synthesizers and tape loops build the quiet halves; the loud halves reach genuine post-metal weight, PopMatters calling Dust and Disquiet (2015) a 'prog-metal melee, equal parts resplendent and eviscerating' full of 'distorted clangor, rife with feedback and guitar squeals'. Around the edges sit things the genre usually leaves out — programmed voices, beats and loops, a crooning trumpet, piano and glockenspiel, and on later records obscured vocal melody and outright screams cutting through the shimmer. Where their peers treat atmosphere as the destination, Caspian treat it as one instrument among several, which is why the records keep changing texture from track to track instead of repeating the same slow build.

Alcest is a French band formed in 2000 in Bagnols-sur-Cèze by multi-instrumentalist Neige (Stéphane Paut), initially as a solo black metal project. Widely credited with pioneering blackgaze and post-black metal, the band pairs black metal's tremolo and blast-beats with the shimmering, ethereal textures of shoegaze and dream pop to evoke Neige's recurring theme of a luminous 'other world.' Since 2009 Alcest has been a duo of Neige and drummer Winterhalter, releasing albums such as Souvenirs d'un autre monde (2007), Les Voyages de l'âme (2012) and Kodama (2016) on Prophecy Productions before moving to Nuclear Blast.

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Wear Your Wounds is the atmospheric solo-turned-band project of Converge founder and vocalist Jacob Bannon, grown out of years of lo-fi bedroom recordings. Far from Converge's hardcore violence, its 2017 debut WYW (Deathwish Inc., Bannon's own label) is measured and ethereal, evoking Swans, early Pink Floyd, Sparklehorse and Songs: Ohia. Bannon fronts an expanded lineup with guests including Converge's Kurt Ballou, Mike McKenzie, Chris Maggio and Sean Martin.

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This node covers Boris's hook-driven rock and shoegaze period, anchored by Pink (Japan 2005, US 2006) and Smile (2008). Pink fused shoegaze, stoner/sludge rock, garage punk and post-rock with melodic hooks, and became the Tokyo trio's breakthrough and most accessible record. Smile pushed further into fast, hook-laden rockers punctuated by sudden feedback and ambient jams, layering in drum machines and sampled textures. Across both albums the band leaned on lo-fi, 'organic' production and dream-pop-tinged melody to lure in listeners beyond the metal audience.

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