Sólstafir (post-rock era)

London-based post-metal/progressive collective led by songwriter Mark Norgate, weaving shoegaze wall-of-sound, doom weight, and Eastern/esoteric folk textures (chant, saxophone) into long-form suites. Their 2025 release 'The Between' expanded the lineup to twelve players for a single 32-minute 'guided meditation through death and dying.' The band has walked away from Spotify entirely over its treatment of artists.

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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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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".

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.

Mutyumu (夢中夢, 'a dream within a dream') was a six-piece Japanese band active 2002–2010, blending post-rock, classical minimalism and heavy metal around operatic vocals, strings and piano alongside blast beats and screamed vocals. Contrary to secondhand descriptions of it as a solo project, sources consistently describe a full band led by vocalist Hatis Noit. Their two albums, 夢中夢 (2006) and イリヤ -Il y a- (2008, on Gyuune Cassette), fold folk melody and droning classical passages into a metal/post-rock framework, with the latter featuring guest contributions from World's End Girlfriend, before the band split in 2010.

Mamiffer is an American experimental band based in Seattle, Washington, founded in 2007 by Faith Coloccia out of ideas from her former group Everlovely Lightningheart. It began as her solo project and grew into a duo with Aaron Turner (of Isis and Sumac), who became her creative partner and later husband; the two also co-founded SIGE Records. The music intertwines ambient, drone, and post-rock composition with piano and ethereal vocals, and the band is known for collaborative albums and rotating guest musicians.

Hail Architeuthis! is a chaotic instrumental metal duo from Bloomington, Indiana, combining technical, prog-metal riffing with cinematic, ambient, and post-rock textures across dynamically extreme compositions. Released a self-titled debut EP in 2009 and a full-length in 2010, both via the Auris Apothecary label.

Deafheaven is an American band formed in San Francisco in 2010 by vocalist George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy, and the most prominent US exponent of blackgaze — a fusion of black metal's tremolo blizzards and shrieked vocals with the luminous washes of shoegaze and post-rock. Their second album, Sunbather (2013), released on Jacob Bannon of Converge's label Deathwish Inc. and produced by Jack Shirley, became one of the most critically acclaimed and divisive metal records of its decade, its pink cover art a byword for the genre's crossover appeal. Later albums swung between the harsher New Bermuda (2015) and the fully clean-sung Infinite Granite (2021) before returning to extremity on Lonely People with Power (2025).

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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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Thy Catafalque is a Hungarian avant-garde/experimental metal project formed in Makó in 1998, essentially the solo vehicle of multi-instrumentalist Tamás Kátai. Its music fuses atmospheric instrumental writing, Hungarian folk melodies and electronics with a post-black-metal core, ranging from fragile ambient passages to harsh metal. Signed to Season of Mist since 2011, the project is known for shape-shifting albums that draw on folklore, rock and electronic textures.