Rockpedia
Heavy metal branch Full entry · 2007

Blackgaze / post-black

Emerged 2007 Origin France / USA Subgenres — Vocals Growled or shrieked
Heaviness
7
Speed
7
Melody
9

Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.

In short

Black metal tremolo over shoegaze harmony: the same density, but the result comes out luminous instead of frozen.

How it sounds

  • Black metal tremolo picking over major or modal, luminous harmony.
  • Walls of guitar with reverb and delay, in the shoegaze tradition.
  • Screamed vocals mixed under the instruments, as texture.

Hear what that means

  • Tremolo in a major key from 7:19

    Alcest - Souvenirs d'un autre monde

    Black metal's picking technique with shoegaze's tone and consonant harmony. The graft works because both parents already wanted a buried voice.

    Open on YouTube at 7:19
  • A blast beat under something beautiful

    Deafheaven - Sunbather

    A rhythm built for hostility supporting a melody that resolves. That collision is the entire genre, and it is why purists objected so loudly.

    Open on YouTube
  • The wall, with a shriek in it

    Lantlôs - .neon

    Guitars layered into a shoegaze wash with the vocal mixed level with them rather than behind - texture rather than menace.

    Open on YouTube

Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. 2 of 3 are cued to a second read from the upload's own tracklist.

The specifics

Tempo
120-200 bpm
Song length
5-10 min
Tuning
Standard or D, with heavy reverb and delay on distorted guitars — black metal's tremolo run through shoegaze's pedalboard, which is the whole idea.
Production
Loud, washed and warm. Where second-wave black metal recorded thin and cold, this is recorded to envelop, with the guitars layered into a wall in the shoegaze manner.
Written about
Memory and childhood, Beauty and grief together, Nature, Transcendence

What each part is doing

  • Guitar Tremolo picking in major keys, layered through reverb and delay so the individual notes disappear into a wash. The technique is black metal's and the tone is My Bloody Valentine's.
  • Drums Blast beats used as a texture underneath something consonant, which is the collision that makes the genre work — a rhythm built for hostility supporting a melody that is not.
  • Bass Melodic and audible, doing what shoegaze's bass does: carrying pitch while everything above it dissolves.
  • Vocals A black metal shriek mixed far back, level with the guitars rather than behind them, functioning as texture rather than as menace.

What it isn't

That it is black metal made palatable. It is a genuine hybrid, and it is the shoegaze half doing the work — the major-key melody, the layered guitars, the buried vocal are all from that tradition, and the black metal contribution is a picking technique and a drum pattern. That the result offends purists is a fact about scene politics rather than about the music, which is doing something neither parent attempted.

Told apart from

  • Atmospheric black metal Atmospheric black metal is vast and cold. Blackgaze is warm and consonant, and its melodies resolve. If it sounds beautiful rather than immense, it has crossed over.
  • Shoegaze The same wall of guitars, with a blast beat and a shriek inside it. Both genres already wanted a buried voice, which is why the graft took.
  • Second wave The wing of black metal that most objected to this existing. The tremolo and the shriek are shared and the intent is opposed.
  • Post-metal / atmospheric sludge Both build to consonant peaks over long forms. Post-metal comes from sludge and screams; this comes from black metal and shrieks.

The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.

History

Neige, working as Alcest, left French black metal to write music about childhood memories, using the same technical vocabulary for the opposite feeling. Deafheaven brought the formula to an entirely new audience in 2013 with a pink-sleeved album that split the scene in two. It has the highest rate of converts from outside metal of any branch.

Descended from

Siblings on this branch

Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree

Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.