A Post-Everything World

Bay-area black-metal act Bosse-De-Nage makes music in a post-everything world. Read how the band’s sound is described in the media: post-hardcore, post-metal. It’s hard to know what any of that means.

But listen to the band’s latest, 2015’s All Fours, and you can believe this might be music for a post-human world, or maybe a world where our industrial excesses finally overtake us — the sound of the last human hand reaching out from an oozing pool of toxic waste. 

Bosse-De-Nage’s opaque song structures are cousins to post-rock, or maybe Radiohead. Vocals don’t so much carry melody as act as a punishing tool. Guitars, bass and drums attack sometimes feverishly and sometimes expressively, but always signaling panic, like hands cupped over ears, blocking out the distant sound of bombs.

“Our sound is something like a progressive, not prog, form of black metal,” Bosse-De-Nage vocalist “B” tells EW. The band members go only by their initials. “With stuff like post-hardcore and an array of other genres coloring our sound,” he adds, “I think many people would say we don’t sound like a black-metal band anymore — and I would agree with that — but I believe that element is still present.” 

“We have a very democratic writing process,” B explains, “so everyone brings their own influences to the table and we write what comes naturally from that.”

Bosse-De-Nage plays with So Hideous, Lo’ There Do I See My Brother and Eugene’s This Patch of Sky 9 pm Saturday, May 14, at Black Forest; $5, 21-plus.