We are a quarter of a century away from the birth and blossoming of the post-metal movement, and the heavy music world is full of bands whose entire identity is wrapped in the works of NEUROSIS and ISIS, with perhaps some feral black metal thrown in for good measure. Many of these bands are great, so this is not a qualitative judgement, but many of them are also reliant on the formula that has been perpetuated ever since we all got excited about “Oceanic” and “Panopticon” and decided that vocals were largely redundant. Only very rarely does a band appear that have the imagination and feverish creativity to generate something new from an age-old combination of quiet / loud dynamics, hypnotic repetition, and huge, crashing metal riffs. This year, and seemingly without much competition, BA’AL have the whole thing sewn up. “The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here” is an album that draws from all the same post-rock, post-metal and black metal source material plundered by everyone else but conjures something subtly fresh and distinctive from it. Often pitilessly heavy, but equally prone to bursts of miraculous beauty, these songs eschew cinematic sheen and wordless grace in favor of vast eruptions of emotional vitriol and the harrowing, heartrending aftermath of tranquility that necessarily follows.

BA’AL dropped a few hints of greatness to come with their debut album, “Ellipsism”, but this is the English band’s sound laid out in all its tragic but triumphant glory. They rattle through large chunks of their repertoire on “Mother’s Concrete Womb”, but with a heightened sense of drama, and askance melodies that really stick in the throat. An ambling, eccentric epic with multiple component parts, it blends several genres into one magnificent parade of melancholy, with flashes of classic metal and sweeping strings infiltrating a series of murderous riffs. Honest, vulnerable vocals float up from a noirish, eerie post-rock ramble before shimmering swathes of coruscating pagan metal unfold, sky-bound melodies to the fore, and followed by a sublime, featherlight oasis of calm. There are no radical moves being made here, but what BA’AL are doing seems organic, authentic and intuitive. Songs like “Waxwork Gorgon” and “Floral Cairn” take a slightly more economical approach to eliciting awe and wonder, their shorter song structures necessitating a more direct approach, but with all the same stirring melodies and disarming transitions.

However, it will undoubtedly be this album’s grand epics that will haunt people’s dreams, in particular “The Ocean That Fills a Wound”. From its gorgeous beginning, with crystalline guitar and the gentle gait of mellow ’70s prog, it steadily reveals its secrets over 13 vivid minutes, switching between bubbling, acrid sludge and muted, ghostly shoegaze, and dropping heartbreaking melodies into the mix with impunity. It reaches a peak of potency after roughly ten minutes in, when BA’AL return to the delicate fizz of slow-motion prog, transcending the entire post-metal pretense in an instant: becoming something greater, something deeper, mournful brass echoing in the near distance. “The Ocean That Fills a Wound” is an extraordinary piece of music.

Not just a fine example of post-metal circa 2025, but a fluid and fiery adventure through often untouched new territory, “The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here” is one of those low-key, underground releases that deserves to be heard by everyone. Pure magic.