Voidgaze

United States · 2010s

Dreamy Dark Sad Epic Intense

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Description

Voidgaze is a heavy, atmospheric offshoot of shoegaze that fuses dense, down‑tuned guitars with post‑metal weight and blackgaze/atmospheric black metal expansiveness. The sound foregrounds towering walls of fuzz and reverb, but replaces the genre’s classic dreaminess with a cavernous, cosmic darkness—hence the sense of “the void.”

Typical tracks pivot between tectonic, slow‑burn passages and explosive peaks: blast‑beat or double‑time surges may erupt beneath layers of smeared guitars, then collapse back into glacial, reverb‑soaked textures. Vocals are usually soft, breathy, or distant in the mix (sometimes screamed as a texture), serving the atmosphere rather than acting as a focal melody. Lyrically, voidgaze tends toward the existential—nature, vastness, decay, memory, and spiritual unease—mirroring the music’s sense of scale and sublimity.

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Influenced by

Shoegaze

Shoegaze is a subgenre of alternative rock characterized by dense, immersive walls of guitar sound, heavily layered effects, and vocals that blend into the mix as another texture rather than a focal point. Typically mid-tempo and enveloping, it emphasizes timbre, atmosphere, and harmonic color over riff-driven hooks. Reverb, delay, chorus, tremolo, fuzz, and pitch-bending create a blurred, dreamlike quality—often described as a "wash"—while bass and drums provide a steady, understated foundation. The style emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s; the term "shoegaze" was coined by the British press, referencing performers’ tendency to look down at their pedalboards during live shows.

Blackgaze

Blackgaze is a fusion of black metal’s intensity (tremolo‑picked guitars, blast beats, harsh shrieks) with shoegaze’s lush, immersive textures and dreamy melodicism. It typically layers high‑gain, reverb‑drenched guitars into a luminous wall of sound, favoring suspended or added‑tone chords that blur tonality and create a sense of vastness. Songs often unfold in long arcs with dramatic dynamic shifts—from pummeling crescendos to breathy, ambient passages—and may juxtapose screamed vocals with soft, clean singing. While the mood can be bleak or melancholic, many blackgaze works balance darkness with radiant, almost euphoric uplift, aided by expansive production and post‑rock pacing.

Post-Metal

Post-metal is a heavy, atmospheric offshoot of metal that blends the weight and distortion of sludge and doom with the expansive dynamics and textural focus of post-rock. Instead of traditional verse–chorus structures, it emphasizes long-form development, layering, and crescendos, often moving from sparse, ambient passages to overwhelming climaxes. Vocals (if present) are used more as another texture—ranging from harsh screams to distant, chant-like cleans—while guitars prioritize drones, pedal tones, and richly effected timbres over conventional riffs. The result is music that feels cinematic and immersive: slow-to-mid tempos, tectonic low-end, and wide dynamic arcs that convey bleakness, catharsis, and grandeur in equal measure.

Post-Rock

Post-rock is a style that uses traditional rock instrumentation—guitars, bass, drums, and often piano or strings—to create expansive textures, evolving soundscapes, and dynamic arcs rather than conventional verse–chorus songs. It emphasizes timbre, atmosphere, and gradual development: clean or lightly overdriven guitars drenched in delay and reverb, cyclical ostinatos, layered crescendos, and pronounced quiet–loud dynamics. Vocals, if present, are often sparse, wordless, or treated as another textural layer. The genre draws heavily from ambient, minimalism, krautrock, progressive and space rock, shoegaze, noise rock, and experimental practices, yielding music that can feel cinematic, contemplative, and emotionally cathartic.

Atmospheric Black Metal

Atmospheric black metal is a branch of black metal that emphasizes immersive, expansive soundscapes and mood as much as raw aggression. It typically blends tremolo‑picked guitars, blast beats, and harsh vocals with sustained synthesizer pads, reverbs, field recordings, and long-form, meditative song structures. The genre often evokes images of nature, wintry or forested environments, and cosmic vastness. Production ranges from lo‑fi, foggy textures to clear but distant mixes that preserve a sense of space. Harmonically, it leans on minor and modal colors, drones, and repeating motifs to create a trance-like intensity rather than riff-showmanship. Where traditional black metal can be claustrophobically fierce, atmospheric black metal opens the sonic frame—slower passages, ambient interludes, and dynamic arcs are common—so that ferocity and serenity coexist within the same piece.

Sludge Metal

Sludge metal is a hybrid of doom metal’s slow, downtuned weight and hardcore punk’s raw aggression. It emphasizes thick, overdriven guitar tones, throttling bass, and drums that lurch between trudging slow-motion grooves and ragged mid‑tempo blasts. Vocals are typically screamed, barked, or anguished, often buried slightly in the mix to feel abrasive and cathartic. The style took shape in the late 1980s United States—particularly the Pacific Northwest and the American South—where bands fused Sabbath‑like doom riffs with the DIY harshness of hardcore and the scabrous textures of noise rock. Lyrical themes commonly explore addiction, despair, social decay, and Southern Gothic imagery, delivered with an intentionally gritty, unvarnished production aesthetic.

Drone

Drone is a minimalist music genre defined by sustained tones, long durations, and extremely gradual change. Harmony is often static or centered on a single fundamental with subtle overtone shifts, while rhythm tends toward stasis or very slow pulses. Sound sources range from acoustic instruments (e.g., strings, organ, bagpipes, shruti box, tambura) to electronics (sine waves, oscillators, feedback, tape loops, and later digital synthesis and processing). Many composers favor just intonation or other alternative tuning systems to emphasize beating patterns, psychoacoustic effects, and the internal life of sound. Although drone as a sonic principle is ancient and global, the modern experimental genre cohered in the 1960s through the New York minimalists and related avant‑garde circles, then spread into ambient, experimental, and heavy music scenes. The focus is less on melody and more on timbre, resonance, and the phenomenology of listening.

Ambient

Ambient is a form of electronic and electroacoustic music that prioritizes tone, atmosphere, and texture over conventional song structures and rhythmic drive. It typically features slow-moving harmonies, sustained drones, gentle timbral shifts, and extensive use of space and silence. Rather than drawing attention to itself through hooks or beats, ambient is designed to be as ignorable as it is interesting, rewarding both background listening and focused immersion. Artists often employ synthesizers, samplers, tape loops, field recordings, and subtle acoustic instruments, with reverb and delay creating a sense of place. Substyles range from luminous, consonant soundscapes to darker, more dissonant atmospheres.

Noise Rock

Noise rock is a subgenre of rock that deliberately embraces distortion, feedback, dissonance, and abrasive textures as primary musical materials rather than mere effects. It prioritizes timbre, volume, and sonic density over conventional melody and harmony, often using nonstandard tunings, prepared or detuned guitars, and extended techniques to generate harsh overtones and sheets of sound. Rhythm sections tend to be driving and repetitive, anchoring the chaos with motorik pulses, lurching grooves, or pummeling, minimal patterns. Vocals range from spoken and murmured to shouted and cathartic, with lyrics that skew cryptic, confrontational, or surreal. Aesthetically, noise rock traces a line from punk’s anti-virtuosity and DIY ethos through no wave’s iconoclasm and the avant-garde’s interest in sound-as-sound, yielding music that can be physically intense, psychologically unsettling, and artistically exploratory.

Doomgaze

Doomgaze is a hybrid of doom metal’s crushing weight and shoegaze’s hazy, immersive textures. It pairs ultra-slow, down-tuned riffs with walls of reverb- and delay-drenched guitars, creating music that feels both monolithic and ethereal. Vocals are often breathy, distant, or melancholic, sitting low in the mix like another instrument. Tempos tend to be slow to mid-slow, the low end is thick and sustained, and songs usually unfold in long arcs that favor mood and atmosphere over technical flash. The result is a sound that balances heaviness and dreaminess—cathartic, immersive, and emotionally heavy without relying on aggression.

Has influenced

Zoomergaze

Zoomergaze is a Gen Z, internet-native evolution of shoegaze that fuses the genre’s dense, guitar-washed textures with hyperpop/digicore maximalism and modern trap/emo-rap rhythm programming. It favors blown‑out saturation, brickwalled dynamics, digital clipping, and wide stereo fields, often pairing jet‑engine guitars with 808 subs, jittery hi‑hats, breakbeat flourishes, and intimate, lightly Auto‑Tuned vocals. The mood leans dreamy yet emotionally raw—nostalgic, melancholic, and diaristic—delivered through DIY production that thrives on Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and TikTok discovery. Where classic shoegaze hid the singer in the mix, Zoomergaze keeps the voice present and personal, weaving confessional hooks into shimmering noise and glitchy, internet-era sound design.

American Shoegaze

American shoegaze is a United States–rooted branch of shoegaze that blends towering, effects-laden guitars with hazy vocals and melodic undercurrents. It takes the UK-born template of immersive guitar textures and pushes it toward American indie rock’s dynamism, post-punk grit, and noise-pop immediacy. Compared with its British counterpart, American shoegaze often foregrounds punchier rhythm sections, brighter hooks, and a slightly more forward vocal presence, while retaining the style’s hallmark blankets of distortion, reverb, and delay. The result is a sound that can be simultaneously crushing and weightless—melancholic, nostalgic, and dreamlike, yet energetic and modern. Its scene cohered in the early 1990s and resurged strongly in the late 2000s–2010s, catalyzed by US indie labels and regional hubs (Philadelphia, Austin, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Boston). Today, it spans everything from noise-leaning walls-of-sound to dream-pop shimmer and heavier hybrids that intersect with metal and doom aesthetics.

New England Shoegaze

New England shoegaze is a regional strand of the shoegaze and dream‑pop tradition centered on the U.S. New England states, with Boston and the college‑town circuit (Providence, Northampton, New Haven) as its main hubs. It blends classic UK shoegaze guitar wash with the DIY grit of New England indie and noise rock: dense, fuzz‑laden layers; roomy, plate‑like reverbs; breathy, low‑in‑the‑mix vocals; and a slightly colder, wintry atmosphere. Compared with West Coast or UK counterparts, it often feels rougher‑hewn and more basement‑show oriented, folding in post‑hardcore urgency and lo‑fi intimacy while retaining shimmering, dreamy overtones.

Texasgaze

Texasgaze is a regional strain of modern shoegaze that crystallized in Texas during the 2010s. It blends the immersive guitar wash and hazy vocals of classic shoegaze with the grit and heft of Southern grunge, noise rock, and post-hardcore. Compared with dreamier UK-inspired scenes, texasgaze typically runs hotter and heavier: high‑gain guitars, drop‑tuned or thickly voiced riffs, and punchy, live‑room drums sit under breathy, often buried vocals. The result is both enveloping and physical—equal parts shimmering atmosphere and concrete, stage‑shaking impact.

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