Last Sunday night at The Haunt, Ithaca Underground brought a touring trio of bands to town that represent a subgenre of music loosely dubbed as “post-metal.” Essentially, post-metal is the umbrella term for the expansive sound of heavy music in the wake of ’90s Neurosis, a wide range of influences from post-rock (another loaded term) to space rock to sludge to doom metal and psychedelic rock. Lots of arpeggios, cavernous guitar washes, multitudes of effects, movement-based eight–minute pieces rather than songs.

After local Ithaca groups Mill Bastards and Makeshift warmed up the crowd, City of Ships took the stage at roughly 8 p.m. A three-piece group based out of Richmond, VA, the band boasts an interesting vocal approach by singer/guitarist Eric Jernigan, sounding like a combination of Isis’ Aaron Turner and the more alternative rock approach of bands like Lifehouse all the way back to ’90s grunge. All combined with lush, effect-dripping electric arpeggios and tasteful two-handed tapping. The rhythm section of bassist Andrew Jernigan and drummer Rob Smith alternated keeping time with the guitar sound-scapes and filling the spaces with complex bass sweep picking and sharp drum hits with restrained fills. The three benefitted from The Haunt’s superb soundsystem and used three instruments to fill the place with-wall-to-wall sound — songs off their full-length Look What God Did To Us. Great credit must be given to E. Jernigan and his ability to sing counterpoint to the complex guitar parts, a mix of rhythm strums and involved leads.

After what felt like a quick turnover, Minnesota’s Battlefields began setting up their 5-piece rig. Casey Loren, Matt Ricigliano, Andrew Wallin, Rob Scmidt, and singer Rusty Schmidt, doubling on synthesizer, took to the stage and played a variant of the post-metal sound City of Ships established with a larger focus on percussive bludgeoning, a result of their far stronger doom metal and drone influence. Sketches of Neurosis and more hardcore-sounding bands such as Mastodon appear the second Battlefields transitions into actual passages of guitar riffs, balancing this more conventional approach with ambient passages of tandem guitar effects and an undertow of bass currents. Drummer Schmidt’s talent in coaxing crescendo swells out of his cymbals must be commended, as his attention to volume detail increased the dynamism of Battlefields’ performance, compensating for the one-dimensional nature of singer Schmidt’s controlled and more-than competent harsh vocal approach. Recognized songs were off their latest full-length, Thresholds of Imbalance.

Talking to City of Ships’ Eric Jernigan in between Battlefields and Rosetta’s sets revealed a lot about his commitment to touring and recording music while the band is split between Brooklyn, the Florida panhandle and Oklahoma. He expressed his curiosity with Ithaca’s 100-mile radius from civilization and his appreciation to have such a significant crowd on a rainy Sunday evening. Topics discussed stretched from the merits of Saranac beer to the life on the road and the songwriting process over distance as opposed to close quarters. He shared anecdotes about visiting Isis’ record label shop, Vacation Vinyl, and their relation to Hydra Head records and the community of down-tempo artists, from the post-metal crowd to the sludge bands to drone and doom metal circles. Jernigan was hesitant to label his band as being part of a style as pedantically and presumptuously named as “post-metal,” but expressed joy at touring with bands with a similar approach.

Rosetta took the stage and all fell silent as the band’s wall-of-sound approach again filled The Haunt. Singer Michael Armine’s passionate shrieks only added to the size of the band’s sound, also consisting of David Grossman, Bruce McMurtie, Jr. and Matthew Reed. They played a mix of their more metallic space-rock songs from their first album, The Galilean Satellites, and a few off their more expansive post-rock oriented second album, Wake/Lift. The band’s ability to sustain waves of sound as opposed to the other bands’ loud/soft approach was a similar-yet-new approach that provided a capstone to the evening.

Armine was available for comment after the band’s mesmerizing set, around 10 pm, when he manned the DIY merch booth while speaking passionately about his job teaching high school students in the Philadelphia suburbs (where the band is based) and how his understanding of sociology informs his students’ understanding of gentrified Philadelphia neighborhoods. Wake/Lift had more than a few songs addressing Armine’s frustrations with his experiences teaching students who were experiencing home problems, and illustrated his commitment to his craft while simultaneously expressing the difficulties of balancing a music career (meaning limited touring opportunities, with jobs and families on the line) and a life dedicated to interacting with people, especially young people.

All three touring bands performed admirably, alternating moments of melodic beauty and atmosphere with crushing moments of brutal layers of sound, either riff or noise based. The cinematic and classical nature of the droning, movement-based music underlined the metal associations all three share, as opposed to the more mainstream rock-oriented groups such as Oceansize or Explosions in the Sky, who all three could be unfairly compare­­d to.