Try telling the packed-out faithful at The Zoo that post-rock is dead. Everywhere you look there is a Mogwai, Pelican or Godspeed You! Black Emperor t-shirt; worn by lovers of instrumental, emotionally-charged rock music refusing to concede the fall of a musical genre.

After a brief word of thanks from guitarist Munaf Rayani, Explosions In The Sky open their set with ‘First Breath After a Coma’ from the band’s defining album, The Earth is Not A Cold Dead Place. At the conclusion of the song’s brief intro, some crystalline notes hang suspended in mid-air and the audience gets what it came for: the first of the band’s brutal, but precise, aural assaults. The three guitarists stand armed and evenly spread across the stage as they unleash some mighty riffs punctated by piercing notes. Too often when a band rely on the wall of sound, things cease to remain musical, distortion piles upon distortion and the audience is left with a case of industrial deafness and nothing more. This is not the case throughout EITS’s set; the mix is so clearly defined that each chord and note still inhabits its own space, even when the decibel levels reach jumbo jet proportions. 

‘Greet Death’ and ‘The Birth and Death of the Day’ are set highlights, with guitarist/bassist Michael James using his bass as a percussive instrument to hammer out some resonant chords that stretch on into infinity – at one point, in the latter song’s finale, we fear for the well being of his instrument as his pounding becomes more and more aggressive. ‘Welcome, Ghosts’ follows and it is drummer, Chris Hrasky’s turn to shine as he pounds out, in and around the tug of war that is taking place between Rayani and James – their interplay is equal measures Roman-Greco wrestling and interpretive dance. Lead guitarist Mark Smith, meanwhile, is happy to supply the soaring melodies for the rest of the band to lift toward the heavens.

Even through the quieter, melancholic moments of tracks like ‘Your Hand In Mine’ and ‘The Only Moment We We’re Left Alone’ the band uphold a majestic grace that captivates the audience and sees them riding the euphoria of each and every note – the guitarists cut ghostly figures as they sway through the rising smoke and blues and reds of the bathing stage lights. Penultimate track, ‘Catastrophe and the Cure’ threatens to hang around a fraction too long but some ferocious double-drumming from Hrasky and Rayani re-focuses the audience for the lead in to the band’s signature track and set closer, ‘Memorial’. With each of the song’s dozen-or-so closing chord bludgeons, the guitar triumvirate hold their arms aloft and strike down upon their instruments in devastating unison; it’s an otherworldly image as the three black silhouettes stand, seemingly floating above a blood red back-lit stage.

Explosions in The Sky have one of those band names that just seem to fit. Tonight, on the Texan quartet’s first visit to these shores, they live up to their moniker as they shower the audience with sheets of sound; raining down like fragments of the night sky itself. It’s a commanding performance from a band well practised but not robotic or contrived.  Best of all, there’s no encore – the band say all they need to on this occasion within the confines of a powerful, tight and emotive set. It may not be the flavour of the month, but EITS prove that post-rock is alive and kicking.