This Will Destroy You performs live in Seattle Wednesday. Photo by Nicholas Daughtry.
Austin’s This Will Destroy You, who play Barboza Wednesday, are often cross-referenced with Explosions in the Sky due to their shared home city and post-rock inclinations.
Yet where Explosions’ dulcet guitarscapes conveyed a certain optimism, This Will… isn’t interested in that. If the former’s music lent itself to football action and tear-jerking drama — and it did, in the 2004 film “Friday Night Lights” — the latter’s is better suited for long, cold walks through apocalyptic wreckage — think 2009’s “The Road.”
On its second and most recent studio album, 2011’s “Tunnel Blanket,” the four-piece takes the pin-drop-quiet to cover-your-ears-loud dynamics characteristic of the genre and — as if to emphasize the “destroy” part of its name — smashes them up against ambient bass murmur and gnarled guitar stabs, lurching forth at molasses-slow tempos more befitting of doom and drone.
Clocking in at an hour, the eight-song LP might not be the best starting point for post-rock novices, but it stands as a worthy addition to the canon — and implies the sort of live spectacle that drags showgoers under and doesn’t let up until it’s over.
This Will Destroy You, Silent Land Time Machine
8 p.m. Wednesday at Barboza, 925 E. Pike St., Seattle; $12 (206-709-9442 or
thebarboza.com)