Thursday’s show at the Melody Inn features a trio of bands who occupy space between post-rock, art metal and a bunch of other hazily defined subgenres. A couple of them — Baltimore’s Darsombra and locals A Caesar Holiday — are experimental side projects for members of more straight-ahead bands.

Darsombra is the solo project of guitarist Brian Daniloski, formerly of noise-metal band Meatjack. With Darsombra, he sheds the vocals, drums and pretty much everything else from Meatjack in favor of subtle drones and other explorations in pure sound.

Granted, there’s been no shortage of comers to the post-metal drone genre recently: for every Sunn O)) or Growing, there seem to be a dozen others mining the same low-end territory. Daniloski isn’t another Johnny-come-lately, though, as he’s been recording drone-based pieces “since I first started recording home demos in the mid ’80s.”

He admits having heard and liked influential drone bands like Earth — who really started the whole genre in the early ’90s — but he draws more inspiration from one-man bands like Robert Fripp, KK Null and Joe Preston’s Thrones. “Just seeing these guys come out by themselves and put on a mind-blowing performance sort of put the bug in me to try and do something like that,” Daniloski says.

A Caesar Holiday, meanwhile, was founded by Ben Masbaum, also of Lafcadio, whose excellent Kibosh was recently released by Joyful Noise Recordings. But while Lafcadio’s songs are aggressive and clobbering, ACH’s are sprawling and expansive — a bit like Isis or recent Neurosis might sound if you subtracted the overt metal elements and substituted a violin. Masbaum is still the default leader, but as violinist Lauren Eison puts it, “This band has been through several lineup changes ... but has progressed pretty significantly into a cohesive, creative group.”