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Minnesota trio Worn Mantle emerged from an earlier, unnamed doom/post-metal project to craft sprawling, noise-caked blackened death/doom, stretching songs well past the 15-minute mark and drifting, per Decibel, into 'guitar-driven psychedelic ambience' between passages of black/death intensity and doom/sludge weight. Their self-titled 2022 debut and 2023 follow-up Hole have built them a quiet but attentive following in the deep underground doom scene.

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One-man US avant-garde black/death metal project by the artist known only as R.P., combining heavily syncopated death-metal riffing with nightmarish soundscapes, industrial rhythms and film-score-like atmospheric passages. No Clean Singing (2017) singled out its 'distinctly smooth' unfurling and sparing-but-grand blast-beat eruptions against a mostly slower, tech-doom-leaning foundation. Discography: 82121 (2014), HHEOALLE (2017), The Hunting Boar! The Hunting Tyrant! (2020), compiled as Collected Works: MMXIV-MMXX (2023).

Thecodontion is a Rome-based black/death metal band formed in 2016 around the unusual choice to abandon guitars entirely, building their sound from two finger-picked distorted basses (plus a third for solos), drums, and vocals. Their releases, including the 2020 full-length Supercontinent on I, Voidhanger Records, follow a 'prehistoric metal of death' concept tracing Earth's continental drift and ancient lifeforms. Reviewers note the band moved from a rawer black/death attack toward a more atmospheric, minimalist, and surprisingly melodic sound, punctuated by bass-driven ambient instrumental passages.

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Blood Incantation are an American death-metal band from Denver, Colorado, formed in 2011 around guitarist-vocalist Paul Riedl and drummer Isaac Faulk. Their 2016 debut Starspawn, on Dark Descent Records, drew wide acclaim for its cavernous, progressive, cosmically themed death metal; they later moved to Century Media and stretched their palette across the fully ambient synth album Timewave Zero (2022) and the sprawling Absolute Elsewhere (2024). They rank among the most celebrated acts of the modern death-metal revival.

Owl is the Bonn, Germany atmospheric death-doom project of Christian Kolf (also of Valborg) and drummer Patrick Schroeder, running since 2010 as an outlet for the death-doom and funeral-doom territory Kolf's main band doesn't cover. Records like the self-titled 'Owl' (2011) and 'Nights in Distortion' (2018) split roughly evenly between churning, Immolation/Deathspell-Omega-tinged death metal and long ambient passages of shifting keyboards and reverbed guitar drone. Their most recent compilation, 'Grid Shimmer' (2022), was released jointly through Zeitgeister and Total Dissonance Worship, and they shared a 2019 split with Slovak act 0N0.

Gojira are a French metal band from Ondres, formed in 1996 as Godzilla and renamed Gojira in 2001. They fuse technical death metal, groove, progressive and post-metal into a percussive, pinch-harmonic-driven style, wrapped in lyrics about spirituality, philosophy and the environment. Their lineup of the Duplantier brothers with Christian Andreu and Jean-Michel Labadie has been unchanged since the rename; they became the first French band to top the Billboard Hard Rock Albums chart and, in 2024, the first metal band to perform at an Olympic opening ceremony.

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Amthrya is an Italian avant-garde death/black metal band founded by guitarist-drummer Barry Yukimura and fronted by vocalist Kasumi Onryō. Their 2022 concept album Passage (Ad Noctem Records/Drakkar Productions), recorded at Black Church studio in Ghemme, Italy, is built around Japanese mythological horror themes of demons and vengeful spirits, rendered through extended, dissonant, depressive-tinged compositions. Guest vocalist Clode of Tethra appears on the title track.

Thorr's Hammer was a short-lived doom/death metal band formed in Ballard, Seattle during the winter of 1994-1995 by guitarists Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, fronted by Runhild Gammelsæter, a then-17-year-old Norwegian exchange student who sang and wrote lyrics. Active for roughly six weeks, the band played two shows and recorded the EP Dommedagsnatt before disbanding when Gammelsæter returned to Oslo. Dommedagsnatt was first issued on cassette in 1996 and reissued on CD in 1998 as the very first release on Southern Lord Records. O'Malley, Anderson and drummer Jamie Sykes went on to form Burning Witch, while Anderson and O'Malley later founded Sunn O))).

Ehnahre is a Boston, Massachusetts experimental extreme metal ensemble formed in 2006 by former Kayo Dot members Ryan McGuire and John Carchia, fusing contemporary classical composition, aleatoric music, and doom/death metal extremity. The group avoids original lyrics, instead setting texts by modernist poets to dense, largely through-composed pieces built from extended technique and free improvisation.

Biesy is a Kraków trio formed in 2014 around guitarist/bassist PR, joined by vocalist Stawrogin (also of Odraza, Totenmesse) and drummer MP (also of Outre), taking their concept from Dostoevsky's Demons and the alienation of urban life. Their 2017 debut Noc Lekkich Obyczajów (Third Eye Temple) delivers dissonant, disjointed black/death riffing compared to Ulcerate, Deathspell Omega, Immolation and Gorguts. The 2020 follow-up Transsatanizm (Godz ov War Productions) pushed further into avant-garde territory, layering industrial synths and looping electro beats over blackened riffs, described by reviewers as 'avangardish, industrial-infused post-rock/post-black.'

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