Abbey ov Thelema

Strangeways is an experimental black metal band from Jerusalem, formed in 2006 by Avi Caspi and Yossi Darmon (later joined by drummer Nir Nakav). Their sole full-length, Rotting Under the La La Bombs (2013, Orgasmatrön Records), delivers Mayhem-indebted, Attila Csihar-toned Norwegian-style black metal roughened by deliberate CD-skip glitch edits and two contrasting instrumental interludes (keyboard/piano, and pure dark ambient). A minor, single-album entry at the fringe of Israel's small extreme metal scene.

A one-man Icelandic project from scene veteran Thordur Bjornsson (also of Illkynja, Hrae and Endalok), built on cavernous, chaotic black metal soaked in murky, oppressive atmosphere. Schizomenous // (2020) and Canvas of a New Dawn (2021) weave in drum machine, synths, field recordings and unsettling radio-broadcast samples. Released through UK label Onism Productions in small limited runs.

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Ophe is a one-man avant-garde/post-black metal project from Châtillon, France, created by Christophe "Bargnatt XIX" Denhez (also frontman of OMRÅDE and Demande à la Poussière), who handles all vocals, instruments and programming. Debut album Litteras Ad Tristia Maestrum Solitude arrived on My Kingdom Music in 2018, followed by Somnium Nocte Mendaciis (2022) on the same label. The project pairs primal black metal with dissonant, hermetic song structures and post-industrial, noise-inflected atmospheres, drawing comparisons to Dodecahedron, Ævangelist and Spektr.

Adaestuo is an international black metal project built around VJS (also known for Nightbringer, Demoncy, Incursus) and P.E. Packain (ex-Horna, Sargeist), with Hekte Zaren on vocals. Across Tacent Semitae (2016), Krew za krew (2018), and Manalan virrat (2020), raw black metal dissolves into extended dark-ambient and musique-concrete passages built around occult, ritual, and cosmogonic lyrical themes. It's a well-pedigreed underground black metal outfit, but none of its members' other projects currently appear in the atlas.

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Avant-garde metal duo of 47_N_74D0 and horrid_charme, recorded and arranged 2019-2020 between Warsaw and Madrid. Their debut Deformed by the Misuse of Soul [RG06] (ruego label, May 2020) fuses black metal and industrial metal with death industrial, noise, musique concrète, and glitch, using field recordings and sound design across four long-form tracks (one featuring guest act portento).

Norwegian avant-garde project (1998-2006) from Notodden founded by Ihsahn (Emperor), his wife Ihriel and her brother Lord PZ, on their own Mnemosyne Productions. It began as symphonic avant-garde extreme metal and drifted toward classical-tinged avant-garde rock full of twisted synths, electronics, operatic female vocals and Ihsahn's shrieks. Lost in Reverie (2004) is regarded as a landmark of the genre-transcending Norwegian avant-garde.

Abstruse is the one-man experimental black/thrash/industrial metal project of Athens, Greece-based musician Substant, active since 2002. Substant composes via an idiosyncratic 'order-based system' that treats intervals as numeric patterns rather than conventional scales, and has built custom software ('motion2sound') to translate movement into sound and multi-sensory staging elements. The project's 2019 album Submerge: Ritual is structured as a conceptual 'Pan Ritual' narrative; a 2010 demo, Ivory Tower, was ranked among the year's top albums by the Avantgarde Metal webzine.

Echo Zero is a Kraków project that debuted in 2026 with "E0," a concept album about an antenna recovered from the Arctic Ocean floor — "the first rung of Jacob's Ladder" — released on Pest Productions. No Clean Singing folded the band into Poland's long tradition of weird black metal, praising its mind-warping ambient stretches, groove-heavy riffs, prowling bass, and "constantly-mutating" multi-tongued vocal performance that never lets the strangeness dull the aggression. The project is led by IHS (Patryk Rzeszutek, aka Faustyna IHS Moreau), also the mainman of atlas act Biesy.

Leukotomy was a black metal duo from Hanoi, Vietnam, formed in late 2020 and active until 2023. Their sole full-length, 'Eternal Path to Eden' (House of Ygra, March 2023), is a nine-part conceptual 'tragedy' set in a gothic world, blending second-wave black metal aesthetics with avant-garde, noise, and ambient elements to tell a story of vengeance, mental torment, and unrequited love. The album was produced by Imperial Cult (Elcrost), mastered by Nemo Lockeheart, and features spoken-word passages by Sam Tang.

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Hail Spirit Noir is a Greek band from Thessaloniki (formed 2010) that welds 1970s psychedelic and progressive rock — vintage organ, synth and mellotron textures — onto a modern second-wave black metal frame. Founded by Haris and Theoharis, both veterans of the prog outfit Rex Mundi and the avant/symphonic project Transcending Bizarre?, the band cultivates an occult, horror-tinged atmosphere across concept albums, drifting further into synth-forward territory on Eden in Reverse. Frequently filed alongside Oranssi Pazuzu and Arcturus as psychedelic/avant-garde black metal.