Aegult

Liturgy is an American avant-garde black metal band from Brooklyn, founded in 2005 and led by composer-guitarist-vocalist Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix. The project is built around a self-authored 'transcendental black metal' philosophy and ranges from blast-driven maximalist black metal to the glitch/IDM electronics of The Ark Work and the choral, orchestral scope of later records like 93696. Critically prominent, The Ark Work was named the #1 avant-garde album of 2015 by both Spin and Rolling Stone.

Avant-garde black metal / digital hardcore project founded 2018 by Viktor Sohm (also of Vienna outfit PRLLNKRCHN) in Vienna, Austria. Debut EP Serotonin (2019) fused blackgaze atmosphere with dissonant black metal; the follow-up album NorAdrenalin (2021, reissued by Total Dissonance Worship) pushed further into deconstructed-club and digital-hardcore territory, blending distorted guitars with club-beat electronics around themes of trauma and existentialism.

Cicada the Burrower is the solo project of Madison, Wisconsin songwriter Cameron Davis, active since 2011/2012 and self-released through her own Blue Bedroom Records. Davis fuses progressive/post-black metal with blackgaze, chiptune, trip-hop and ambient electronics, using albums like Corpseflower (2021) and Blight Witch Regalia (2023) to process her gender transition. Reviewers have likened its blurred, synth-laced blackgaze passages to Sadness while noting jazzy horns, trip-hop beats and lo-fi electronic production woven through the harsh vocals.

Worhs began around 2009-2010 as the one-man black metal project of Paris musician WLWD (Willow), releasing debut album 'Le Temps des Blasphèmes' in 2014 before evolving into a queer-fronted duo with multi-instrumentalist Nijmaa, who joined as a session drummer on 'Ballerine Sourde' (2018) and became a full co-composer. The project blends black metal with post-punk, psychedelia, industrial noise, and noise pop, growing more accessible and compositionally complex across releases up to 'La Grande Poisseuse' (2024).

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The Kovenant are a Norwegian band formed in 1992 (as Covenant) in Hamar that began in symphonic black metal and reinvented itself as industrial/cyber 'space metal' after its 1999 rename. The pivotal 1998 album Nexus Polaris, released on Nuclear Blast, drew in Mayhem drummer Jan Axel 'Hellhammer' Blomberg, who has remained the band's drummer. Fronted by Lex Icon (ex-Dimmu Borgir) and Psy Coma, their programming-drenched sound sits at the electronic edge of the Norwegian avant-black scene.

Abbey ov Thelema is a Slovak project founded in mid-2009 by Delgrast (vocals, keyboards, programming) of atmospheric black metal band Nevaloth, initially as a dark-ambient solo side project before Nevaloth bandmate Vilozof joined on guitar in late 2010 and pushed it toward what the pair called 'Transcendental Khaoblack Metal.' Across a run of demos and full-lengths for Wraith Productions (2009-2019), including "A Fragment ov the Great Work" (2011) and "Liber DCLXVI" (2013), the project fused fast, melodic black metal songwriting with heavy synth/electronic textures and esoteric Thelemic themes before splitting up.

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.

Dødheimsgard (DHG) are a Norwegian band formed in Oslo in 1994 that mutated from the raw black metal of Kronet Til Konge (1995) into the fractured avant-garde industrial black metal of 666 International (1999). Led throughout by Vicotnik, they became a touchstone of the experimental wing of Norwegian black metal. Kronet Til Konge's lineup featured Darkthrone's Fenriz on bass, and its closer 'When Heavens End' carries an additional-songwriting credit for Ulver founder Sigmund 'Grellmund' Løkken.

Laster is a Dutch avant-garde black metal trio from Utrecht, active since 2012, that has steadily dissolved conventional black metal form into a hybrid of art rock, new wave, and shoegaze. Their Dutch-language lyrics dwell on love, distress, and identity across albums like Ons vrije fatum and Andermans mijne. In 2023 they toured Europe as support for Japanese avant-garde metal veterans Sigh.

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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.