Anchor and Burden

Vaults of Zin is a Denton, Texas quartet fusing Magma-style zeuhl rhythm-section interplay with sludgy, doom-weighted metal guitar and modular-synth freakouts. Largely instrumental and built from long-form, prog-length pieces, their two albums (self-titled 2011, Kadath 2016) sit at the psychedelic, heavy end of the American avant-prog underground, drawing comparisons to Kayo Dot and Maudlin of the Well.

Combat Astronomy is bassist James Huggett's long-running vehicle for downtuned, Meshuggah-inflected riffing fused with British free jazz — sax, bassoon, and flute from Martin Archer's circle collide with drum-machine noise and industrial grind. Since 1998 the project has moved from IDM-tinged solo recordings toward a horn-heavy ensemble sound critics compare to late-period King Crimson crossed with free jazz. It reads as avant-doom in weight but jazz-fusion in vocabulary, sitting closer to zeuhl and brutal prog than to any conventional metal lineage.

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Metallic Taste of Blood is an instrumental supergroup led by Italian guitarist/producer Eraldo Bernocchi and Porcupine Tree bassist Colin Edwin, fusing metal, dub, avant-jazz and progressive rock on RareNoiseRecords. The 2012 self-titled debut featured avant-jazz pianist Jamie Saft (Electric Masada, New Zion Trio) and drummer Balazs Pandi; the 2015 follow-up Doctoring the Dead swapped in drummer Ted Parsons -- also known for Swans, Prong, Godflesh and Jesu -- alongside keyboardist Roy Powell. Reviewers describe the results as cinematic, industrial-tinged instrumental pieces that balance brutal riffage against ambient, discordant delicacy.

Metatron were a sludge/post-hardcore outfit from Evansville, Indiana and Owensboro, Kentucky, active 1998–2011, built from long improvised bass-and-drums sessions that founders Aaron King and Clay Burns restructured into songs. Their sound folded post-hardcore, space rock, freeform jazz, and math rock into a constantly-shifting take on sludge, drawing notice for a 2001 split EP with noise heavyweights Today Is The Day. Founding drummer Clay Burns's death in August 2011 appears to have ended the band; no evidence of a reformation was found.

God were a London experimental collective founded in 1987 around Kevin Martin (later of The Bug and Zonal), fusing ambient, dub, free jazz and noise rock into a saxophone-led 'jazzcore' that passed through the grindcore and industrial-metal scenes. The project ballooned to a nine-piece and drew admirers including Bill Laswell and John Zorn, the latter contributing directly. Justin Broadrick, whose Godflesh Martin had heard on John Peel's radio show, produced the group's early releases before joining as guitarist; the debut EP Breach Birth appeared on Situation Two in 1990, followed by the album Possession on Virgin in 1992.

Drainbow is the Austin, Texas one-man vehicle of multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Sarcophagus, who writes, performs and records everything himself. Its debut full-length 'The Tower of Flints' (2020) careens between thrash riffing, doom weight, gothic atmosphere, jazz-tinged lounge interludes and ambient post-metal passages inside a single kaleidoscopic record. It occupies the DIY, one-person-band corner of the avant-garde metal scene, prioritizing eclectic mood-shifting over any single subgenre identity.

Tear Light From Matter is a Massachusetts-based instrumental act pairing saxophone with a standard metal rhythm section, self-tagged on Bandcamp as experimental/jazz metal/fusion/prog metal. Their debut, "In Statu Nascendi" (released 25 January 2019, recorded and mixed by Jerry MacDonald at Odd Fellows Recording), sits alongside a further release, "Fœtal Præyers", in a small but pointed discography. The saxophone-led interplay places them in the lineage of jazz-inflected heavy bands rather than straightforward metal songwriting.

Brooklyn/NYC instrumental trio blending prog, jazz, and metal into knotty, polymetric compositions; began as an acoustic jazz unit before electrifying into an aggressive math-rock/tech-metal power trio. Drummer Jeff Eber doubles in Dysrhythmia, and the band's Cuneiform-era records were engineered by Dysrhythmia's Colin Marston, tying them into the Brooklyn tech-metal underground.

Praxis is producer/bassist Bill Laswell's shape-shifting experimental project, built around a core trio of Laswell, guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brain (Bryan Mantia) that fuses funk, jazz, hip-hop, dub and heavy metal into highly improvised music. The 1992 debut Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) drew in P-Funk's Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins, while the harsher 1993/94 album Sacrifist added John Zorn on saxophone and ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris of Painkiller, plus vocalist Yamatsuka Eye. The result swings between noisy speed metal, dub and turntablist collage.

Jon Irabagon is a Filipino-American jazz saxophonist and composer, founder of Irabbagast Records and winner of the 2008 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, whose work runs 'from postbop to free improvisation, avant country to doom metal.' He performed on John Zorn's Bagatelles Vol. 13 (Tzadik, 2023) as half of the Speed-Irabagon Quartet with Chris Speed, Christian McBride and Ches Smith, with Zorn himself guesting on alto sax.