Becoming-Animal

A Czech alternative-grindcore project that folds jazz-rock/fusion runs, doom-y slow sections and experimental black metal atmosphere into short, poem-set blasts, with guest saxophone thickening the mix. Sits in the small Czech underground orbit (Magick Disk Musick) alongside acts like Voluptas, using grindcore's economy as a chassis for genre-hopping rather than straight aggression.

A short-lived 1990s Norwegian project that released two albums on Ironic Recordings — Sjelefred (1996) and Fun For All the Family (1997, produced by Helge Sten) — rooted more in punk and alternative metal than orthodox black or death metal, but stirring in jazz, 70s prog, dance and electronic influences via a rotating cast that included saxophone and trumpet players. Its genre-agnostic, eclectic approach later put it in the same critical orbit as Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Primus.

Unnatural Ways is guitarist/vocalist Ava Mendoza's power trio with bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Sam Ospovat, formed in 2012 and drawing on noise rock, free jazz and metal for a raw, heavy, unpredictable sound built around Mendoza's angular, distorted guitar work. The band's second album, We Aliens, came out on John Zorn's Tzadik label in 2016, and Mendoza herself has a deep pedigree in Zorn's orbit, having played his 1984 'game piece' Cobra and recorded in his Arcana series. She's also a recurring guest on saxophonist Jon Irabagon's improv-noise 'I Don't Hear Nothin' But the Blues' series alongside guitarist Mick Barr.

Alien Gooplay in the dock

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Chicago's Murmur mutate black metal's frost into something stranger, threading Moog synths, jazz-inflected dissonance, and Midwest punk urgency through shrieked, tremolo-driven songwriting. Where peers double down on cold atmosphere, Murmur's albums (2010's Mainlining the Lugubrious, its 2014 self-titled follow-up) reach for space-rock sprawl and noise-rock grit instead. The result sits closer to post-black-metal's outer edges than to any orthodox scene.

Yakuza is a Chicago avant-garde metal band formed in 1999, led by saxophonist/vocalist Bruce Lamont. They build a metal base with progressive flair, folding in free jazz saxophone and clarinet, world music, doom, grind, and post-rock ambience into a jazz-metal hybrid sometimes tagged 'jazzcore.' Their discography spans Way of the Dead (2002, Century Media), Samsara (2006) and Transmutations (2007, Prosthetic), Of Seismic Consequence (2010) and Beyul (2012, Profound Lore), and Sutra (2023, Svart Records).

Dumb Waiter is a Richmond, VA quartet formed in 2012 that fuses noise rock, free/fusion jazz saxophone, mathy post-punk structure, and metallic heaviness into a genre-resistant, frequently absurdist package. Fifth album Gauche Gists (2022, Ossein Records) drew comparisons to Pharoah Sanders and This Heat, with klezmer-tinged sax lines colliding against distorted bass and drums. They sit at the noise-rock/jazz-metal fringe rather than squarely inside metal, but their heaviness and structural weirdness keep them on the avant-garde-metal chart's radar.

Vegan Mustache Jazzplay in the dock

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Clondementto is a genre-scrambling rock/metal project from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, formed in late 2002. Their 2009 album Carnival Complexia is promoted on Bandcamp as a 'free improvisational ride' melding free jazz, black metal, noise rock and lounge into one vision, wrapped in a carnival/commedia-dell'arte concept (track titles reference Polichinella and funhouses). The wider band catalog leans on eclectic Mexican alt-metal blending jazz, funk, bossa nova and rock, but Carnival Complexia specifically is the outlier record where the metal and free-jazz elements are most explicit.

Los Angeles metal-jazz quartet fronted by trumpeter Dan Rosenboom and guitarist Jake Vossler, pairing lyrical, Miles-Davis-lineage trumpet against Vossler's distorted, noise-inflected guitar over double bass and drums. Their 2017 debut Reclamation (Tzadik) was tracked in 72 hours as a politically charged 'jazz protest record,' moving between free improvisation, heavy thrash riffing, and balladic passages.

Red Side Visible is a Cleveland/Akron, Ohio project built around multi-instrumentalist Tim Mirth, fusing odd-metered metal riffing with genuine free-jazz improvisation and alto saxophone. Press copy invokes Meshuggah, Mr. Bungle and Zappa as touchstones; the 2021 album 'A Break from Normality' collects material written and re-recorded across a decade since the project's 2010 debut 'Enter Entropy'.

TDK are an avant-prog/jazz-metal band from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, self-styled as from the 'Separatist Republic of Dobrina,' blending psychedelic post-metal, free-jazz dissonance, noise and punk energy. Records like Uspeh (2019) and Nemesta (2023) mix spastic mathy technicality with hypnotic grooves and washed-out ambiance, augmented by saxophone, accordion and electric organ over largely Bulgarian-language lyrics.