Black Heart Sutra

Hunab Ku was a Seattle avant-garde metal act built around vocalist Mike Gilmore, guitarist Luke Jaeger (ex-Sleep Terror, joined 2008 replacing founding guitarist Dan Hagerty), bassist Matt Finn, and drummer Mark Villano. Their 2007 debut "The Gaze Inward" (Black Sheep Records) was reviewed as chaotic mathcore-indebted avant metal, drawing explicit critical comparisons to Dillinger Escape Plan, Cephalic Carnage, and Fantomas, with vocals ranging from screams to croons and moans. IMPORTANT DISAMBIGUATION: this is distinct from an unrelated Costa Rican black metal band of the same name (founded 2016 by Lord Eythraz) and a dark-ambient project — the Seattle act is the one matching the chart description and reviews cited here.

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Peculate is the solo avant-garde/progressive metal project of American composer Ben Norton, self-releasing everything for free since 2012 under a self-styled 'Metal in Opposition' banner. Norton fuses djent and mathcore aggression with 12-tone technique, Zappa-esque jazz-fusion tangents and polished production, occasionally detouring into satirical protest-song territory (2015's viral 'This Sick Beat™'). It reads as a bedroom-scale answer to the Zorn/Zappa strand of metal-adjacent avant-composition.

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Titan to Tachyons is a New York instrumental quartet led by guitarist Sally Gates, built around a two-bassist frontline (Trevor Dunn and Matt Hollenberg) with drummer Kenny Grohowski, fusing free-jazz improv, prog counterpoint, and metal violence into sci-fi-themed instrumentals. Their 2022 album Vonals was released on John Zorn's Tzadik label (following 2020's Cactides on Nefarious Industries), and the polyrhythmic, two-bass arrangement gives the compositions an unusually dense, contrapuntal low end. Every member's other credits (Mr. Bungle, Fantômas, Tomahawk, Secret Chiefs 3, Cleric, Imperial Triumphant) wire this band into the Zorn/downtown-jazz and Patton-adjacent avant-metal orbit.

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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.

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Upsilon Acrux is an American avant-progressive / math rock band founded in 1998 by guitarist Paul Lai, who started the group near San Diego before relocating to Los Angeles. Built on interlocking twin-guitar counterpoint, odd meters and a frequently rotating cast of players around Lai as the sole constant, they trade in a dense, athletic, largely instrumental 'brutal prog' indebted to King Crimson and Japanese noise-rock forebears like Ruins. They released their most widely heard albums, Galapagos Momentum (2007) and Radian Futura (2009), on the Maryland avant-rock label Cuneiform Records.

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Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant is the avant-garde jazz vehicle of Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, active since 1997 and built on the idea of a compositional jazz trio that also wields rock's power chords — AllMusic called the result "moody jazz with convulsive rock." The group debuted with Debutantes & Centipedes (1998, Buzz Records) featuring guitarist Adam Levy and drummer Kenny Wollesen, then re-emerged on Ipecac with Sister Phantom Owl Fish (2004) in a new lineup with guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Ches Smith. That trio returned on Séances (2022, Pyroclastic Records), expanded by the chamber quartet Folie à Quatre — including Sleepytime Gorilla Museum violinist Carla Kihlstedt — for music inspired by the 18th-century French Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard.

The Salamanderplay in the dock

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Ruins is a Japanese progressive-rock duo formed in 1985 by drummer/vocalist Tatsuya Yoshida, intended as a power trio until the guitarist never showed, leaving a manic bass-and-drums unit. Heavily indebted to French zeuhl pioneers Magma, Ruins performs written-out, fiendishly complex compositions sung in an invented Kobaian-like tongue, veering through prog, jazz fusion and noise rock. Yoshida, the band's only constant, is one of the pillars of Japanese avant-rock; Ruins released several albums on John Zorn's Tzadik label, including Hyderomastgroningem (1995). The bass seat rotated across the group's history.

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The Number Twelve Looks Like You is an American mathcore band formed in Bergen County, New Jersey in 2001 (initially as And Ever), taking their name from a 1964 Twilight Zone episode. Their dystopian screamo/grind fuses metal, hardcore, and Frank Zappa-esque experimental shifts across albums including Mongrel (2007) and, after a 2010–2016 split, the comeback record Wild Gods (2019). The band is fronted by longtime vocalist Jesse Korman and guitarist Alexis Pareja, with a lineup that has turned over repeatedly since its early-2000s inception.

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Self-described 'parthcore' outfit from Atlanta, Georgia blending mathcore, grindcore, punk and math rock with a comedic, satirical hillbilly sensibility — song titles skewer figures like Ben Shapiro and Ronald Reagan. Listeners have compared their zany, technically dense compositions to Frank Zappa, aided by Rex Torbalt's trombone work alongside the group's guitars, synths and rhythm section. Active on Bandcamp from 2013 through their 2019 full-length 'Women & Police Everywhere'.

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Girth is a Seattle instrumental trio — guitarist Dave Webb and drummer Peijman Kouretchian expanding to triple-guitar with Blane Patnode and Mark Corier of Swarming Hordes — playing dense, through-composed 'tech hardcore' described by one zine as splitting the difference between Orthrelm and Guapo with oddball electronic and jazz detours. Their breakthrough 2006 EP 'Sleeper, Awaken!' is a single 19-minute, four-movement piece recorded with engineer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth) and released on Trey Spruance's Web of Mimicry label, directly tying the band into the Mr. Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3-adjacent avant-metal underground. The project wound down after 2009's 'deconstruction.', with members moving on to Wah Wah Exit Wound and Satya Sena.