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Iblis were a Kraków, Poland avant-garde black metal band active 2003-2013, known for their self-styled 'Nuklear Rock'n'Roll' and 2012 album Menthell. Bassist Traktor's jazz/funk/prog-inflected playing and guitarist Borsuk's swings between dense black/thrash riffing and spacious passages sat under frontman Zgred's theatrical, King Diamond-adjacent vocal shifts, sampled voices and persistent psychedelic effects.

Goatchrist is the solo vehicle of Leeds, UK musician Jacob Guilherme, formed in 2014, an explicitly occult project layering piano, orchestral textures, and jazz-inflected instrumental passages over an Orthodox black-metal core.

Nefarious Mash is the solo vehicle of Grenoble-based contemporary-classical composer Eddy Jaber, founded in late 2021 to bridge concert-hall composition and extreme metal. Debut LP In Memory of Your Hopes (2022, reissued 2024 on Wormholedeath) builds dense 'harmonic cathedrals' of dissonant black metal, threading in jazz-derived harmony, polyrhythmic surprises and theatrically flexible vocal delivery across nine long-form tracks.

In Front of the Mirrorplay in the dock

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Ashenspire is a Glasgow avant-garde/progressive black metal act formed in 2015, one of Scotland's most distinctive experimental metal bands. Their acclaimed 2022 album 'Hostile Architecture' (Code666) welds black-metal dissonance to avant-garde jazz, weaving saxophone, violin, Rhodes and prepared piano beneath vocalist Alasdair Dunn's Sprechstimme delivery. Lyrically it is a scathing, class-conscious critique of late capitalism, gentrification and urban design.

The Law of Asbestosplay in the dock

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Morpheus Tales is a Greek experimental/progressive black metal project from Thessaloniki, built around core member Paris (guitars, drums/keys programming) with Georgios P on guitars and Lee on vocals for their most recent work. Their music is billed as 'avantgarde post black metal' that's psychedelic, strange and concept-driven — 2014's Secular Noir is a 'cosmic noir tale of greed and lust,' while 2017's II is an 8-chapter concept record about hypocrisy, false prophets and the denial of reality, featuring a guest saxophone part from Orestis Exidaris. The project appears self-released/unsigned, distributing exclusively through its own Bandcamp.

Deathspell Omega is an anonymous French black metal collective, formed in 1998, that turned from orthodox raw black metal into one of the most cerebral, theologically-preoccupied acts of the 'dissonant' avant-black wave. From Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice (2004) and Kénôse (2005) onward their music folds jazz-derived chord voicings, math-rock complexity and dark-ambient/choral interludes into blast-driven black metal. The band never confirms its lineup, so personnel details are limited to widely-reported names.

Arkheth is the long-running (2001-present) Australian project of Tyrone 'Tyraenos' Kostitch, now a one-man vehicle for symphonic-turned-experimental black metal after growing out of the Orange, NSW band Eternal Dark. Its 2018 high point, 12 Winter Moons Comes the Witches Brew, folds saxophonist Glen Wholohan's honking, Contortions-indebted jazz lines into black-metal songwriting critics have dubbed 'an inverted Shining' -- black metal wading into jazz rather than the reverse. It is one of the more distinctive jazz/black-metal hybrids operating outside the Norwegian axis the label comparison implies.

Trismegistusplay 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.

Kwade Droes is an anonymous Dutch black metal act from Gelderland, releasing through Ván Records since a 2017 debut EP. Reviewers describe the project as lo-fi Darkthrone-style black metal collided with a 'stoned free jazz ensemble,' built from tremolo riffs, sampled radio static, and demonic chorales. The band guards its members' identities closely.

Met Onoprechte Deelneming (full album)play in the dock

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Ved Buens Ende..... is a Norwegian avant-garde black metal band, active 1993–1997 with later reunions, whose sole album Written in Waters (1995) is a touchstone of experimental black metal. It blends aggressive black-metal blasts and harsh vocals with quiet, jazz-influenced instrumental passages, atonality, dissonance, prominent bass and eerie clean crooning. Its members are central figures of the Norwegian avant-black scene, overlapping with Dødheimsgard, Ulver, Aura Noir and Virus.