ByoNoiseGenerator

Long-running Indonesian band from Yogyakarta, formed 1998, that started as avant-garde/technical death metal and by their 2009 album 'Lipan's Kinetic' had shifted toward a free-jazz-influenced mathcore style, incorporating clean jazz guitar passages, electronic/dubstep digressions, and even a straight-faced Cure cover ('Friday I'm In Love') alongside brutal death metal riffing. Reviewers have likened the results to 'a collaboration between John Zorn and Melt-Banana' and to Psyopus-style mathcore fused with brutal death metal. Current lineup is Halim (guitars, since 1998), Mal (bass, since 2001), Didit (vocals, since 2002) and Obet (drums, since 2006).

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Effluence is the one-man 'free death' project of California multi-instrumentalist Matt Stephens, begun in 2020 and released through his own Putrefactive Recordings. The music welds brutal and technical death metal and goregrind to free-jazz improvisation and noise, a chaotic, through-improvised sound Stephens coined 'free death' and is widely credited with pioneering. His jazz training surfaces in the frantic piano and horn runs threaded through the blast beats.

Agabas is a six-piece 'deathjazz' band formed in Trondheim, Norway, fusing death metal aggression with jazz harmony and improvisation, anchored by saxophonist Alexander Dellerhagen alongside a full metal rhythm section. Several members hold jazz performance master's degrees, and press coverage draws comparisons to Meshuggah, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Gojira crossed with John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. The band signed to Mascot Records around their 2025 album Hard Anger.

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Killing Spree is a French avant-jazz/death-metal duo of saxophonist Matthieu Metzger (Klone, Orchestre National de Jazz) and drummer Grégoire Galichet (Deathcode Society, Kwoon), formed after the pair met on a tour of Japan. Their 2020 debut EP A Violent Legacy reworked Death and Meshuggah tracks through saturated free-jazz saxophone and talkbox, and their 2024 full-length Camouflage (Klonosphere/Season of Mist) pushes further into technical, hardcore-adjacent death-metal-via-jazz territory. Not to be confused with several unrelated straight thrash-metal bands of the same name.

Sarmat is a New York technical death metal quintet whose 2023 debut Determined to Strike (I, Voidhanger Records) pairs Gorguts-style dissonance with jazz-fusion horn and piano interludes, drawing comparisons to a hybrid of Imperial Triumphant and Weather Report. The record is framed as the first chapter of a three-part interstellar sci-fi concept cycle, and was mastered by Colin Marston at his Menegroth studio. Bassist/pianist guest Steve Blanco doubles as the touring bassist of Imperial Triumphant.

Eigenstate Zero is the solo project of Stockholm metal veteran Christian Ludvigsson, launched in 2018 to fuse progressive death metal with Frank Zappa-style jazz-fusion excess. Across Sensory Deception, Machinery of Night, The Malthusian and Shape of God Thought of Sun, Ludvigsson stacks odd time signatures and weird electronic/synth textures over a death-metal chassis, filling 'passages of eclectic weirdness' between the heavy sections.

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Brain Tentacles is a Chicago trio formed in 2013: Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Bloodiest) on saxophone, electric piano, synth and voice; Dave Witte (Discordance Axis, Municipal Waste) on drums; and Aaron Dallison (Keelhaul) on bass and synth. Their 2016 self-titled debut (Relapse Records) swings between 'mathy chaos' and 'juddering grooves,' drawing direct comparisons to John Zorn's Naked City, with a guest vocal spot from Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), production by Sanford Parker, and cover art by Jef Whitehead (Leviathan).

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LA duo of guitarist Lee Wanner and vocalist Paula Stefanini, active since 2012, fusing djent, jazz-fusion, blues and country into a genre-scrambling avant-garde metal project. Their two albums, Butterfly (2012) and Exocoetidae: Flying Fish (2013), pair death-metal vocal bursts with virtuosic, humor-laced composition. Guest musicians on Exocoetidae include prog drummers Morgan Ågren and Marco Minnemann.

Panzerballett is a Munich jazz-metal quintet founded in 2004 and led by guitarist-composer Jan Zehrfeld, fusing delicate interlocking funk grooves with brutally hard, polyrhythmic Meshuggah-informed riffs and genuine jazz improvisation. Alongside Zehrfeld's originals they stage virtuosic reinterpretations spanning Deep Purple, Meshuggah and Weather Report, and are known for comedic, theatrical live shows. Signed to ACT Records, their guest-heavy albums (e.g. Planet Z, Übercode Œuvre) recruit elite fusion drummers.

The Dr. Orphyus Project is the solo vehicle of Ryan Morris, a death-metal/jazz-fusion outfit based in Clay City, Illinois and active since 2001 (per Metal Archives) with a discography running from the 2001 self-titled EP through 2011's Death Jazz and 2016's The Roustabout. Morris plays guitar, trombone, and vocals, weaving swing, Latin, grind, and even polka passages into extreme-metal songwriting, citing Mr. Bungle and Agoraphobic Nosebleed as touchstones. Comic-book concept releases (the Death Nouveau series) and an animated Death Jazz feature underline the project's theatrical, genre-scrambling bent.

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