Catatonic Effigy

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.

Yawn is an instrumental Oslo five-piece that treats extreme metal as a jumping-off point for collective free-jazz improvisation, splicing heavy-as-hell riffing and brutal breakdowns with synth-laced electronics and loose, improvised guitar soloing. Formed in 2019, their DIY-recorded 2022 debut 'Materialism' (Mindsweeper Records) drew acclaim from prog and jazz press alike for treating metal orthodoxy as raw material for real-time reinvention.

Dysrhythmia is an instrumental progressive/technical metal trio formed in Philadelphia in 1998 by guitarist Kevin Hufnagel and drummer Jeff Eber, now based in Brooklyn. Bassist Colin Marston — also of Krallice, Behold...The Arctopus, and the reunited Gorguts — joined in 2004, and the band's eight studio albums fuse jazz-inflected chord work, technical/progressive-death riffing, and prog-rock structure into a wordless, largely live-tracked instrumental attack.

Blind Idiot God is an instrumental trio formed in 1982 in St. Louis, fusing noise rock, dub, funk, free jazz and metal; Greg Ginn signed them to SST Records after hearing their demo. Their 1988 album Undertow was produced by Bill Laswell and featured saxophonist John Zorn, and the full band performed on Laswell's Praxis album Sacrifist (1993) alongside Buckethead, Bootsy Collins and Yamatsuka Eye. Khanate drummer Tim Wyskida joined in 2001 and remains the band's drummer through their 2015 reunion album Before Ever After.

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Volto! is an American jazz-fusion jam band based in Los Angeles, best known as the side project of Tool drummer Danny Carey. Formed in the early 2000s from improvised sessions with guitarist John Ziegler and bassist Lance Morrison at a San Fernando Valley jazz club, the group spent nearly a decade as a live-only act before releasing its debut album Incitare (2013) on Fantasy Records. Their heady, genre-spinning instrumental sound bridges King Crimson, Liquid Tension Experiment, and 1970s fusion, foregrounding the improvisation that Carey has cited as his main motivation for the project.

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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.

Vile Dissonance is the instrumental solo project of Dutch musician Edwin van Koppen, fusing mathcore and technical death-metal aggression with free-jazz harmony and ambient electronics. Across releases such as Metalheads are a Bunch of Conservative Fuckers (2020) and Music Theory Is a Social Convention (2021), phased-out low-tuned HM2 guitars and polyrhythmic drumming sit alongside analog synths and field recordings, with the artist citing touchstones ranging from Meshuggah and Knocked Loose to jazz-fusion guitarists Allan Holdsworth, Fredrik Thordendal and Marc Ribot, and ambient acts Boards of Canada and Air. The result plays like free jazz and mathcore trying to absorb one another.

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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The Pitts Minnemann Project is an instrumental progressive-rock/jazz-fusion collaboration between keyboardist Jimmy Pitts (Scholomance) and drummer Marco Minnemann, joined by rotating guest virtuosi on guitar, bass, saxophone, and violin. They released two albums, '2 L 8 2 B Normal' (2014) and 'The Psychic Planetarium' (2016), both blending heavy fusion with progressive-metal complexity.

Cartel Carnage is a French quintet of jazz-scene musicians (guitar, bass, trumpet, tenor sax, drums) fusing free jazz, heavy metal, pop and progressive rock into what reviewers called a 'musical UFO.' Their sound and stated influences — Naked City, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, Zorn, Ornette Coleman, alongside Meshuggah and Slayer — place them squarely in genre-collision RIO/avant-prog territory, though no sourced personnel or label ties connect them to the existing atlas. Their sole full-length, Incorporated, was released in 2012 on Great Winds/Musea Records.

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