Cicada the Burrower

Nostalghia is the one-man atmospheric/post-black metal project of Alex Becerra, based in Mexico City. Moved toward a more avant-garde, blackgaze-inflected post-black metal sound on The Last Path and Duelo (both 2023).

Mamaleek are an anonymous project of brothers recording in San Francisco (and, per their own Bandcamp bio, Beirut), active since 2008 and currently signed to The Flenser. They build a black metal foundation of tremolo riffing and harsh vocals, then layer in saxophone, industrial noise, blues, and Middle Eastern melodic phrasing. Their 2020 record Come and See reworks African-American spirituals into a meditation on American housing history, and the band deliberately withholds biographical detail to keep focus on the music.

Eating Unblessed Meatplay in the dock

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Aegult is a one-person atmospheric/avant-garde black metal project from Macclesfield, near Manchester, England, run since 2021 by an artist credited as Tomas (also behind Misertus and Ikiuni). Reviewers place 'The Pantheon of Insignificance' (2022) alongside Solefald, Thy Catafalque, and Sigh, praising its 'hyper-human' quirkiness: raw/hallucinatory black metal blindsided by unexpected jungle and synthwave breaks, then dissolving into dreamy, melancholic lo-fi shoegaze passages.

Laster is a Dutch avant-garde black metal trio from Utrecht, active since 2012, that has steadily dissolved conventional black metal form into a hybrid of art rock, new wave, and shoegaze. Their Dutch-language lyrics dwell on love, distress, and identity across albums like Ons vrije fatum and Andermans mijne. In 2023 they toured Europe as support for Japanese avant-garde metal veterans Sigh.

Bitterzoetplay in the dock

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Kekal is an Indonesian avant-garde/experimental act formed in Jakarta in 1995, one of the first Southeast Asian extreme-metal bands to reach an international audience. Beginning in black/death metal, they transformed across their discography into a genre-collapsing project spanning progressive metal, jazz fusion, trip-hop, electronic/IDM, ambient and post-rock — the 2003 breakthrough 1000 Thoughts of Violence being the pivot. Since August 2009 the band has operated as a 'memberless' collective, with former members and volunteer contributors assembling new albums.

Avant-garde black metal / digital hardcore project founded 2018 by Viktor Sohm (also of Vienna outfit PRLLNKRCHN) in Vienna, Austria. Debut EP Serotonin (2019) fused blackgaze atmosphere with dissonant black metal; the follow-up album NorAdrenalin (2021, reissued by Total Dissonance Worship) pushed further into deconstructed-club and digital-hardcore territory, blending distorted guitars with club-beat electronics around themes of trauma and existentialism.

Murmuüre is a French one-man avant-garde black metal project (sole member Felix Naos) whose enigmatic 2010 self-titled album was assembled over three years from a single one-hour guitar improvisation recorded in November 2006, edited and re-layered into a ritualistic sound collage. The result blends black-metal instrumentation with dark ambient, drone, noise and psychedelic textures — 'a churning, claustrophobic mix of queasy underwater black metal... glitchy, phantom drones'. It was released on Cold Void Emanations and Aurora Borealis Recordings.

A one-person Saudi Arabian project that has released an extraordinarily prolific run of blackgaze/atmospheric-black-metal albums since 2024, pairing raw black metal with synth textures and long-form ambient passages. Track and album titles swing between clinical/medical imagery and Arabic-language poetry, giving the catalog a disorienting, diaristic quality. Entirely self-released on Bandcamp under Creative Commons licensing.

Al-Kamar is a Japanese blackgaze/depressive black metal project, essentially the solo work of a musician known as Tsukisima, begun in 2010 as a doujin circle arranging Touhou Project music before evolving into an atmospheric post-black/shoegaze sound that incorporates Vocaloid/voice-synthesis vocals. Live performances feature supporting musicians; the self-titled 2022 album marked a deliberate return to black metal roots.

Elagabalus is a Baltimore, Maryland avant-garde black metal duo formed in 2014 by Dustin Swanson (bass, vocals, synth) and Ben Price (drums, vocals, guitar). Across Damnatio Memoriae (2015), Antiquarian Black MIDI (2017), and Dark Money (2018), the project layers synthesizers over black-metal instrumentation, drawing press comparisons to Neurosis, My Bloody Valentine, Godflesh, and Nirvana. Dark Money is tagged 'doomgaze/shoegaze' on Bandcamp and explores themes of financial corruption and power through a cinematic, synth-heavy sound.