Circle of Sighs

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.

Ensoph is an Italian avant-garde gothic/industrial metal project from Venice, active from 1997 (emerging from the prog-doom band Endaymynion) into the 2010s and signed at various points to Cruz del Sur Music. Their name, Hebrew for 'infinity,' signals the band's abiding interest in esotericism, Kabbalah and apocalyptic theology, filtered through a sound that moved from dense avant-garde gothic metal on early records toward techno/industrial-driven arrangements by 2009's Rex Mundi X-Ile. Critics likened aspects of their sound to The Kovenant and Marilyn Manson, though the arrangements were often described as 'busy' to the point of overcrowded.

Crowhurst is Philadelphia composer Jay Gambit's revolving-door noise/black metal project, begun in 2011 as solo power electronics before expanding into a shifting ensemble spanning black and doom metal, drone, and dark ambient. Their 2019 album III was produced by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou at God City Studios and released via Prophecy Productions; its 'Ghost Tropic' video paired Ballou-produced black-metal-noise with a Jane Chardiet-directed horror clip. The forthcoming Thorns (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia, 2026) folds in ten collaborators including White Ward's Dima Dudko on saxophone and Sleepwalker's PBV on dulcimer, balalaika and bouzouki.

Ghost Tropicplay in the dock

Spotify

compare profiles →

Back to R'lyeh is a Madrid progressive/avant-garde metal band formed in 2011, building Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos concept albums out of genre-hopping riffs that swing from black and death metal aggression into funk, jazz-tinged chords, and theatrical, multi-voiced vocal performances. Critics have compared their unpredictable, vocally chaotic style to Mr Bungle, Sigh, and System of a Down.

Chosenplay in the dock

BandcampSpotify

compare profiles →

Kayo Dot is an American avant-garde/experimental band formed in Boston in 2002 by multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver out of the ashes of his previous group maudlin of the Well. Their 2003 debut Choirs of the Eye was released on John Zorn's Tzadik label and set the template for a restless, genre-dissolving music that has drifted across chamber metal, art rock, post-rock, drone and synth-driven new wave over more than a decade of records. Driver is the band's only constant, steering a rotating cast of string players, horn players and rhythm sections through long-form compositions that refuse to sit still.

The Manifold Curiosityplay in the dock

BandcampSpotifyTidal

compare profiles →

Troldhaugen are a self-described 'circus-metal-prog-folk-rock' outfit from Wollongong, Australia, formed in 2008, fusing Frank Zappa-style genre-hopping with Danny Elfman-esque orchestration and electronic 'Skrillex-ian' edits. The band began as a folk-metal duo before growing into a larger chaotic ensemble, releasing albums including Obzkure Anekdotez and Idio+syncrasies (2017) through Bird's Robe Records.

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

BandcampSpotifyYT Music

compare profiles →

Long-running Turin, Italy project (evolving out of Maldoror, active since the 1990s) that moved from Norwegian-leaning black metal into an idiosyncratic industrial/avant-garde fusion — noir jazz sampling, post-industrial electronics, and ambient/classical texture layered over metal spikes. One of the pillars, alongside Aborym, of Italy's early-2000s industrial black metal scene; in 2009 the band evolved into the successor project Textbook of Modern Karate before later reactivations under the TMK name.

Oranssi Pazuzu is a Finnish psychedelic black metal band formed in 2007 in Tampere. Their sound fuses black metal with psychedelic rock, space rock, krautrock, dark ambient and electronic textures into a hypnotic, boundary-dissolving whole, a synthesis critics have struggled to categorize. Across six studio albums, from Muukalainen puhuu (2009) to the acclaimed Muuntautuja (2024), they have become one of the most celebrated exports of Finland's experimental heavy underground.

Uusi teknokratiaplay in the dock

BandcampSpotifyTidal

compare profiles →

Sigh is a Japanese avant-garde/experimental metal band formed in Tokyo in 1989, led throughout by multi-instrumentalist Mirai Kawashima. Their 1993 debut Scorn Defeat, released by Euronymous's Deathlike Silence Productions, helped pioneer a surrealist take on black metal before the band expanded into symphonic, orchestral, jazzy and world-music territory, adding saxophone, keyboards and traditional Japanese instruments. They remain one of Japan's most revered and eclectic extreme-metal exports.