Cranial Incisored
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).
SCORE PROFILE
Accent numbers counted towards the index. Hover an axis — or hold it on a phone — for what it means.
WHY THOSE SCORES
- Jazzy 7 — Discogs bio: the band 'would later abandon a death metal-inspired sound in favor of a free jazz-influenced mathcore style'; track titled 'Jazz Ujan' and reviews note 'outright clean jazz guitar parts' (discogs.com).
- Hardcore 4 — Described as a combination of mathcore 'in the vein of Psyopus' with brutal death metal (search aggregation of reviews via cranialincisored.bandcamp.com/rateyourmusic).
- Death 6 — Metal Archives lists early genre as Technical Death Metal; reviews confirm retained brutal death metal vocal/riff elements throughout catalog (metal-archives.com).
- Technical 8 — Metal Archives/Discogs genre tags: Avant-garde/Technical Death Metal (early), Mathcore (later); reviewers call the material 'highly technical' despite its loose, improvised feel (metal-archives.com, discogs.com).
- Glitch 3 — Reviews note 'electronic music, dubstep, and jazz digressions throughout' later material (search aggregation of RYM/Bandcamp reviews).
MEMBERS
- HalimGuitars
- MalBass
- DiditVocals
- ObetDrums
FURTHER LISTENING
Nearest score profiles in the atlas.
- UnaffiliatedEI 12Killing SpreeTechnicalJazzyDeath
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.
- UnaffiliatedEI 8ByoNoiseGeneratorTechnicalJazzyDeath
ByoNoiseGenerator are a five-piece avant-garde/brutal death metal and deathgrind band from Perm, Russia, formed in 2014, built around a dedicated saxophone player alongside the standard metal lineup. Their three LPs (Turbulent Biogenesis 2015, Neuromechanica 2018, Subnormal Dives 2025) blend insanely technical grindcore with freeform jazz, funk (Primus-style) guitar work and drum-and-bass detours. Subnormal Dives (2025) drew coverage from Angry Metal Guy, The Progressive Subway and Everything Is Noise for this jazz/deathgrind hybrid.
- Dissonant tech-deathEI 12Brain TentaclesTechnicalJazzyDeath
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).
- UnaffiliatedEI 8AgabasJazzyTechnicalDeath
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.
- Dissonant tech-deathEI 12The Flying LuttenbachersTechnicalJazzyDeath
The Flying Luttenbachers are an American instrumental noise/avant-garde band formed in Chicago in 1991 and led throughout by composer-drummer Weasel Walter, who coined 'brutal prog' for their aggressively dissonant fusion of free jazz, no wave, punk and death metal. Over 20-plus albums and a rotating cast of 40+ Chicago-improv and avant players, they've morphed from punk-jazz trio to industrial sound-collage to a ferocious, hyper-technical metal-prog engine. The band dissolved in 2007 and reformed in 2017, remaining an uncompromising touchstone of extreme instrumental music.
- UnaffiliatedEI 12EffluenceJazzyTechnicalDeath
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.
- UnaffiliatedEI 19Fredrik Thordendal's Special DefectsTechnicalJazzyDeath
Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects is the solo project of Meshuggah lead guitarist Fredrik Thordendal, whose lone album Sol Niger Within (1997) is a landmark of avant-garde metal. Structured as one continuous 43-minute composition indexed into 29 tracks, it grafts Meshuggah's mathematical rhythmic language onto the fluid, Allan Holdsworth-inspired jazz-fusion soloing Thordendal is known for. The record's dense, free-associative sprawl draws comparisons to John Zorn's Naked City and features a cast of Swedish improvisers.
- UnaffiliatedEI 8Lye by MistakeTechnicalJazzyHardcore
Lye by Mistake were an instrumentally virtuosic experimental metal band from St. Louis, Missouri, active 2004-2011, who moved from vocal mathcore on their 2006 debut Arrangements for Fulminating Vective to fully instrumental jazz-fusion metal on 2009's Fea Jur after vocalist Tony Saputo's 2008 departure. Reviewers likened their guitar work to jazz-fusion players like Pat Metheny and Al Di Meola grafted onto a Meshuggah-indebted metal chassis. They toured alongside mathcore-scene peers including Psyopus, The Number Twelve Looks Like You, Cattle Decapitation, and Arsonists Get All the Girls.
- UnaffiliatedEI 9Hunab KuTechnicalJazzyHardcore
Hunab Ku was a Seattle avant-garde metal act built around vocalist Mike Gilmore, guitarist Luke Jaeger (ex-Sleep Terror, joined 2008 replacing founding guitarist Dan Hagerty), bassist Matt Finn, and drummer Mark Villano. Their 2007 debut "The Gaze Inward" (Black Sheep Records) was reviewed as chaotic mathcore-indebted avant metal, drawing explicit critical comparisons to Dillinger Escape Plan, Cephalic Carnage, and Fantomas, with vocals ranging from screams to croons and moans. IMPORTANT DISAMBIGUATION: this is distinct from an unrelated Costa Rican black metal band of the same name (founded 2016 by Lord Eythraz) and a dark-ambient project — the Seattle act is the one matching the chart description and reviews cited here.
- ZornEI 13Trevor Dunn's Trio-ConvulsantTechnicalJazzyHardcore
Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant is the avant-garde jazz vehicle of Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, active since 1997 and built on the idea of a compositional jazz trio that also wields rock's power chords — AllMusic called the result "moody jazz with convulsive rock." The group debuted with Debutantes & Centipedes (1998, Buzz Records) featuring guitarist Adam Levy and drummer Kenny Wollesen, then re-emerged on Ipecac with Sister Phantom Owl Fish (2004) in a new lineup with guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Ches Smith. That trio returned on Séances (2022, Pyroclastic Records), expanded by the chamber quartet Folie à Quatre — including Sleepytime Gorilla Museum violinist Carla Kihlstedt — for music inspired by the 18th-century French Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard.