Damned Spirits' Dance

Chryst is the solo, present-day moniker of Christof Niederwieser, who founded the Austrian avant-garde black metal band Korova in Innsbruck in 1990, continued it as Korovakill from 2000, then released the sole Chryst album PhantasmaChronica (2011). Niederwieser also sang on Angizia's first two studio albums.

Transcending Bizarre? are a Thessaloniki avant-garde/symphonic black metal band formed in 2000, built around guitarist Theoharis Liratzakis and keyboardist/vocalist Haris. Across three albums (The Four Scissors, 2003; The Serpent's Manifolds, 2008; The Misanthrope's Fable, 2010) they mixed icy black metal with synths, samples and a theatrical, surrealist fairy-tale aesthetic one reviewer compared to a Tim Burton soundtrack. In 2010 Liratzakis and Haris used the band as a launchpad to found Hail Spirit Noir, carrying much of Transcending Bizarre?'s eerie, keyboard-driven avant-black approach into that project.

The Music Of The Spheresplay in the dock

Spotify

compare profiles →

The Wicked was a short-lived (1999-c.2005) Finnish melodic black/industrial/avant-garde metal act from Uusimaa, released on Spikefarm Records, built around Necrotron (guitars, keyboards - real name Henri 'Trollhorn' Sorvali, also of Moonsorrow and Finntroll) and vocalist Lucius M.K. Their two albums, ...For Theirs Is the Flesh (2002) and Sonic Scriptures of the End Times (2004), pile industrial beats, voice-over samples, and symphonic/new-age keyboard writing onto a black-metal chassis, drawing comparisons to a metal Danny Elfman scoring a Tim Burton film. It's a genuinely odd, theatrical corner of the late-90s/early-2000s Finnish extreme scene.

Ram-Zet is a Norwegian avant-garde metal band formed in Hamar in 1998 as the solo vehicle of vocalist/guitarist Zet (Henning Ramseth), later expanding into a full band. Their self-described 'schizo-metal' welds black/thrash foundations to industrial textures, prominent violin and rare time signatures, framed by concept albums about schizophrenia with dual harsh/clean vocals. Their experimentalism sits largely in the progressive, technical and black-metal dimensions rather than the exotic 'weird' axes.

The Kovenant are a Norwegian band formed in 1992 (as Covenant) in Hamar that began in symphonic black metal and reinvented itself as industrial/cyber 'space metal' after its 1999 rename. The pivotal 1998 album Nexus Polaris, released on Nuclear Blast, drew in Mayhem drummer Jan Axel 'Hellhammer' Blomberg, who has remained the band's drummer. Fronted by Lex Icon (ex-Dimmu Borgir) and Psy Coma, their programming-drenched sound sits at the electronic edge of the Norwegian avant-black scene.

Abstruse is the one-man experimental black/thrash/industrial metal project of Athens, Greece-based musician Substant, active since 2002. Substant composes via an idiosyncratic 'order-based system' that treats intervals as numeric patterns rather than conventional scales, and has built custom software ('motion2sound') to translate movement into sound and multi-sensory staging elements. The project's 2019 album Submerge: Ritual is structured as a conceptual 'Pan Ritual' narrative; a 2010 demo, Ivory Tower, was ranked among the year's top albums by the Avantgarde Metal webzine.

Dødheimsgard (DHG) are a Norwegian band formed in Oslo in 1994 that mutated from the raw black metal of Kronet Til Konge (1995) into the fractured avant-garde industrial black metal of 666 International (1999). Led throughout by Vicotnik, they became a touchstone of the experimental wing of Norwegian black metal. Kronet Til Konge's lineup featured Darkthrone's Fenriz on bass, and its closer 'When Heavens End' carries an additional-songwriting credit for Ulver founder Sigmund 'Grellmund' Løkken.

Carnival in Coal was a French extreme/avant-garde metal duo formed in Amiens in 1995 by vocalist Arno Strobl and multi-instrumentalist Axel Wursthorn, active until 2007 (briefly revived 2014). The band mixed death and black metal with disco, pop, reggae, and chamber-rock elements under a recurring carnival/circus concept, releasing albums via War On Majors, Season of Mist, and Earache's Elitist imprint. Critics drew comparisons to Faith No More/Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa, and John Zorn for the band's genre-defying juxtapositions.

Ebonylake are a UK avant-garde gothic/black/death metal band from Ossett, West Yorkshire, formed in 1997 by vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Ophelius and drummer Sighmon W. Their 1999 debut On the Eve of the Grimly Inventive (Cacophonous Records) fused technical black metal with avant-garde classical influences (Penderecki, Prokofiev) and horror-film scoring. The band went dormant after 2000, reunited around 2009, and released a second album, In Swathes of Brooding Light, in 2011/2012.

I Painted the Suicide of Neptuneplay in the dock

Bandcamp

compare profiles →

A Montreal avant-garde black metal trio whose 2015 album 'Une voûte sans clef' has been described by reviewers as a terrifying, exhilarating merger of black metal and circus music — cinematic, synth-layered black metal that lurches between harsh blast passages and eerie, carnivalesque calm. Roots trace back to the black metal project Esker before the 2015 rename.