Deddom

Yakuza is a Chicago avant-garde metal band formed in 1999, led by saxophonist/vocalist Bruce Lamont. They build a metal base with progressive flair, folding in free jazz saxophone and clarinet, world music, doom, grind, and post-rock ambience into a jazz-metal hybrid sometimes tagged 'jazzcore.' Their discography spans Way of the Dead (2002, Century Media), Samsara (2006) and Transmutations (2007, Prosthetic), Of Seismic Consequence (2010) and Beyul (2012, Profound Lore), and Sutra (2023, Svart Records).

The Book of Knots is a Brooklyn experimental art rock studio collective formed in the spring of 2003 at Joel Hamilton and Tony Maimone's Studio G, with Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt completing the core quartet. The group built a trilogy of themed concept albums: the self-titled debut (Arclight, 2004) about failed sea voyages, Traineater (Anti-, 2007) about crumbling Midwestern rust belt towns, and Garden of Fainting Stars (Ipecac Recordings, 2011) about flight and space travel. Their records feature a rotating cast of guest vocalists and musicians including Tom Waits, Mike Watt, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, and Jon Langford.

Ottone Pesante is an Italian instrumental trio from Faenza billing itself as the first 'brassmetal' band, replacing guitars with electronically processed trumpet and trombone over grindcore-rooted drums. Their 2024 album Scrolls of War (Aural Music) featured guest spots from Napalm Death's Shane Embury, Cattle Decapitation's Travis Ryan, Messa's Sara Bianchini, and ambient artist Lili Refrain. Reviewers describe their sound as 'jazz-infused metal and noise' that blends small-town brass-band bombast with extreme-metal intensity.

Black Bells of Destructionplay in the dock

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maudlin of the Well (stylized lowercase, often abbreviated motW) was an avant-garde metal band from Boston formed in 1996 around the songwriting core of Toby Driver, guitarist Greg Massi and lyricist Jason Byron. Across the 1999 debut My Fruit PsychoBells... A Seed Combustible and the 2001 companion albums Bath and Leaving Your Body Map, they braided death and doom metal with jazz horns, clean female and male vocals, chamber textures and ambient passages. The group dissolved in 2002 and Driver reconstituted the project as Kayo Dot; motW later reunited to record the fan-funded Part the Second (2009).

The Blue Ghost / Shedding Qliphothplay in the dock

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The Deserts of Traun (stylized TRAUN) is an experimental, multi-genre metal project from Santa Barbara, California, founded and largely composed by drummer Dave Murray, formerly of Estradasphere. Its self-titled 2003 debut features Murray on numerous instruments alongside contributions from Estradasphere guitarist Jason Schimmel and others, blending metal, jazz, progressive rock and soundtrack styles. Murray later carried the project's polyrhythmic-metal sensibility into High Castle Teleorkestra.

Kurushimi (苦しみ, 'suffering') is a Sydney improv collective founded in 2015 by bassist Andrew Mortensen, built around Zorn/Zappa-style conduction: two conductors flash hand signals mid-performance to steer a five-to-six-piece horn-and-rhythm ensemble through sudden lurches between free jazz, doom, freegrind, dub and noise. Reviewers reach for John Zorn, Ornette Coleman, Bill Laswell, Morbid Angel and Bohren & Der Club of Gore in the same breath to describe it, and the band's own 'doom jazz' tag undersells how far the improvisations range. It's one of the purest Naked City-lineage conduction projects to turn up on the avant-garde-metal chart, even without any documented direct tie to Zorn himself.

Chaos Remainsplay in the dock

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Dumb Waiter is a Richmond, VA quartet formed in 2012 that fuses noise rock, free/fusion jazz saxophone, mathy post-punk structure, and metallic heaviness into a genre-resistant, frequently absurdist package. Fifth album Gauche Gists (2022, Ossein Records) drew comparisons to Pharoah Sanders and This Heat, with klezmer-tinged sax lines colliding against distorted bass and drums. They sit at the noise-rock/jazz-metal fringe rather than squarely inside metal, but their heaviness and structural weirdness keep them on the avant-garde-metal chart's radar.

Vegan Mustache Jazzplay in the dock

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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

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Convulsif is a Swiss instrumental unit built around bassist Loïc Grobéty, trading guitars for a lineup of bass, drums, treated violin and bass clarinet. Billed as a 'jazz-grindcore collective,' they fuse doom, drone, black metal and noise through conceptual improvisation, with 2020's 'Extinct' marking their fifth full-length.

The Axe Will Breakplay in the dock

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A Portuguese progressive death/doom act from Vila Real, active 1997-2011 (as Thanatos until 2001), that pushed from straightforward death metal into an increasingly atmospheric, doom-tinged and progressive direction across five albums. Dual male/female vocals (Guilhermino Martins and Patrícia Rodrigues) traded off over jazzy detours, Middle-Eastern-flavored guitar-and-keyboard passages, and dreamlike, trance-inducing keyboard textures, drawing comparisons to Porcupine Tree and Lacuna Coil before disbanding in 2011.

L.play in the dock

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