Deserts of Traun

Free Salamander Exhibit is an avant-rock band from Oakland, California, formed by former members of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Comprising roughly four-fifths of that group's lineup plus additional players, the band pursues an art-prog / rock-in-opposition sound built around an arsenal of homemade instruments alongside guitars, bass, and drums. Their debut album, Undestroyed, was released December 13, 2016 on the Web of Mimicry label.

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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Between the Buried and Me are an American progressive metal band formed in 2000 in Raleigh, North Carolina, spanning progressive metalcore, technical death metal and avant-garde metal. Their genre-hopping suites mix death growls and cleans with sweep-picked leads that draw on bluegrass and jazz, plus ambient 'space music' passages and acoustic balladry.

Mastodon is an American heavy metal band formed in Atlanta in 2000, fusing sludge and stoner metal with progressive rock, hardcore aggression and jazz-influenced drumming into an ambitious, concept-driven sound. Their breakthrough Leviathan (2004), a song cycle built around Moby-Dick, established them as one of the most original and influential American metal bands of the 21st century, and later records like Crack the Skye (2009) pushed further into psychedelic prog territory. The classic four-piece held together for 25 years until guitarist Brent Hinds split with the band in March 2025 and died in a motorcycle accident that August; three of the four members trade lead vocals, giving the band its distinctive multi-voiced attack.

Blood and Thunderplay in the dock

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Gojira are a French metal band from Ondres, formed in 1996 as Godzilla and renamed Gojira in 2001. They fuse technical death metal, groove, progressive and post-metal into a percussive, pinch-harmonic-driven style, wrapped in lyrics about spirituality, philosophy and the environment. Their lineup of the Duplantier brothers with Christian Andreu and Jean-Michel Labadie has been unchanged since the rename; they became the first French band to top the Billboard Hard Rock Albums chart and, in 2024, the first metal band to perform at an Olympic opening ceremony.

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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.

Pecking Out My Stained Glass Eyesplay in the dock

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Azusa is a multinational progressive extreme metal supergroup formed in 2014 by cousins Christer Espevoll (guitars) and David Husvik (drums) of the Norwegian band Extol, joined by bassist Liam Wilson of The Dillinger Escape Plan and vocalist Eleni Zafiriadou of Sea + Air. Their sound blends melodic thrash, jazz-fusion, hardcore and early-90s riff-pop, a style the band has tongue-in-cheek dubbed "Avant-Thrash." They released their debut album Heavy Yoke in 2018 and the follow-up Loop of Yesterdays in 2020, via Solid State Records (US) and Indie Recordings (Europe).

Interstellar Islandsplay in the dock

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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).

Meshuggah is a Swedish extreme metal band formed in Umeå in 1987, celebrated for the polymetric and polyrhythmic architecture of their music — thundering, downtuned guitar riffs written in shifting odd groupings over a steady 4/4 pulse. Fusing thrash, death, and groove metal with a cerebral jazz-fusion sensibility, they inadvertently launched the subgenre now known as djent and became one of the most technically influential acts in modern heavy music. Guitarist Fredrik Thordendal's Allan Holdsworth-inspired soloing and drummer Tomas Haake's mechanical precision are cornerstones of the sound.

Bleedplay in the dock

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Tomahawk is the Nashville-formed supergroup that pairs Mike Patton's shape-shifting vocals with Duane Denison's razor-wire guitar, born in 1999 when the two started swapping tapes after a Mr. Bungle tour stop. With John Stanier's piston-precise drumming and bass from Kevin Rutmanis (later Trevor Dunn), the band deals in taut, noirish alternative/avant-garde metal that splits the difference between The Jesus Lizard's angular menace and Patton's cinematic weirdness. Five albums on Patton's Ipecac Recordings — from the 2001 debut through 2021's Tonic Immobility — make it one of the label's flagship acts.

God Hates a Cowardplay in the dock

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