Devin Townsend (maximalist era)

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is an Oakland avant-garde metal and experimental rock collective formed in 1999 from the ashes of Idiot Flesh, known for theatrical live rituals, dark literary lyrics, and an arsenal of self-built instruments. The band fuses avant-metal, progressive rock, industrial, and chamber influences into a deliberately uncategorizable sound. Active through 2011, the group reunited in 2023 and released the album "of the Last Human Being" in February 2024.

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Tool is an American progressive metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1990, meshing dark underground metal with the ambition of art rock into multi-sectioned, layered songs built on odd time signatures and lengthy instrumental passages. The classic lineup pairs vocalist Maynard James Keenan and guitarist Adam Jones with drummer Danny Carey and, since 1995, bassist Justin Chancellor, who replaced founding bassist Paul D'Amour. Across albums from Undertow (1993) through Ænima, Lateralus, 10,000 Days, and Fear Inoculum (2019), the band cultivated an almost mythic reputation for cryptic, cerebral heaviness. Keenan splits his time with A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, while Carey moonlights in the fusion outfit Volto!.

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Buckethead (Brian Patrick Carroll) is an American guitarist from the San Francisco Bay Area, famous for performing in a white mask and a KFC bucket and for one of the most prolific solo discographies in music, numbering hundreds of albums. His playing spans thrash, fingerpicking, slap and avant-improv, and he conceives much of his output as soundtracks for rides at his imaginary amusement park, Bucketheadland. He released his 1992 debut on John Zorn's Avant label and that same year became the guitarist of Bill Laswell's supergroup Praxis.

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.

Fantômas is the avant-metal supergroup Mike Patton assembled in the wake of Faith No More's breakup, uniting him with Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne, Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, and ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. The band treats metal as raw material for conceptual games: a debut sung as pages from imaginary sci-fi comics, The Director's Cut warping horror-film themes into grindcore-tinged miniatures, and Delìrium Còrdia stretching one queasy piece across an entire album around the concept of surgery without anesthesia. Whiplash dynamics, cartoon-splice editing, and Patton's wordless vocal acrobatics made it a cornerstone of the experimental metal canon, with every record released on Patton's own Ipecac label.

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Empalot were a French experimental band formed in the Landes in 1998 by Gojira's Joe and Mario Duplantier with friends from Joe's high-school thrash band. Self-described as "terroir metal," they welded alternative metal, jazz fusion, funk rock and avant-garde noise to burlesque, self-deprecating theatre, with members costumed as axes, clouds and flowers on stage. Conceived as the festive antithesis of Gojira, the group toured France between 1999 and 2004 and released a single studio album, Tous aux Cèpes (2002), before going on hiatus. The Duplantier brothers performed under the aliases Vensceslas Podoldo and Daniel Pestous.

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St. Petersburg dark-cabaret metal quartet fronted by vocalist Darya Pavlovich (performing as 'Rorria'), whose voice swings from clownish grotesque chants and animal growls to a crooning contralto over guitar-and-keyboard interplay that critics liken to Diablo Swing Orchestra and Rammstein's Mutter. Built on a tongue-in-cheek conceit of being 'made of tardigrades,' the band leans into horror-circus theatrics with vintage synths, theremins, and kazoos, and is best known publicly for a viral metal cover of the LazyTown novelty hit 'We Are Number One.' Their 2026 album Hush was reviewed as pushing past creature-feature camp toward more sophisticated, psychologically-driven territory.

We Are Number One (LazyTown cover)play in the dock

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Idiot Flesh was an American experimental rock band formed in Oakland, California in 1985 (initially as Acid Rain) and active until 1998, known for their theatrical "rock against rock" performances incorporating homemade and non-traditional instruments such as bicycle horns, saws, and mailing tubes. Their sound blended prog, funk, metal, opera, and Eastern European folk influences. They released the LP Tales of Instant Knowledge and Sure Death (1990), The Nothing Show (1993/94), and their final album Fancy (1997). Founding members Nils Frykdahl and Dan Rathbun went on to form Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and later Free Salamander Exhibit.

Danish industrial/progressive thrash outfit active in the early 1990s, known for bizarre stage costuming, thick facial makeup, and outrageous live shows that made them an unlikely precursor to Marilyn Manson and Slipknot. Their sole full-length, Just Human (1993, TBA Records), fused Godflesh-style industrial mechanization with dense polyrhythmic 'chugga-chugga' riffing that a Metal Archives review describes as predating Meshuggah's Destroy, Erase, Improve by two years. The band split up shortly after release, leaving only a 1992 demo and the one album behind.

Flagman is a funk-metal/avant-metal band founded in 2015 in Orlando, Florida by bassist-vocalist Sam Stewart and guitarist Cody Singleton, later relocating to Seattle, Washington. Their sound centers on Stewart's Les Claypool-indebted slap bass and theatrical, character-voiced vocals, wearing clear influences from Primus, Mr. Bungle, System of a Down, and Faith No More across releases like 'Thank You, Come Again' (2022), 'Tastes Incredible' (2024), and the industrial-tinged EP 'Before The Blast' (2025). Press coverage has also compared their more recent, blunter material to 'funky Chat Pile.'

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