Diablo Swing Orchestra

Don Salsa was an experimental avant-prog/avant-metal band formed in 1993 while its members were in high school in the South Bay region of Los Angeles, active until 1997. The band recorded a single album, 'Koolaide Moustache in Jonestown,' released May 21, 1997, recorded over nearly three years in a warehouse on a primitive digital multi-track recorder, with an opening track exceeding 30 minutes. Core members Tim Smolens and Jason Schimmel went on to form Estradasphere, and Schimmel later became a founding member of Atomic Ape and an active member of Secret Chiefs 3.

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Celebrity Sex Scandal is an avant-garde metal band from San Antonio, Texas, formed in 2011 by guitarist Greg Combs after the dissolution of Dog Fashion Disco, effectively continuing that band's eclectic funk/ska/metal/pop hybrid with a horn section. Debut album Derivative (2013) was Kickstarter-funded, followed by Integral (2015), The Fundamental (2020) — which featured Dog Fashion Disco alumni John Ensminger and Jeff Siegel — and Convergence of Infinite Sequences (2023) on Razor To Wrist Records.

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Koenji Hyakkei (Kōenji Hyakkei, "Hundred Sights of Koenji") is a Japanese zeuhl band founded in Tokyo in 1991 by drummer/vocalist Tatsuya Yoshida as his tribute to the operatic, chant-driven Zeuhl idiom pioneered by France's Magma. Fronting frantic, meticulously composed avant-prog sung in an invented language, Yoshida remains the band's only constant across an evolving cast, steering the sound from folk-tinged prog toward the jazz-fusion complexity of Angherr Shisspa (2005). The group records for Yoshida's own Magaibutsu label in Japan and Skin Graft Records in North America.

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Mondo Cane is Mike Patton's orchestral love letter to 1950s–60s Italian pop, assembled after his years living in Bologna: a 40-piece orchestra, 15-piece band, and choir behind Patton crooning Neapolitan standards and Ennio Morricone's 'Deep Down', released on his own Ipecac label in 2010. Co-produced and arranged with conductor Daniele Luppi, the recordings were stitched together from live European performances in 2007. It earns its place in an experimental metal atlas as the purest example of where the genre's members go when they leave metal entirely — the Faith No More and Mr. Bungle frontman trading screams for Morricone-era orchestration, and critics compared it favorably to Mr. Bungle's California.

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High Castle Teleorkestra is a remote avant-fusion "supergroup" assembled during the pandemic by Estradasphere alumni Tim Smolens and guitarist Chris Bogen, with members scattered across the US, Norway, Australia and France. Their 2022 debut, "The Egg That Never Opened" (released on Art As Catharsis), retells Philip K. Dick's "Radio Free Albemuth" through a cacophonous fusion of Eastern European folk, swing jazz, exotica and technical metal. The lineup draws on Estradasphere, Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Farmers Market and Umlaut.

SNAILFORCE! is the genre-hopping instrumental project of Greg Eldridge and Adam Stacey, based in Portland, Oregon, blending metal, Balkan, prog and other styles into what the band calls a "musical slime project." Adam Stacey is also known for recording with Estradasphere, Atomic Ape, Secret Chiefs 3, High Castle Teleorkestra and Igorrr. The band's debut, the two-track EP "Greg and Adam's Wilderness Adventure," was released on May 24, 2024, mixed and mastered by Justin Phelps at The Hallowed Halls, with a rotating cast of guest players on strings, horns, shamisen and more.

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.

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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Duct Tape Mustache were a Chicago-area experimental/metal/jazz band active in the early-to-mid 2000s, releasing a self-titled EP in 2002 and 'Mise En Scéne' in 2004 before disbanding in 2005. The lineup blended saxophone, keyboards, and dual guitars into a genre-hopping, horn-driven sound described online as circus-tinged avant-garde metal. Following the split, members scattered into other Chicago-scene projects including Ideamen.

Cojum Dip is an avant-garde jazz-metal project founded by multi-instrumentalist Bora Karaca in Ann Arbor, Michigan around 2004, fusing metal, jazz, opera and math rock beneath a mythology of five costumed fictional 'members' portrayed by live musicians. The band is known for raucous theatrical shows (wrestling masks, capes, acrobatics, on-stage video games) and for the 2012 Videojuegos volumes of instrumental Mega Man covers, while the 2014 self-titled record features guest vocals from Joe Hawley of Tally Hall — a band for which Karaca served as an honorary 'orange-tie' member. It stands well apart from anything currently in the atlas.