Dødsverk
A short-lived 1990s Norwegian project that released two albums on Ironic Recordings — Sjelefred (1996) and Fun For All the Family (1997, produced by Helge Sten) — rooted more in punk and alternative metal than orthodox black or death metal, but stirring in jazz, 70s prog, dance and electronic influences via a rotating cast that included saxophone and trumpet players. Its genre-agnostic, eclectic approach later put it in the same critical orbit as Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Primus.
SCORE PROFILE
Accent numbers counted towards the index. Hover an axis — or hold it on a phone — for what it means.
WHY THOSE SCORES
- Jazzy 5 — Described as blending metal with 'nods to jazz, 70's prog, dance, electronic' across its two Ironic Recordings LPs, with saxophone and trumpet players in the rotating cast (rikenberg.com credits).
- Hardcore 4 — Reviewers place the band's metal stylings 'more in the alternative and punk realms' than conventional metal.
- Technical 5 — Rotating lineup of up to a dozen contributing musicians (sax, trumpet, multiple keyboardists) across two albums reflects a maximalist, genre-juggling compositional approach (rikenberg.com credits).
- Glitch 2 — Credits include a dedicated samples performer (Tore Ylwizaker) contributing electronic/sample elements (rikenberg.com credits).
- Folk 2 — A genre description cites 'even polka' among the eclectic styles blended into the material (single-source claim, moderated at merge).
MEMBERS
- Kjetil Laumannvocals, guitar
- Frode Liabass
- Eirik Svendsenkeyboards, synth, sampler
- Andreas Krogvolddrums
- Tore Ylwizakersamples· also in Ulver (black metal era), Ulver (electronic era)
CONNECTIONS
- Ulver (black metal era)path →
Tore Ylwizaker in both — keyboards, programming (1998–2024) in Ulver (black metal era), samples in Dødsverk. source ↗
- Ulver (electronic era)path →
Samples performer Tore Ylwizaker played on both Dødsverk Ironic Recordings albums and was Ulver's longtime keyboardist/electronics member from 1997 until his death in 2024 — corroborated by Ulver's own stored member list. source ↗
FURTHER LISTENING
Nearest score profiles in the atlas.
- ZornEI 11Unnatural WaysJazzyTechnicalHardcore
Unnatural Ways is guitarist/vocalist Ava Mendoza's power trio with bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Sam Ospovat, formed in 2012 and drawing on noise rock, free jazz and metal for a raw, heavy, unpredictable sound built around Mendoza's angular, distorted guitar work. The band's second album, We Aliens, came out on John Zorn's Tzadik label in 2016, and Mendoza herself has a deep pedigree in Zorn's orbit, having played his 1984 'game piece' Cobra and recorded in his Arcana series. She's also a recurring guest on saxophonist Jon Irabagon's improv-noise 'I Don't Hear Nothin' But the Blues' series alongside guitarist Mick Barr.
- UnaffiliatedEI 14PeculateTechnicalJazzyHardcore
Peculate is the solo avant-garde/progressive metal project of American composer Ben Norton, self-releasing everything for free since 2012 under a self-styled 'Metal in Opposition' banner. Norton fuses djent and mathcore aggression with 12-tone technique, Zappa-esque jazz-fusion tangents and polished production, occasionally detouring into satirical protest-song territory (2015's viral 'This Sick Beat™'). It reads as a bedroom-scale answer to the Zorn/Zappa strand of metal-adjacent avant-composition.
- UnaffiliatedEI 8Burning GhostsJazzyTechnical
Los Angeles metal-jazz quartet fronted by trumpeter Dan Rosenboom and guitarist Jake Vossler, pairing lyrical, Miles-Davis-lineage trumpet against Vossler's distorted, noise-inflected guitar over double bass and drums. Their 2017 debut Reclamation (Tzadik) was tracked in 72 hours as a politically charged 'jazz protest record,' moving between free improvisation, heavy thrash riffing, and balladic passages.
- UnaffiliatedEI 8Red Side VisibleJazzyTechnical
Red Side Visible is a Cleveland/Akron, Ohio project built around multi-instrumentalist Tim Mirth, fusing odd-metered metal riffing with genuine free-jazz improvisation and alto saxophone. Press copy invokes Meshuggah, Mr. Bungle and Zappa as touchstones; the 2021 album 'A Break from Normality' collects material written and re-recorded across a decade since the project's 2010 debut 'Enter Entropy'.
- UnaffiliatedEI 5Upsilon AcruxTechnicalJazzyHardcore
Upsilon Acrux is an American avant-progressive / math rock band founded in 1998 by guitarist Paul Lai, who started the group near San Diego before relocating to Los Angeles. Built on interlocking twin-guitar counterpoint, odd meters and a frequently rotating cast of players around Lai as the sole constant, they trade in a dense, athletic, largely instrumental 'brutal prog' indebted to King Crimson and Japanese noise-rock forebears like Ruins. They released their most widely heard albums, Galapagos Momentum (2007) and Radian Futura (2009), on the Maryland avant-rock label Cuneiform Records.
- UnaffiliatedEI 10ToumaïJazzyTechnical
Toumaï is a French 'psyché-fonk-metal' fusion band founded in 2006 near Aix-en-Provence/Marseille, built around vocalist Antoine Hude-Flaven and a rotating rhythm section. Their two albums, Sapiens Demens (2013) and Tempus Fugit (2023), fuse groove/progressive metal riffing with funk, jazz and math-metal detours, citing Primus, Mr. Bungle, Tool and Gojira as touchstones; they shared stages with Gojira and Psykup through the 2010s. A groove-funk-prog outfit at the edge of avant-metal rather than a deeply experimental one, with no documented ties into the atlas.
- UnaffiliatedEI 8Cartel CarnageJazzyTechnical
Cartel Carnage is a French quintet of jazz-scene musicians (guitar, bass, trumpet, tenor sax, drums) fusing free jazz, heavy metal, pop and progressive rock into what reviewers called a 'musical UFO.' Their sound and stated influences — Naked City, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, Zorn, Ornette Coleman, alongside Meshuggah and Slayer — place them squarely in genre-collision RIO/avant-prog territory, though no sourced personnel or label ties connect them to the existing atlas. Their sole full-length, Incorporated, was released in 2012 on Great Winds/Musea Records.
- ZornEI 11AhleuchatistasTechnicalJazzyHardcore
Ahleuchatistas are an American instrumental avant-prog / math rock group formed in Asheville, North Carolina, in November 2002, mixing jazz, progressive rock, noise, African and Chinese traditional music into block-form, thru-composed and improvised pieces. Their name fuses Charlie Parker's 'Ah-Leu-Cha' with the Zapatistas. Their 2004 album The Same and the Other was reissued on John Zorn's Tzadik in 2008 after Zorn took interest, and the current lineup pairs founder Shane Parish with bassist Trevor Dunn.
- UnaffiliatedEI 11CoinmonsterJazzyTechnical
Coinmonster is a Pennsylvania/Ohio-border progressive-metal outfit (New Castle, PA, formed 1990) built around guitarist-vocalist Jon Reider's fusion chops — self-described 'avant-garde jazzcore' that threads Holdsworth/Herring-style jazz-rock guitar through off-kilter time signatures, with detours into banjo-and-brushes Americana on tracks like 'Wake Up Tilton.' Largely a private-press/regional act (The Schematic, 2000; Tilton Johnson, 2002) rather than a scene band, it's an outlier RYM-tagged avant-garde-metal entry with no documented ties to the wider atlas.
- Estradasphere / MimicryEI 14GirthTechnicalJazzyHardcore
Girth is a Seattle instrumental trio — guitarist Dave Webb and drummer Peijman Kouretchian expanding to triple-guitar with Blane Patnode and Mark Corier of Swarming Hordes — playing dense, through-composed 'tech hardcore' described by one zine as splitting the difference between Orthrelm and Guapo with oddball electronic and jazz detours. Their breakthrough 2006 EP 'Sleeper, Awaken!' is a single 19-minute, four-movement piece recorded with engineer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth) and released on Trey Spruance's Web of Mimicry label, directly tying the band into the Mr. Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3-adjacent avant-metal underground. The project wound down after 2009's 'deconstruction.', with members moving on to Wah Wah Exit Wound and Satya Sena.