Don Salsa

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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Diablo Swing Orchestra is a Swedish avant-garde metal band formed in Stockholm in 2003, built around a genre-hopping fusion of swing, symphonic and progressive metal, jazz, and classical orchestration. Their theatrical sound pairs operatic and rock vocals with a horn section and cello, threaded through crunching riffs — an aesthetic they trace to a tongue-in-cheek mythology about a 16th-century "Diablo Swing" music guild. Across five studio albums from The Butcher's Ballroom (2006) to Swagger & Stroll Down the Rabbit Hole (2021), they have remained one of the more distinctive one-of-a-kind acts in avant-garde metal.

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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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San Francisco shape-shifters who smuggled funk, hip-hop, synth-pop, thrash, lounge and film-score bombast into stadium-sized alternative metal, peaking commercially with The Real Thing (1989) and creatively with the gloriously perverse Angel Dust (1992). When Mike Patton was poached from Mr. Bungle in 1988, the band became the primary launchpad for his sprawling avant-garde universe — making Faith No More the closest thing this atlas has to a mainstream gateway drug. Few bands did more to convince metal that genre borders were optional.

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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.

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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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.

Primus are a San Francisco Bay Area experimental rock trio led by bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, whose virtuosic slap-and-tap bass, absurdist storytelling and cartoonish character sketches define a sound that fuses funk, thrash, prog and Americana. Formed in 1984, they broke through with Sailing the Seas of Cheese (1991) and Pork Soda, later returning with records like The Desaturating Seven (2017). Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin, a longtime friend of Claypool's, guested on several early Primus recordings.

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.

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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