Dreadnought

In the Woods... are a Norwegian avant-garde/progressive metal band from Kristiansand, formed in 1992 from the early Green Carnation lineup. Their debut 'Heart of the Ages' helped shape pagan black metal before the band evolved toward atmospheric, progressive and doom-leaning territory across 'Omnio' and later records, with clean and female vocals broadening the palette. After disbanding in 2000 they reformed in 2014 and continue releasing through Debemur Morti Productions.

João Pessoa, Brazil quartet formed in 2012, blending sludge metal, zeuhl and prog rock with the traditional rhythms and folklore of Northeastern Brazil. Their 2021 debut Holoceno, a concept album about ecological apocalypse, drew comparisons to Mastodon jamming with 70s King Crimson and Magma; 2024's Lampião Rei tells a biographical narrative about bandit leader Lampião. Their 2026 album Celestial folds in MPB, black metal, ciranda and forró, tracked entirely to magnetic tape without computers.

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Long-running unsigned Chicago 'pan-metal' quartet whose four albums (Vanlandingham and Zone 2006, Tsushima 2012, Emeritus 2016, Azimuth 2023) each pursue long-form, genre-hopping narrative songwriting — magisterial doom/prog riffage alongside jazzy slow-builds, kraut-trance rhythms, shoegaze-tinted codas, Americana melodicism and post-hardcore intensity, often within a single track. Metal Archives lists their genre as 'Various' for good reason.

A Portuguese progressive death/doom act from Vila Real, active 1997-2011 (as Thanatos until 2001), that pushed from straightforward death metal into an increasingly atmospheric, doom-tinged and progressive direction across five albums. Dual male/female vocals (Guilhermino Martins and Patrícia Rodrigues) traded off over jazzy detours, Middle-Eastern-flavored guitar-and-keyboard passages, and dreamlike, trance-inducing keyboard textures, drawing comparisons to Porcupine Tree and Lacuna Coil before disbanding in 2011.

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Grayceon are a San Francisco progressive-metal trio formed in 2005, built around Jackie Perez Gratz's electric cello and vocals alongside Max Doyle's guitar and Zack Farwell's drums, releasing through Vendlus and later Profound Lore on records such as All We Destroy (2011). The cello-forward lineup fuses thrash and doom heaviness with chamber-folk melody. Perez Gratz also plays in Giant Squid, with whom Grayceon shared a 2007 split, and has collaborated widely across the Bay Area scene, including with Neurosis.

Formloff is a Norwegian two-piece formed in 2002 by Marius Blekspetl Sjøli and Bernt Karsten Sannerud, playing a doomy, progressive-leaning strain of avant-garde black metal. After four demos and a 2007 debut, Adjø Silo, the duo's 2012 sophomore album Spyhorelandet arrived on Eisenwald Tonschmiede, layering long free-flowing compositions, shifting time signatures, folk instrumentation like mandolin, cult-like chanting, and a guest saxophone turn over its dissonant black-metal core. Where much of the genre traffics in myth, Formloff's lyrics dwell on ugly, everyday personal histories, a thematic inversion critics have paired with labelmates-in-spirit like Ved Buens Ende and Virus.

Pyrithe are a Pittsburgh, US experimental sludge/post-metal band whose 2022 Gilead Media debut Monuments to Impermanence smears sludge and doom across noise, ambient, post-rock, hardcore and black-metal extremes. The trio treat the studio as a junk-shop orchestra, folding a Finnish kantele, coconuts, egg-shakers and literal trash into their whirlwind, avant-garde compositions. It is a savage, absurdist 'strange symphony' that stays coherent despite trying to do everything at once.

Rakoth is a Russian epic black/doom/folk metal band formed in 1996, named after one of the New Gods in Nik Perumov's novels. Fuses Tolkien-inspired folk mysticism, medieval acoustic passages, and black metal into a literary, multi-hued 'Middle Earth' atmosphere.

Golden Cat Pagoda (金猫塔) is a one-man experimental black metal project founded by an artist known as 张 in early 2020, originally based in Shanghai and now working from Vancouver. The project fuses modern black metal's raw hostility with free jazz, ambience, and avant-garde structures, drawing lyrical and conceptual material from folktales of China's Sichuan-Chongqing (Chuan Yu) region. Its 2021 debut album 'Entropy' (熵) was released through the Chinese label Pest Productions and was followed by 'Mí Mí' (弥弥) in 2022, described as incorporating traditional Chinese drumming into hypnotic atmospheric passages.

Aaen Anima is a Prague, Czechia avant-garde/doom-metal project founded April 25, 2002 as, in the band's own words, "originally playing acoustic avant-garde." Its 2003 album "Aniline Harp" pairs guitars and bass with cedar drum, bell, didgeridoo, darbuka and harmonium (all played by founder Aaen), plus flute (Ismia) and keyboards/djembe (Jari Velaochaga) — an eclectic, ritual-tinged folk-instrumentation palette rare even for avant-garde metal. No activity is documented past 2008.