Eigenstate Zero

Yawn is an instrumental Oslo five-piece that treats extreme metal as a jumping-off point for collective free-jazz improvisation, splicing heavy-as-hell riffing and brutal breakdowns with synth-laced electronics and loose, improvised guitar soloing. Formed in 2019, their DIY-recorded 2022 debut 'Materialism' (Mindsweeper Records) drew acclaim from prog and jazz press alike for treating metal orthodoxy as raw material for real-time reinvention.

ByoNoiseGenerator are a five-piece avant-garde/brutal death metal and deathgrind band from Perm, Russia, formed in 2014, built around a dedicated saxophone player alongside the standard metal lineup. Their three LPs (Turbulent Biogenesis 2015, Neuromechanica 2018, Subnormal Dives 2025) blend insanely technical grindcore with freeform jazz, funk (Primus-style) guitar work and drum-and-bass detours. Subnormal Dives (2025) drew coverage from Angry Metal Guy, The Progressive Subway and Everything Is Noise for this jazz/deathgrind hybrid.

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Azure Emote is an avant-garde death metal project founded in New York in 2003 by illustrator/vocalist Mike Hrubovcak (Monstrosity, Vile) as an outlet 'to express personal negativity without the genre limitations often present within Extreme Metal.' Built around a core band with guitarist Ryan Moll, bassist Kelly Conlon, drummer Mike Heller and violinist Pete Johansen, the project layers in shifting rosters of guest musicians — female vocalists, saxophone, harmonica, keyboards — to give nearly every song its own distinct color. Releases including The Gravity of Impermanence (2013) and The Third Perspective (2020) have come out on Selfmadegod Records.

Sarmat is a New York technical death metal quintet whose 2023 debut Determined to Strike (I, Voidhanger Records) pairs Gorguts-style dissonance with jazz-fusion horn and piano interludes, drawing comparisons to a hybrid of Imperial Triumphant and Weather Report. The record is framed as the first chapter of a three-part interstellar sci-fi concept cycle, and was mastered by Colin Marston at his Menegroth studio. Bassist/pianist guest Steve Blanco doubles as the touring bassist of Imperial Triumphant.

Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects is the solo project of Meshuggah lead guitarist Fredrik Thordendal, whose lone album Sol Niger Within (1997) is a landmark of avant-garde metal. Structured as one continuous 43-minute composition indexed into 29 tracks, it grafts Meshuggah's mathematical rhythmic language onto the fluid, Allan Holdsworth-inspired jazz-fusion soloing Thordendal is known for. The record's dense, free-associative sprawl draws comparisons to John Zorn's Naked City and features a cast of Swedish improvisers.

Catatonic Effigy is a free-improv/avant-metal trio formed by guitarist Álvaro Domene, bassist/producer Colin Marston, and drummer Mike Caratti, convened at Marston's Menegroth studio in early 2019. Their debut 'Putrid Tendency' (Iluso Records, Nov. 2019) fuses free jazz, minimalism, and 20th-century composition.

Dysrhythmia is an instrumental progressive/technical metal trio formed in Philadelphia in 1998 by guitarist Kevin Hufnagel and drummer Jeff Eber, now based in Brooklyn. Bassist Colin Marston — also of Krallice, Behold...The Arctopus, and the reunited Gorguts — joined in 2004, and the band's eight studio albums fuse jazz-inflected chord work, technical/progressive-death riffing, and prog-rock structure into a wordless, largely live-tracked instrumental attack.

Moral Collapse is a Bengaluru, India extreme-metal project founded in 2020 by guitarist/vocalist Arun Natarajan, forging old-school death metal in the vein of Nile and Morbid Angel that is repeatedly derailed by dissonant, Dillinger Escape Plan-style riffing, free-jazz saxophone/violin, and glitchy ambient interludes. Session drummer Hannes Grossmann (ex-Necrophagist, Obscura, Alkaloid) anchors both the 2021 self-titled debut and 2023's Divine Prosthetics, records stacked with guest guitar spots from Kevin Hufnagel (Gorguts, Dysrhythmia) and Death's Bobby Koelble. The project splices Indian percussive texture and free-improv passages into an otherwise brutal technical-death chassis.

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Endolith are an extreme progressive metal three-piece from Tromso, Norway, formed 2010 and signed to local label Rob Mules Records. Their concept album 'Chicxulub - The Fossil Record' (2019) refracts the dinosaur-extinction narrative through Meshuggah/Strapping Young Lad-style djent grooves, Gojira-esque crush, Devin Townsend-scale orchestral synth walls, black-metal (Emperor-tinged) tremolo bursts, and electronic programming, arriving at what one reviewer called 'a truly unforgettable trip.'

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Rivers of Nihil are a Reading, Pennsylvania band who wrote a four-album cycle with one season each, and turned the autumn record into the one everybody names first. Where Owls Know My Name (2018) put a saxophone in the middle of a technical death metal album — three solos and atmospheric passages from Burial in the Sky's Zach Strouse, with cello and trumpet around them — and it landed because the songs were already long, cinematic and keyboard-shaded, with somewhere for a horn to go. Brody Uttley's keys and programming carry that atmosphere; Adam Biggs moved from bass to lead vocals in 2022, and the self-titled 2025 album was written with no dedicated frontman at all. The saxophone stayed, which is the tell: the band deliberately refused to be 'the sax band' and kept using it anyway, as one more colour rather than a gimmick to retire.