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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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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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Free Salamander Exhibit is an avant-rock band from Oakland, California, formed by former members of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Comprising roughly four-fifths of that group's lineup plus additional players, the band pursues an art-prog / rock-in-opposition sound built around an arsenal of homemade instruments alongside guitars, bass, and drums. Their debut album, Undestroyed, was released December 13, 2016 on the Web of Mimicry label.

Tomahawk is the Nashville-formed supergroup that pairs Mike Patton's shape-shifting vocals with Duane Denison's razor-wire guitar, born in 1999 when the two started swapping tapes after a Mr. Bungle tour stop. With John Stanier's piston-precise drumming and bass from Kevin Rutmanis (later Trevor Dunn), the band deals in taut, noirish alternative/avant-garde metal that splits the difference between The Jesus Lizard's angular menace and Patton's cinematic weirdness. Five albums on Patton's Ipecac Recordings — from the 2001 debut through 2021's Tonic Immobility — make it one of the label's flagship acts.

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Waltari is a Finnish experimental/crossover metal band formed in Helsinki in 1986 and led by principal songwriter Kärtsy Hatakka, notorious for splicing progressive, alternative and extreme metal with hip-hop, techno, industrial, pop and punk. Their conceptual ambition peaks in staged productions like the orchestra-backed Yeah! Yeah! Die! Die! Death Metal Symphony in Deep C (1996) and Evangelicum (1999), the latter incorporating ballet, light shows and a guest turn from Nightwish's Tarja Turunen. Alumni include Sami Yli-Sirniö (Kreator), Roope Latvala (Children of Bodom) and Janne Parviainen (Ensiferum).

The Book of Knots is a Brooklyn experimental art rock studio collective formed in the spring of 2003 at Joel Hamilton and Tony Maimone's Studio G, with Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt completing the core quartet. The group built a trilogy of themed concept albums: the self-titled debut (Arclight, 2004) about failed sea voyages, Traineater (Anti-, 2007) about crumbling Midwestern rust belt towns, and Garden of Fainting Stars (Ipecac Recordings, 2011) about flight and space travel. Their records feature a rotating cast of guest vocalists and musicians including Tom Waits, Mike Watt, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, and Jon Langford.

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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St. Petersburg dark-cabaret metal quartet fronted by vocalist Darya Pavlovich (performing as 'Rorria'), whose voice swings from clownish grotesque chants and animal growls to a crooning contralto over guitar-and-keyboard interplay that critics liken to Diablo Swing Orchestra and Rammstein's Mutter. Built on a tongue-in-cheek conceit of being 'made of tardigrades,' the band leans into horror-circus theatrics with vintage synths, theremins, and kazoos, and is best known publicly for a viral metal cover of the LazyTown novelty hit 'We Are Number One.' Their 2026 album Hush was reviewed as pushing past creature-feature camp toward more sophisticated, psychologically-driven territory.

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Negative Øhio is a noise/experimental duo of Gigakoops (Ohio) and Nightmare Lyre (Norway), begun in 2016. Self-tagged across an eclectic sprawl — jazz fusion, industrial, dark ambient, digital hardcore, queercore, dada, and avant-garde metal — the project favors abrasive, self-consciously limitless production married to absurdist, Dada-inflected humor.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is an Oakland avant-garde metal and experimental rock collective formed in 1999 from the ashes of Idiot Flesh, known for theatrical live rituals, dark literary lyrics, and an arsenal of self-built instruments. The band fuses avant-metal, progressive rock, industrial, and chamber influences into a deliberately uncategorizable sound. Active through 2011, the group reunited in 2023 and released the album "of the Last Human Being" in February 2024.

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