Epistasis

Avant-garde metal sextet from Poznań, Poland, founded in 2019 by guitarist Marcin Tuliszkiewicz and drummer Krzysztof Kulis. Their self-titled debut (10 January 2025) fuses black/death metal harshness with dark jazz, doomy drone and trumpet (Magdalena Andrys), driven by dual vocals between clean singer Julita Dąbrowska and growler Michał Sosnowski.

Norwegian avant-garde metal band formed in Oslo in 2000 by Carl-Michael Eide (Czral), who considered it a continuation of his earlier band Ved Buens Ende. Their angular, dissonant sound folds jazz and death-metal elements into an idiosyncratic avant-rock framework across albums like 'Carheart' (2003) and 'The Black Flux' (2008, Season of Mist). The band disbanded in 2018.

Epectase is a Paris duo that folds frantic tremolo-picked black metal into long-form suites of 70s prog, jazz-tinged interludes, and hazy krautrock electronics, sliding between shrieks, operatic cleans, and meditative ambient passages within a single track. Since forming in 2018, multi-instrumentalist Vague and vocalist Avitus have released a steady run of albums and EPs on I, Voidhanger Records and Frozen Records, sitting among the more overtly progressive-rock-indebted corners of the French avant-black underground.

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Wyrmwoods is a one-man experimental/atmospheric black metal project from Oulu, Finland, active since 2014 under the alias Nuurag-Vaarn and signed to Inverse Records. Its four full-lengths (Earth Made Flesh, 2017; Spirit & Teeth, 2019; Gamma, 2020; No Sun Nor Moon, 2022) fold progressive rock, doom, jazz saxophone and ambient texture into a black metal core, with Gamma marking a deliberate turn from a chaotic, lo-fi approach toward more progressive, Opeth-indebted songwriting.

Kexelür is a Santiago, Chile trio formed around 2021 playing atmospheric, dissonant, and psychedelic black metal built around free improvisation. Their releases are billed as largely improvised live sessions, with reviewers noting 'jazz fusion inspired soloing/leads' layered over the black metal foundation. The band communicates only through single-letter pseudonyms (Λ., V., J.), with Λ. also running the solo project Fatalys (not in the E.M.M.A. atlas).

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Lychgate is a London-based avant-garde black/doom metal band formed around 2011-2012, built on a foundation of pipe/church organ used as the compositional backbone of every track. Their influences span late-19th/early-20th-century art music, Rock in Opposition and musique concrete. They record for Debemur Morti Productions, with a discography running from the 2013 self-titled debut through 2025's 'Precipice.'

Dola are a Polish avant-garde black metal trio formed in Poznań in 2018 and now based in Toruń. Their sound couples a dissonant, aggressive black-metal backbone with ritual ambient, sludge/post-metal heaviness and pronounced jazz elements, the latter carried by Maras's trumpet. Recent album 'Tabernakulum' (2024, Piranha Music) swings between brutal dissonance and the atmospheric avant-garde passages that define the band.

Rouen trio built around vocalist Jonathan Théry, guitarist/bassist Julien Payan, and drummer Alexis Damien, Void Paradigm write unorthodox, structurally complex black metal described by their own label as 'dodecatonic' — twelve-tone composition applied to extreme metal. Signed to I, Voidhanger Records after a stint on Avantgarde Music, their records, most recently the two-part Tout ira mieux sans nous, function as extended, restless suites rather than verse-chorus songs. They land closer to the compositionally 'weird' end of black metal than to genre-blending pastiche.

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Ex Eye are an instrumental NYC quartet formed in 2016, led by experimental saxophonist Colin Stetson with Greg Fox (Liturgy) on drums, Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs 3, Ceramic Dog) on synth and Toby Summerfield on guitar. Grown out of Stetson's Gorecki-reimagining sessions, they fuse black metal's hypnotic repetition and blast beats with free-jazz saxophone and drone, releasing a self-titled debut on Relapse Records in 2017. It is one of the more successful jazz-metal syntheses of its era.

Nirrti is a solo psychedelic black metal project based in Orlová, Czechia, signed to Depressive Illusions Records. The project's music has been described as eerie, dissonant, and 'progressive black metal played through the lens of psychedelics and jazz,' aiming to convey darkness, uncertainty, and glimpses of other dimensions rather than adhering to traditional black metal norms. Releases include 'Psychonautix' (2022), 'Palindromos' (2023), and 'Cyberpsychosis' (2024), the latter continuing the project's cyber/psychedelic conceptual throughline.