Flagman
Flagman is a funk-metal/avant-metal band founded in 2015 in Orlando, Florida by bassist-vocalist Sam Stewart and guitarist Cody Singleton, later relocating to Seattle, Washington. Their sound centers on Stewart's Les Claypool-indebted slap bass and theatrical, character-voiced vocals, wearing clear influences from Primus, Mr. Bungle, System of a Down, and Faith No More across releases like 'Thank You, Come Again' (2022), 'Tastes Incredible' (2024), and the industrial-tinged EP 'Before The Blast' (2025). Press coverage has also compared their more recent, blunter material to 'funky Chat Pile.'
SCORE PROFILE
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WHY THOSE SCORES
- Glitch 3 — Newest EP 'Before The Blast' layers industrial-rock production into the mix — a reviewer compares it to 'a bonus track on Ministry's Psalm 69' — adding mechanized/processed texture beyond the earlier funk-metal sound.
- Theatrical 6 — Vocalist Sam Stewart performs manic speak-singing and 'silly voices' in Tom Waits/Serj Tankian-style character work, and 'Before The Blast' is structured as a mini concept EP set in a 'hyper-sinister corporate universe.'
MEMBERS
- Sam Stewartbass, lead vocals
- Cody Singletonguitar, backing vocals (former)
- Grant Freemandrums, programming, backing vocals (former)
- Orlando Riveradrums (on 'Before The Blast')
FURTHER LISTENING
Nearest score profiles in the atlas.
- Igorrr-verseEI 166:33TheatricalTechnicalGlitch
Paris's 6:33 build unpredictable, theatrical avant-metal around rotating lead vocalists and songs that swerve from grinning electronic pop hooks ('I'm a Nerd') to widescreen prog-metal bombast. Signed to Kaotoxin Records for 2015's Deadly Scenes, the band draws comparisons to Devin Townsend's maximalism and Diablo Swing Orchestra's genre-hopping theatrics. Multi-vocalist trade-offs and electronic texture keep the material feeling more like a revue than a conventional metal band.
- UnaffiliatedEI 14Kokumaromilk (こくまろみるく)TechnicalTheatricalGlitch
こくまろみるく (Kokumaromilk) is a Japanese avant-garde outfit that dresses power and symphonic metal foundations in noise interludes, jazz-pop detours, and a vocalist who swings between saccharine-cute and unhinged within the same song. Reviewers place it alongside Sigh and Gonin-Ish in Japan's weird-metal lineage, praising its whiplash genre-shifts. Documentation outside Metal Archives is thin, so several details (full lineup, precise formation year) remain unconfirmed.
- ZornEI 15BucketheadTechnicalTheatrical
Buckethead (Brian Patrick Carroll) is an American guitarist from the San Francisco Bay Area, famous for performing in a white mask and a KFC bucket and for one of the most prolific solo discographies in music, numbering hundreds of albums. His playing spans thrash, fingerpicking, slap and avant-improv, and he conceives much of his output as soundtracks for rides at his imaginary amusement park, Bucketheadland. He released his 1992 debut on John Zorn's Avant label and that same year became the guitarist of Bill Laswell's supergroup Praxis.
- UnaffiliatedEI 10Aberrant VascularTheatricalTechnicalGlitch
Aberrant Vascular is a Helsinki, Finland project built in 2003 around opera vocalist Vladimir "Lumi" and keyboardist Heikki "Mr. Rych" Pöntinen, releasing a single album, Aegisthus (2012), that layers operatic vocal theatrics over trip-hop beats, industrial synths and guitar riffing. It has been namechecked alongside Arcturus, Solefald, Vulture Industries and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum for its bombastic, genre-blending approach, though reviewers note the metal riffing itself stays fairly conventional under the vocal pyrotechnics.
- UnaffiliatedEI 15Edge of RealityTechnicalTheatrical
Edge of Reality is a Nashville art-metal quintet whose 2019 album In Static packs jazz-inflected saxophone, carnival theatrics, and djent-adjacent riffing into a maximalist, constantly shifting progressive-metal frame. Reviewers place them alongside Native Construct, Thank You Scientist and Haken: dense, technically ambitious, occasionally overstuffed songwriting paired with a comedic, narrative-driven concept. Guitarist Joey Frevola also plays in UK prog act KYROS and LA's An Endless Sporadic, though neither is part of the EMMA atlas.
- UnaffiliatedEI 17ArchangelTechnicalTheatricalGlitch
Archangel is an avant-garde/electronic metal band from Venice, Italy, formed in 1994, notable for a groove-metal-rooted early sound that evolved into a symphonic, industrial, and electronically-inflected style incorporating elements as varied as saxophone passages within metal arrangements. Their 1996/97 debut 'In Tears the Angel Falls...' is often cited as a landmark avant-garde metal record and the band has been credited by some (including their own promotion) as the first metal act to tune entirely to the Golden Mean-derived 432 Hz standard. They continued releasing conceptually ambitious albums through 2010's 'The Story of My Immor(t)al Life', with core member Vam Kama Ocean Archangel (vocals/keyboards) present since formation.
- Patton-verseEI 13Peeping TomTechnicalTheatricalGlitch
Peeping Tom is Mike Patton's self-described 'version of pop music' — chart-radio hooks, trip-hop and hip-hop production run through his warped sensibility, named after Michael Powell's 1960 voyeur thriller. Its sole, self-titled album (Ipecac, May 30, 2006) took roughly six years to assemble, built by swapping song files through the mail with a rotating cast including Dan the Automator, Rahzel, Norah Jones, Massive Attack, Kool Keith, Amon Tobin and Bebel Gilberto. Widely called Patton's most mainstream-accessible work since Faith No More, it reached #103 on the Billboard 200 and #1 on the Heatseekers chart — the atlas's clearest case of an avant-metal lifer infiltrating pop rather than escaping it.
- UnaffiliatedEI 8Shaolin Death SquadTheatricalTechnical
Shaolin Death Squad are a theatrical progressive/avant-garde metal band from Denton, Texas, formed around 2001-2002, performing under kung-fu-themed stage personas. Their sound is dynamic prog metal with lead vocalist The White Swan frequently compared to Mike Patton, across releases including Intelligent Design (2006) and a 2024 self-titled record on Soman Records.
- UnaffiliatedEI 11Lob of LemmingsTechnicalTheatrical
Danish industrial/progressive thrash outfit active in the early 1990s, known for bizarre stage costuming, thick facial makeup, and outrageous live shows that made them an unlikely precursor to Marilyn Manson and Slipknot. Their sole full-length, Just Human (1993, TBA Records), fused Godflesh-style industrial mechanization with dense polyrhythmic 'chugga-chugga' riffing that a Metal Archives review describes as predating Meshuggah's Destroy, Erase, Improve by two years. The band split up shortly after release, leaving only a 1992 demo and the one album behind.
- Patton-verseEI 14Faith No MoreTechnicalTheatrical
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.