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The Deserts of Traun (stylized TRAUN) is an experimental, multi-genre metal project from Santa Barbara, California, founded and largely composed by drummer Dave Murray, formerly of Estradasphere. Its self-titled 2003 debut features Murray on numerous instruments alongside contributions from Estradasphere guitarist Jason Schimmel and others, blending metal, jazz, progressive rock and soundtrack styles. Murray later carried the project's polyrhythmic-metal sensibility into High Castle Teleorkestra.

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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Mastodon is an American heavy metal band formed in Atlanta in 2000, fusing sludge and stoner metal with progressive rock, hardcore aggression and jazz-influenced drumming into an ambitious, concept-driven sound. Their breakthrough Leviathan (2004), a song cycle built around Moby-Dick, established them as one of the most original and influential American metal bands of the 21st century, and later records like Crack the Skye (2009) pushed further into psychedelic prog territory. The classic four-piece held together for 25 years until guitarist Brent Hinds split with the band in March 2025 and died in a motorcycle accident that August; three of the four members trade lead vocals, giving the band its distinctive multi-voiced attack.

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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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Empalot were a French experimental band formed in the Landes in 1998 by Gojira's Joe and Mario Duplantier with friends from Joe's high-school thrash band. Self-described as "terroir metal," they welded alternative metal, jazz fusion, funk rock and avant-garde noise to burlesque, self-deprecating theatre, with members costumed as axes, clouds and flowers on stage. Conceived as the festive antithesis of Gojira, the group toured France between 1999 and 2004 and released a single studio album, Tous aux Cèpes (2002), before going on hiatus. The Duplantier brothers performed under the aliases Vensceslas Podoldo and Daniel Pestous.

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These Arms Are Snakes were a Seattle post-hardcore band active from 2002 to 2009, formed by former members of Botch and Kill Sadie. Blending punk urgency with math-rock complexity and synth textures, they released three studio albums on Jade Tree: Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home (2004), Easter (2006), and Tail Swallower and Dove (2008). After disbanding, bassist Brian Cook went on to Russian Circles and Sumac.

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Formed in Austin in 1987 and relocated to Chicago in 1989, The Jesus Lizard perfected a blueprint of noise-rock menace: David Wm. Sims and Mac McNeilly's lurching, hydraulic rhythm section, Duane Denison's wiry precision guitar, and David Yow howling from deep in the mix like, in one critic's words, 'a kidnap victim trying to howl through the duct tape over his mouth.' Their Steve Albini-recorded Touch and Go albums Goat (1991) and Liar (1992) stand among the most significant noise rock records of the era, and a split single with Nirvana briefly brushed them against the mainstream. After disbanding in 1999 and reuniting for tours from 2009 onward, they released Rack in 2024, their first album in 26 years.

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Tool is an American progressive metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1990, meshing dark underground metal with the ambition of art rock into multi-sectioned, layered songs built on odd time signatures and lengthy instrumental passages. The classic lineup pairs vocalist Maynard James Keenan and guitarist Adam Jones with drummer Danny Carey and, since 1995, bassist Justin Chancellor, who replaced founding bassist Paul D'Amour. Across albums from Undertow (1993) through Ænima, Lateralus, 10,000 Days, and Fear Inoculum (2019), the band cultivated an almost mythic reputation for cryptic, cerebral heaviness. Keenan splits his time with A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, while Carey moonlights in the fusion outfit Volto!.

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Mutoid Man is an American heavy metal band formed in 2012 in Brooklyn, New York City by Cave In vocalist/guitarist Stephen Brodsky and Converge drummer Ben Koller. The project began as a two-piece before adding bassist Nick Cageao, who was replaced in August 2021 by Jeff Matz of High on Fire. Their sound has been described as metalcore that engages hardcore punk, rock and roll, math rock, progressive rock, and psychedelic music.

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Today Is the Day is an American noise-rock and experimental-metal band led by guitarist/vocalist and producer Steve Austin, formed in Nashville in the early 1990s. Blending grindcore, hardcore and avant-garde metal with heavy sampling and unhinged, erratic arrangements, the group became a touchstone for the noisecore and mathcore underground. Their 1999 Relapse album In the Eyes of God featured a young rhythm section of bassist Bill Kelliher and drummer Brann Dailor, both formerly of Lethargy, who soon left to co-found Mastodon.