Ghostmass (大鬼眾)

Reto Mäder's long-running Sum Of R has cycled through several lineups since 2008; the current Swiss-Finnish incarnation with Marko Neuman (vocals) and Jukka Rämänen (drums) pushes furthest into ritual drone-doom territory on 2025's Spectral, an 'acoustic séance' of tape manipulation, mellotron, and psychedelic doom built around sustained tones rather than riffs. The record pulls in a small constellation of scene names as guests — Juho Vanhanen of Oranssi Pazuzu, Vicotnik of Dødheimsgård, and G. Stuart Dahlquist of Burning Witch/Goatsnake — placing the band at a crossroads of drone, post-metal, and avant-black circles, even as Mäder's other projects (Ural Umbo, Hexvessel, Dark Buddha Rising) sit outside this atlas.

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German experimental/noise act (Mainz) built around destructive recording techniques rather than conventional songwriting — their Radiant Eulogy series deliberately degrades master tapes (sun exposure, physical decay) to bury heavy doom riffs under crackling, collapsing signal. Prolific (37+ Bandcamp releases since 2013) across noise, post-metal, drone, doom, and post-rock with electronic/tape elements. Sits closer to power-electronics/drone art-noise than conventional metal songcraft.

House of Low Culture is an American drone/dark ambient and experimental project fronted by Aaron Turner (Isis, Sumac), active since 2000 and named after a song from Isis's Sawblade EP. Its music marries warm cinematic tones with murky, sub-nautical textures, and its lineup has drawn on figures from the wider Hydra Head/experimental-metal orbit. Since 2010 the project has centered on Turner alongside his Mamiffer bandmate and wife Faith Coloccia, with Kevin Micka joining in 2020.

Jodis is a minimal drone/doom trio featuring Aaron Turner (vocals), James Plotkin (guitar) and Tim Wyskida (drums). The band is a modern exploration of restrained sonic minimalism and tonal/textural density, coupling Plotkin and Wyskida's sparse, mercurial rhythmic interplay with Turner's monolithic ambience and distressed vocals. They released two albums on Hydra Head Records: Secret House (2009) and Black Curtain (2012).

Haiku Funeral is a ritualistic industrial/black-metal-adjacent project born in a Marseille studio on Halloween 2008, built around Bulgarian multi-instrumentalist Dimitar Dimitrov (electronics, keyboards, vocals) and American bassist/vocalist William Kopecky, with Finnish drummer David Lillkvist also credited on record. Their sound is a hallucinogenic blend of occult drone, droning doom, and cinematic/ritual ambient, colored by theremin, e-bow, spring-drum, children's harp, and sitar - one reviewer singled out the sitar-and-tribal-percussion 'Cherni Shamani' as evoking cyber-shamanic trance. Six albums deep (most recently Drown Their Moons in Blood, 2021, via Aesthetic Death), they occupy a genuinely fringe niche between black metal atmosphere and psychedelic ritual ambient.

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Locrian are an American experimental trio formed in late 2005 in Chicago by André Foisy and Terence Hannum, with drummer Steven Hess joining permanently in 2010. AllMusic characterizes their sound as an eclectic mixture of black metal, electronics, drone and noise rock, shot through with ambient and industrial textures and dystopic, apocalyptic imagery. In 2012 they made the collaborative album Bless Them That Curse You with Mamiffer, released on Profound Lore alongside Sige and Utech.

Phyllomedusa is the prolific one-man harsh noise wall / goregrind project of Matt Mansfield, aka 'Big Frog,' active since 2007 out of Annapolis, Maryland. Across an enormous catalog (170+ releases), the project fuses gorenoise and harsh-noise-wall drone with goregrind, sludge/doom, black metal, and power-electronics textures, all wrapped in a running amphibian theme; No Clean Singing proposed 'frogrind' as a better label than plain 'gorenoise.' Mansfield also records frog-themed material as Amphibians Performing Surgery, Macrophagous Gilled Larvae, olm, and Toad Birth, and supports the Save The Frogs conservation organization.

Lotus Eaters is an American experimental electroacoustic/drone supergroup formed around 1999, featuring Aaron Turner of Isis, Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))), and James Plotkin of OLD and Khanate. Working in a minimal, guitar-and-electronics drone idiom, the trio released the CD Mind Control for Infants (Neurot Recordings, 2002) and Wurmwulv (Troubleman Unlimited, 2007). As the only project shared by Turner and O'Malley, it forms the shortest bridge between the Isis pole and the Sunn O))) pole of the atlas. (Not to be confused with the Liverpool new-wave band The Lotus Eaters.)

Persistence in Mourning is the Oklahoma City-based solo funeral doom project of Andy Lippoldt, active since 2006, described as sitting between funeral doom, death industrial, power electronics and death metal.

Black Mayonnaise is the long-running one-man bedroom project of Mike Duncan from Akron, Ohio, active since August 1991. It blends heavily detuned, distorted doom/sludge guitar with drum-machine programming, tape loops and cut-up sonic manipulation into a lo-fi, ambient/psych-drone-inflected sound. Cited influences include old Godflesh, old Carcass, Butthole Surfers and Big Black; notable releases include TTSSATTSR (2004) and the retrospective compilation When You Get Caught Between the Moon and Boston Harbor (2011). (Verified spelling: the RYM scout note had a typo, 'Black Mayonaise' — the real band spells it 'Black Mayonnaise'.)