Gojira

Meshuggah is a Swedish extreme metal band formed in Umeå in 1987, celebrated for the polymetric and polyrhythmic architecture of their music — thundering, downtuned guitar riffs written in shifting odd groupings over a steady 4/4 pulse. Fusing thrash, death, and groove metal with a cerebral jazz-fusion sensibility, they inadvertently launched the subgenre now known as djent and became one of the most technically influential acts in modern heavy music. Guitarist Fredrik Thordendal's Allan Holdsworth-inspired soloing and drummer Tomas Haake's mechanical precision are cornerstones of the sound.

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Killer Be Killed is an American heavy metal supergroup formed in 2011 by Greg Puciato (The Dillinger Escape Plan) and Max Cavalera (Soulfly), later joined by bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders (Mastodon) and drummer Ben Koller (Converge). Conceived by Puciato and Cavalera in the vein of Cavalera's 1990s project Nailbomb, the band signed to Nuclear Blast and released its self-titled debut in 2014, with drums by Dave Elitch. Elitch left in 2015 and was replaced by Koller, who plays on the second album, Reluctant Hero (2020).

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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.

Sepultura is a Brazilian metal band formed in Belo Horizonte in 1984 by brothers Max and Igor Cavalera, and the most internationally successful heavy metal act to emerge from Brazil. Their late-1980s records helped codify a raw strain of thrash and death metal before Chaos A.D. (1993) and Roots (1996) pivoted the band toward a percussive groove metal laced with Brazilian tribal rhythms and indigenous instrumentation. Max Cavalera's 1996 departure fractured the classic lineup, but guitarist Andreas Kisser and bassist Paulo Jr. carried the band forward with American vocalist Derrick Green from 1997 onward.

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Starkweather is a Philadelphia band formed in 1989, widely credited as an early architect of metalcore and a direct influence on mathcore and sludge-adjacent bands like Converge, Coalesce, and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Their sound fuses dissonant, tempo-shifting metalcore with sludge metal and death-metal drumming, most fully realized on 2005's Croatoan (produced by Pierre Remillard of Cryptopsy/Gorguts fame). Bassist Liam Wilson played on Croatoan before/during his long tenure as bassist of The Dillinger Escape Plan.

Extol is a Norwegian extreme metal band formed in 1993 in Bekkestua, celebrated for a restless fusion of technical and progressive death metal with black metal, thrash, and melodic, prog-rock sensibilities. Emerging from the Christian metal underground, they evolved sharply across records from the blackened death of Burial (1998) to the genre-defying, atmospheric The Blueprint Dives (2005) and the reunion-era self-titled album (2013). The core is built around the Espevoll cousins Peter and Christer alongside longtime drummer David Husvik and multi-instrumentalist Ole Børud. After their hiatus, members Christer Espevoll and David Husvik went on to co-found the international progressive metal band Azusa.

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German death metal/grindcore act from Halle (Saale), formed 2003, that evolved by its second album Retardierte Jahre Teil 2 - Bananas (2011) into an avant-garde/progressive project blending death/grind with female vocals, synths, electronic percussion, opera-style screams and absurdist lyrical themes about food and gluttony. The band renamed itself Mansfeld in 2020.

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Out of the Mouth of Graves is a South Carolina dissonant death metal trio formed in 2021, featuring members also active in Vølus and Acausal Intrusion, releasing through Vargheist Records. Their debut Harbinger Unceremonious (2022) and the Lovecraft-themed Shrines to Dagon (2023) build cavernous, off-kilter death metal around H.P. Lovecraft's horror mythos.

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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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Soulfly is an American metal band formed in Phoenix, Arizona in 1997 by vocalist/guitarist Max Cavalera after he left Sepultura, the Brazilian band he had co-founded with his brother Igor in 1984. The group fuses groove, thrash and death metal with tribal, Brazilian and world-music elements, an outgrowth of the rhythmic experiments Cavalera began on Sepultura's Roots. Long anchored by the Cavalera family, the band has been a durable vehicle for Max's riff-driven, spiritually themed heavy metal across more than a dozen albums, from the nu-metal-adjacent self-titled debut (1998) through Chama (2025).

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