Howling Sycamore

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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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.

GuilThee is a cultic Hungarian eclectic-metal band from Veszprém, founded in June 2006 by multi-instrumentalist Nagaarum (Gábor Tóth), evolving from thrash/groove/death metal into experimental/progressive metal. Their sound folds in tenor saxophone via longtime member Mr Match, synth-carpet atmospheres, and black-metal/dark-ambient textures across albums including Lustration (2009), Homunculus Paradoxon (2011), Szemantikai háromszögek (2012) and Eklektika (2013).

Orthrelm are an American avant-garde metal duo from Washington, D.C., Mick Barr on guitar and Josh Blair on drums, specializing in intricately composed guitar-drum instrumentals of vast complexity that straddle extreme metal, avant-garde jazz and progressive rock. Their 2005 album OV, a single 45-minute continuous piece recorded by Colin Marston, was released on Mike Patton's Ipecac Recordings and is regarded as a landmark of post-modern experimental composition.

If Nothing Is (stylized/credited as INI on Metal Archives) is a Trondheim, Norway avant-garde metal project fronted by vocalist Boeddelen, guitarists Håkon Grytvik and Mats Stenberg, drummer Vegard Myrdal Berg, and bassist/main composer Lars Emil Måløy — also the bassist of Dødheimsgard. Emerging from the ashes of an earlier band called Revocation around 2008, the group self-released its sprawling, ten-track debut "If Nothing Is" digitally in 2015, later remixed, remastered and issued physically by Dark Essence Records in 2021 with a guest synth/sample contribution from Dødheimsgard's Vicotnik. The record moves through thrash, speed, death and black metal within long-form, technically demanding compositions compared to early Atheist and Cynic.

Dark Angel are an American thrash metal band formed in Downey, California in 1981, whose extremely fast, lengthy, tempo-shifting songs earned them the nickname "the L.A. Caffeine Machine" and the motto "too fast, my ass." They are widely credited as one of the progenitors of technical/progressive thrash — Time Does Not Heal (1991) was famously advertised with "246 riffs" — and their second album Darkness Descends (1986) is cited as a major influence on the later death, doom and groove metal scenes. The band launched the career of drummer Gene Hoglan, who joined in late 1984 and went on to Death, Testament and Devin Townsend's projects.

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Korog is a Budapest black'n'roll/death'n'roll outfit formed in 1995, most widely known for the two years (2001-2003) that Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar spent behind the microphone.

Semen Across Lips was the deliberately shock-named vehicle Garry Brents used from 2004-2007 in Grand Prairie, Texas for a strange, technical black/death/grind hybrid, before renaming the project Parabstruse later in 2007. It's an early, standalone chapter in the prolific Brents catalogue that would later include Cara Neir and the chiptune-flecked Gonemage.

One-man project of linguist Liu Zhenyang (born in Ningbo, China; studying in Paris), Hoplites fuses dissonant black and death metal with mathcore and zeuhl-style repetition, topped with squealing saxophone. All song and album titles are rendered in Greek despite lyrical content addressing Chinese social themes. The project debuted with an EP in 2021, released three full-lengths in 2023, and put the project on an open-ended hiatus in mid-2024 as Zhenyang shifted focus to a new project, Dgra.

Terra Impressionum formed in 2005 in the small Crimean seaside town of Novofedorivka, Ukraine, later regrouping in Kyiv, and play avant-garde black/doom metal that folds in art-rock, blues, and jazz. Their two full-lengths, TI:tanium (2008) and Transmitting Device (2010), reach further into opera and Brazilian rhythms, but the project has been on hold since a 2011 lineup collapse left a third album unfinished.