Hunab Ku

Black Heart Sutra is a New York experimental/mathcore project centered on composer-violinist Earl Maneein (SEVEN)SUNS) and drummer Kenny Grohowski (Imperial Triumphant, Secret Chiefs 3, frequent John Zorn collaborator), expanded on record with guest vocalists including Jessica Pimentel. Their 2017 debut album "Zersetzung" (Still Water Recordings) mixes progressive-jazz harmony with mathcore's chaotic, Locust-like structural shifts.

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A Northern California one-man band whose 'Never Was' (2024) and 'Shriek' (Lou Kelly...and Friends) LPs bounce between jazzcore, mathcore, grindcore, crust punk and harsh-noise-wall under a self-described 'Progressive-Violence-Jazz' banner, all written, performed and produced solo. The 'Shriek' record began as a drunken online invitation for strangers to sing over Kelly's instrumentals and grew into a 14-track collaborative curio on the tiny label THE HILLS ARE DEAD Records. Listeners have likened the results to a heavier Mr. Bungle/Mike Patton side-project, though that is a stylistic comparison only — no verified personal connection exists.

Raxinasky is a Brussels, Belgium noise-core/mathcore/avant-garde metal outfit formed in 2001, self-described as 'Freemetal' and compared to Zu, Ruins, and Discordance Axis. Their records — the demo Koffie Anhal (2003), Transport de Viandes (2005), and The Anti-apopathodiaphulatophobicoustical Days (2008) — are built on abrupt time/dynamic shifts and swings between harsh extremes and gentler clean sections, with a trumpet in the original founding lineup.

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Girth is a Seattle instrumental trio — guitarist Dave Webb and drummer Peijman Kouretchian expanding to triple-guitar with Blane Patnode and Mark Corier of Swarming Hordes — playing dense, through-composed 'tech hardcore' described by one zine as splitting the difference between Orthrelm and Guapo with oddball electronic and jazz detours. Their breakthrough 2006 EP 'Sleeper, Awaken!' is a single 19-minute, four-movement piece recorded with engineer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth) and released on Trey Spruance's Web of Mimicry label, directly tying the band into the Mr. Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3-adjacent avant-metal underground. The project wound down after 2009's 'deconstruction.', with members moving on to Wah Wah Exit Wound and Satya Sena.

XHOHX are a duo who describe their own music, in their own words, as "Chaotic and Organic No Wave, Poly-rhythmic and Atonal Music" — which is both accurate and about as much help as it sounds. Ramon Ribas Coca plays guitar and programs the drums, Oregolakatzor plays bass, and the result is heavy avant-rock built out of angular, disharmonic riffing that never repeats a bar it could complicate instead. Reviewers reach for Ruins, the Flying Luttenbachers and Univers Zero, and hear an industrial edge that comes from the rhythmic construction rather than from any electronics — the programmed drums are deliberately played straight, close enough to a human kit that the review noting them also notes you cannot really tell. Growled shouts surface between the instrumental passages. Two albums in eleven years, then a 2013 split with Ahleuchatistas recorded either side of the Atlantic, and not much since.

Upsilon Acrux is an American avant-progressive / math rock band founded in 1998 by guitarist Paul Lai, who started the group near San Diego before relocating to Los Angeles. Built on interlocking twin-guitar counterpoint, odd meters and a frequently rotating cast of players around Lai as the sole constant, they trade in a dense, athletic, largely instrumental 'brutal prog' indebted to King Crimson and Japanese noise-rock forebears like Ruins. They released their most widely heard albums, Galapagos Momentum (2007) and Radian Futura (2009), on the Maryland avant-rock label Cuneiform Records.

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Peculate is the solo avant-garde/progressive metal project of American composer Ben Norton, self-releasing everything for free since 2012 under a self-styled 'Metal in Opposition' banner. Norton fuses djent and mathcore aggression with 12-tone technique, Zappa-esque jazz-fusion tangents and polished production, occasionally detouring into satirical protest-song territory (2015's viral 'This Sick Beat™'). It reads as a bedroom-scale answer to the Zorn/Zappa strand of metal-adjacent avant-composition.

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SikTh are a British progressive/technical metal band formed in Watford, Hertfordshire in 1999, known for their dual-vocalist attack, dissonant mathcore-adjacent riffing, and unorthodox compositions. They are widely cited as pioneers of the djent and tech-metal movement, breaking through with their debut album The Trees Are Dead & Dried Out Wait for Something Wild (2003), followed by Death of a Dead Day (2006) and, after a reunion, The Future in Whose Eyes? (2017).

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The Number Twelve Looks Like You is an American mathcore band formed in Bergen County, New Jersey in 2001 (initially as And Ever), taking their name from a 1964 Twilight Zone episode. Their dystopian screamo/grind fuses metal, hardcore, and Frank Zappa-esque experimental shifts across albums including Mongrel (2007) and, after a 2010–2016 split, the comeback record Wild Gods (2019). The band is fronted by longtime vocalist Jesse Korman and guitarist Alexis Pareja, with a lineup that has turned over repeatedly since its early-2000s inception.

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Praxis is producer/bassist Bill Laswell's shape-shifting experimental project, built around a core trio of Laswell, guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brain (Bryan Mantia) that fuses funk, jazz, hip-hop, dub and heavy metal into highly improvised music. The 1992 debut Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) drew in P-Funk's Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins, while the harsher 1993/94 album Sacrifist added John Zorn on saxophone and ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris of Painkiller, plus vocalist Yamatsuka Eye. The result swings between noisy speed metal, dub and turntablist collage.