Killing Spree

Long-running Indonesian band from Yogyakarta, formed 1998, that started as avant-garde/technical death metal and by their 2009 album 'Lipan's Kinetic' had shifted toward a free-jazz-influenced mathcore style, incorporating clean jazz guitar passages, electronic/dubstep digressions, and even a straight-faced Cure cover ('Friday I'm In Love') alongside brutal death metal riffing. Reviewers have likened the results to 'a collaboration between John Zorn and Melt-Banana' and to Psyopus-style mathcore fused with brutal death metal. Current lineup is Halim (guitars, since 1998), Mal (bass, since 2001), Didit (vocals, since 2002) and Obet (drums, since 2006).

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The Flying Luttenbachers are an American instrumental noise/avant-garde band formed in Chicago in 1991 and led throughout by composer-drummer Weasel Walter, who coined 'brutal prog' for their aggressively dissonant fusion of free jazz, no wave, punk and death metal. Over 20-plus albums and a rotating cast of 40+ Chicago-improv and avant players, they've morphed from punk-jazz trio to industrial sound-collage to a ferocious, hyper-technical metal-prog engine. The band dissolved in 2007 and reformed in 2017, remaining an uncompromising touchstone of extreme instrumental music.

ByoNoiseGenerator are a five-piece avant-garde/brutal death metal and deathgrind band from Perm, Russia, formed in 2014, built around a dedicated saxophone player alongside the standard metal lineup. Their three LPs (Turbulent Biogenesis 2015, Neuromechanica 2018, Subnormal Dives 2025) blend insanely technical grindcore with freeform jazz, funk (Primus-style) guitar work and drum-and-bass detours. Subnormal Dives (2025) drew coverage from Angry Metal Guy, The Progressive Subway and Everything Is Noise for this jazz/deathgrind hybrid.

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Brain Tentacles is a Chicago trio formed in 2013: Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Bloodiest) on saxophone, electric piano, synth and voice; Dave Witte (Discordance Axis, Municipal Waste) on drums; and Aaron Dallison (Keelhaul) on bass and synth. Their 2016 self-titled debut (Relapse Records) swings between 'mathy chaos' and 'juddering grooves,' drawing direct comparisons to John Zorn's Naked City, with a guest vocal spot from Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), production by Sanford Parker, and cover art by Jef Whitehead (Leviathan).

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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.

Agabas is a six-piece 'deathjazz' band formed in Trondheim, Norway, fusing death metal aggression with jazz harmony and improvisation, anchored by saxophonist Alexander Dellerhagen alongside a full metal rhythm section. Several members hold jazz performance master's degrees, and press coverage draws comparisons to Meshuggah, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Gojira crossed with John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. The band signed to Mascot Records around their 2025 album Hard Anger.

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Effluence is the one-man 'free death' project of California multi-instrumentalist Matt Stephens, begun in 2020 and released through his own Putrefactive Recordings. The music welds brutal and technical death metal and goregrind to free-jazz improvisation and noise, a chaotic, through-improvised sound Stephens coined 'free death' and is widely credited with pioneering. His jazz training surfaces in the frantic piano and horn runs threaded through the blast beats.

Hunab Ku was a Seattle avant-garde metal act built around vocalist Mike Gilmore, guitarist Luke Jaeger (ex-Sleep Terror, joined 2008 replacing founding guitarist Dan Hagerty), bassist Matt Finn, and drummer Mark Villano. Their 2007 debut "The Gaze Inward" (Black Sheep Records) was reviewed as chaotic mathcore-indebted avant metal, drawing explicit critical comparisons to Dillinger Escape Plan, Cephalic Carnage, and Fantomas, with vocals ranging from screams to croons and moans. IMPORTANT DISAMBIGUATION: this is distinct from an unrelated Costa Rican black metal band of the same name (founded 2016 by Lord Eythraz) and a dark-ambient project — the Seattle act is the one matching the chart description and reviews cited here.

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Ukakuja is an international extreme-music collective centered on vocalist Lori Bravo (ex-Nuclear Death), fusing dissonant deathgrind, avant-garde grindcore, and free-jazz-adjacent noise into a dense, short-form assault. Debut album Ōmukade (2023, The Centipede Abyss, limited to 35 copies) draws direct comparison to John Zorn's Naked City, pairing Bravo's operatic-to-guttural vocal range with morphing synth textures and a revolving cast of guest screamers. It reads as a spiritual successor to Nuclear Death's chaotic early sound rather than a conventional band.

LA duo of guitarist Lee Wanner and vocalist Paula Stefanini, active since 2012, fusing djent, jazz-fusion, blues and country into a genre-scrambling avant-garde metal project. Their two albums, Butterfly (2012) and Exocoetidae: Flying Fish (2013), pair death-metal vocal bursts with virtuosic, humor-laced composition. Guest musicians on Exocoetidae include prog drummers Morgan Ågren and Marco Minnemann.