Kilter

A Chicago/Minneapolis improv-death quartet (with members of Zebulon Pike, Celestiial, and Obsequiae) whose albums are single continuous live improvisations rather than composed songs, splicing death metal's blast-and-growl violence with doom lumber, free-jazz harmolodics, and drone-thick ambience. The band cites John Zorn's Naked City and Ornette Coleman's harmolodic concepts as explicit touchstones, assigning time-boxed solo/duo segments to a stopwatch instead of a setlist. 2025's 'Enter the Misanthropocene' pushed further into jazz noodling and grind intensity relative to its drone-heavier 2022 debut.

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Metallic Taste of Blood is an instrumental supergroup led by Italian guitarist/producer Eraldo Bernocchi and Porcupine Tree bassist Colin Edwin, fusing metal, dub, avant-jazz and progressive rock on RareNoiseRecords. The 2012 self-titled debut featured avant-jazz pianist Jamie Saft (Electric Masada, New Zion Trio) and drummer Balazs Pandi; the 2015 follow-up Doctoring the Dead swapped in drummer Ted Parsons -- also known for Swans, Prong, Godflesh and Jesu -- alongside keyboardist Roy Powell. Reviewers describe the results as cinematic, industrial-tinged instrumental pieces that balance brutal riffage against ambient, discordant delicacy.

Avant-garde metal sextet from Poznań, Poland, founded in 2019 by guitarist Marcin Tuliszkiewicz and drummer Krzysztof Kulis. Their self-titled debut (10 January 2025) fuses black/death metal harshness with dark jazz, doomy drone and trumpet (Magdalena Andrys), driven by dual vocals between clean singer Julita Dąbrowska and growler Michał Sosnowski.

Chaos Echœs formed in Gueberschwihr, Alsace, in 2011, months after the split of blackened death metal trio Bloody Sign, built around guitarist Kalevi Uibo and drummer Ilmar Uibo alongside bassist Stefan Thanneur. Metal Archives tags the project 'Experimental Death Metal/Drone/Jazz,' and reviewers describe albums like Transient and Mouvement as death metal stretched into psychedelic, free-jazz-inflected drone territory, drawing comparisons to John Zorn's Moonchild. Their 2018 release Sustain was a collaboration with free-jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. The band was active until 2019, releasing through Sentient Ruin and Nuclear War Now! Productions.

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Spintria is a free-jazz-inflected black/drone metal unit from Nashville, Tennessee, built around guitarist Ryan Clackner, keyboardist Edward Longo and drummer Josh Byrd, joined by guest saxophonist Colin Fisher. Their two full-lengths — a 2021 self-titled debut and 2022's Bacchanalia — stretch black-metal drone into side-long, saxophone-scorched free-improv freakouts that deliberately blur the line between written and improvised music. It's a small, DIY discography, but a genuinely strange one, closer to a free-jazz collective that occasionally detonates blast beats than a conventional metal band.

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Ehnahre is a Boston, Massachusetts experimental extreme metal ensemble formed in 2006 by former Kayo Dot members Ryan McGuire and John Carchia, fusing contemporary classical composition, aleatoric music, and doom/death metal extremity. The group avoids original lyrics, instead setting texts by modernist poets to dense, largely through-composed pieces built from extended technique and free improvisation.

Obscuring Veil is an international avant-garde black metal project assembled in 2018 around Matron Thorn (also of Ævangelist) on guitars/vocals, with Maurice 'Mories' De Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues, De Magia Veterum) on keyboards/synths, H.V. Lyngdal (Wormlust) on bass/piano, Jarle Byberg (Urgehal) on drums, and Kabukimono on voices, releasing through I, Voidhanger Records. Their 2019 debut Fleshvoid to Naught was described by reviewers as black metal 'played by free jazz musicians,' a dissonant, ghostlike plunge into psychedelic murk.

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Ingurgitating Oblivion are a German death metal band (active as such since 2002, roots in 1997) built around founder-guitarist Florian Engelke. Their later work, especially Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light (2017) and Ontology of Nought (2024), moved into progressive, dissonant, avant-garde death metal, lacing Gorguts-style dissonance with jazz guitars, vibraphone, piano and musical saw, and drawing openly on Ligeti, Bartok and jazz. With Defeated Sanity's Lille Gruber on drums for the pivotal 2017 record, they became a fixture of the explorative death-metal underground.

Plague Organ is a Dutch guitar-less avant-garde black/death metal duo of drummer Rene Aquarius (Dead Neanderthals, Cryptae, Imperial Cult) and recording engineer Marlon Wolterink (bass, synths), built entirely from bass, drums, and synthesizer. Their 2020 debut Orphan on Sentient Ruin Laboratories is a single 40-minute piece fusing free-form jazz, drone, dark ambient, kraut, and ritualistic black/death metal into what CVLT Nation called a 'suffocating instrumental ambient fractal.' Aquarius is a highly prolific Dutch underground drummer with a sprawling collaborative discography, though no direct tie to an existing E.M.M.A. atlas act was found.

Yakuza is a Chicago avant-garde metal band formed in 1999, led by saxophonist/vocalist Bruce Lamont. They build a metal base with progressive flair, folding in free jazz saxophone and clarinet, world music, doom, grind, and post-rock ambience into a jazz-metal hybrid sometimes tagged 'jazzcore.' Their discography spans Way of the Dead (2002, Century Media), Samsara (2006) and Transmutations (2007, Prosthetic), Of Seismic Consequence (2010) and Beyul (2012, Profound Lore), and Sutra (2023, Svart Records).