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Kekal is an Indonesian avant-garde/experimental act formed in Jakarta in 1995, one of the first Southeast Asian extreme-metal bands to reach an international audience. Beginning in black/death metal, they transformed across their discography into a genre-collapsing project spanning progressive metal, jazz fusion, trip-hop, electronic/IDM, ambient and post-rock — the 2003 breakthrough 1000 Thoughts of Violence being the pivot. Since August 2009 the band has operated as a 'memberless' collective, with former members and volunteer contributors assembling new albums.

Ephel Duath was an Italian avant-garde metal band from Padua, active 1998-2014 and led throughout by guitarist Davide Tiso. Their sound is 'an unorthodox combination of hardcore punk and jazz fusion,' recruiting players from jazz, blues, funk and progressive backgrounds. Later lineups featured vocalist Karyn Crisis and drummer Marco Minnemann, and the band released through Code666, Earache and Agonia Records.

White Ward are an Odesa, Ukraine post-black metal band built around a full-time saxophonist, folding brass-led dark jazz, post-rock, and blackened death-metal passages into a dense, cinematic 'noir' sound. Formed in 2012 by guitarist Yurii Kazaryan, they moved from raw depressive black metal on early demos to the widescreen, saxophone-laced records Futility Report (2017), Love Exchange Failure (2019), and False Light (2022). On Debemur Morti Productions alongside labelmates like Blut aus Nord, they sit at the jazzier, more atmospheric end of the avant-black scene next to acts like Imperial Triumphant and Oranssi Pazuzu.

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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.

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.

Ploughshare is a Canberra, Australia black/death metal trio-turned-collective that folds industrial electronics, noise rock, and jazz-inflected bass work into long, dissonant compositions. Their 2024 album Second Wound (Brilliant Emperor/I, Voidhanger) was praised for pushing further into warped electronic textures and technical death metal complexity while retaining the project's blast-driven black/death core.

Ex Eye are an instrumental NYC quartet formed in 2016, led by experimental saxophonist Colin Stetson with Greg Fox (Liturgy) on drums, Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs 3, Ceramic Dog) on synth and Toby Summerfield on guitar. Grown out of Stetson's Gorecki-reimagining sessions, they fuse black metal's hypnotic repetition and blast beats with free-jazz saxophone and drone, releasing a self-titled debut on Relapse Records in 2017. It is one of the more successful jazz-metal syntheses of its era.

Azusa is a multinational progressive extreme metal supergroup formed in 2014 by cousins Christer Espevoll (guitars) and David Husvik (drums) of the Norwegian band Extol, joined by bassist Liam Wilson of The Dillinger Escape Plan and vocalist Eleni Zafiriadou of Sea + Air. Their sound blends melodic thrash, jazz-fusion, hardcore and early-90s riff-pop, a style the band has tongue-in-cheek dubbed "Avant-Thrash." They released their debut album Heavy Yoke in 2018 and the follow-up Loop of Yesterdays in 2020, via Solid State Records (US) and Indie Recordings (Europe).

Interstellar Islandsplay in the dock

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Kayo Dot is an American avant-garde/experimental band formed in Boston in 2002 by multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver out of the ashes of his previous group maudlin of the Well. Their 2003 debut Choirs of the Eye was released on John Zorn's Tzadik label and set the template for a restless, genre-dissolving music that has drifted across chamber metal, art rock, post-rock, drone and synth-driven new wave over more than a decade of records. Driver is the band's only constant, steering a rotating cast of string players, horn players and rhythm sections through long-form compositions that refuse to sit still.

The Manifold Curiosityplay in the dock

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maudlin of the Well (stylized lowercase, often abbreviated motW) was an avant-garde metal band from Boston formed in 1996 around the songwriting core of Toby Driver, guitarist Greg Massi and lyricist Jason Byron. Across the 1999 debut My Fruit PsychoBells... A Seed Combustible and the 2001 companion albums Bath and Leaving Your Body Map, they braided death and doom metal with jazz horns, clean female and male vocals, chamber textures and ambient passages. The group dissolved in 2002 and Driver reconstituted the project as Kayo Dot; motW later reunited to record the fan-funded Part the Second (2009).

The Blue Ghost / Shedding Qliphothplay in the dock

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