Liturgy

Parisian avant-garde post-black metal project led by AK (also of Merrimack and Vorkreist, both off-atlas), pairing abrasive tremolo-driven black metal with electro/industrial samples and symphonic passages. The discography runs as two philosophical concept trilogies — the first drawing on neurologist Henri Laborit, the second (starting with 'Johannes,' 2021) on Soren Kierkegaard, continuing through 'Wilhelm' (2025). Released on Agonia Records.

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Worhs began around 2009-2010 as the one-man black metal project of Paris musician WLWD (Willow), releasing debut album 'Le Temps des Blasphèmes' in 2014 before evolving into a queer-fronted duo with multi-instrumentalist Nijmaa, who joined as a session drummer on 'Ballerine Sourde' (2018) and became a full co-composer. The project blends black metal with post-punk, psychedelia, industrial noise, and noise pop, growing more accessible and compositionally complex across releases up to 'La Grande Poisseuse' (2024).

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The Kovenant are a Norwegian band formed in 1992 (as Covenant) in Hamar that began in symphonic black metal and reinvented itself as industrial/cyber 'space metal' after its 1999 rename. The pivotal 1998 album Nexus Polaris, released on Nuclear Blast, drew in Mayhem drummer Jan Axel 'Hellhammer' Blomberg, who has remained the band's drummer. Fronted by Lex Icon (ex-Dimmu Borgir) and Psy Coma, their programming-drenched sound sits at the electronic edge of the Norwegian avant-black scene.

The Wicked was a short-lived (1999-c.2005) Finnish melodic black/industrial/avant-garde metal act from Uusimaa, released on Spikefarm Records, built around Necrotron (guitars, keyboards - real name Henri 'Trollhorn' Sorvali, also of Moonsorrow and Finntroll) and vocalist Lucius M.K. Their two albums, ...For Theirs Is the Flesh (2002) and Sonic Scriptures of the End Times (2004), pile industrial beats, voice-over samples, and symphonic/new-age keyboard writing onto a black-metal chassis, drawing comparisons to a metal Danny Elfman scoring a Tim Burton film. It's a genuinely odd, theatrical corner of the late-90s/early-2000s Finnish extreme scene.

Dødheimsgard (DHG) are a Norwegian band formed in Oslo in 1994 that mutated from the raw black metal of Kronet Til Konge (1995) into the fractured avant-garde industrial black metal of 666 International (1999). Led throughout by Vicotnik, they became a touchstone of the experimental wing of Norwegian black metal. Kronet Til Konge's lineup featured Darkthrone's Fenriz on bass, and its closer 'When Heavens End' carries an additional-songwriting credit for Ulver founder Sigmund 'Grellmund' Løkken.

Ophe is a one-man avant-garde/post-black metal project from Châtillon, France, created by Christophe "Bargnatt XIX" Denhez (also frontman of OMRÅDE and Demande à la Poussière), who handles all vocals, instruments and programming. Debut album Litteras Ad Tristia Maestrum Solitude arrived on My Kingdom Music in 2018, followed by Somnium Nocte Mendaciis (2022) on the same label. The project pairs primal black metal with dissonant, hermetic song structures and post-industrial, noise-inflected atmospheres, drawing comparisons to Dodecahedron, Ævangelist and Spektr.

Choronzon is a merger of two unrelated American projects — Florida black-metaller P. Emerson Williams and San Francisco industrial artist Demitria Monde Thraam — who discovered each other online in 2002 and combined forces. What resulted, starting with 1998's Samoth-signed Magog Agog, is ritualistic, electronics-soaked black-industrial metal conceived explicitly as ceremonial music for occult initiates. Williams' background in London's FoolishPeople theatre troupe, where he literally played the demon Choronzon on stage, leaks into everything the band does.

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Abstruse is the one-man experimental black/thrash/industrial metal project of Athens, Greece-based musician Substant, active since 2002. Substant composes via an idiosyncratic 'order-based system' that treats intervals as numeric patterns rather than conventional scales, and has built custom software ('motion2sound') to translate movement into sound and multi-sensory staging elements. The project's 2019 album Submerge: Ritual is structured as a conceptual 'Pan Ritual' narrative; a 2010 demo, Ivory Tower, was ranked among the year's top albums by the Avantgarde Metal webzine.

Crystalline Thunderbolts Pierce the Sacred Mountain is a synth-driven raw black metal / dark ambient project of prolific Dutch multi-instrumentalist Maurice 'Mories' de Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues, Cloak of Altering, De Magia Veterum, Obscuring Veil, Aderlating, Seirom). Releases like Blessed Hands Touch the Ophanim Under the Golden Rainbows (2023) and Shine Like the Suicidal Madness of the Sacred Amethyst (2024) are built from 'wild keyboard music exclusively' — chaotic, saturated electronic textures layered with black-metal atmosphere and grandiose, scripture-tinged song titles about celestial beings. It's tagged avant-garde/symphonic/black metal on metal.academy and functions as one more mutation in de Jong's sprawling, genre-blurring catalog.

Folgers is the 'Cult of Folgers' — a Tennessee bedroom project built around raw black metal and harsh noise, entirely fixated on the Folgers coffee brand as a running joke/lore concept (album titles include 'Damn Right, It's Folgers!' and 'Folgers Hates Maxwells'). Main contributor Hystalgia handles vocals/screams/growls, guitar, bass, synths, noise and production, blending household-object noise sources (shower, microwave, coffee maker) into the black-metal base, with Sikaydah contributing cover art and noise. The project is absurdly prolific — dozens of releases since its founding in December 2021 via the DIY label Lucid Haze Productions — culminating in the 2024 full-length 'Summoning of the Folgers.'