Lugubrum

Dawn of a Dark Age is the main vehicle of Italian multi-instrumentalist Vittorio Sabelli (aka Eurynomos), formed in 2014 and joined on vocals/drums by Emanuele Prandoni (also of Progenie Terrestre Pura) from 2020. A trained classical and jazz musician, Sabelli gives the clarinet and acoustic guitar a leading role within an avant-garde black metal framework, layering in saxophone, choral chant, spoken word, and Italian folk melody. The catalogue includes the five-part The Six Elements series (2014-2017) and the Samnite-history-themed La Tavola Osca (2020) and Le Forche Caudine (2021).

I Regi Tratturiplay in the dock

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Neon Scaffold is a Russian avant-garde/blackened metal project from Sergiyev Posad, Moscow Oblast, formed in 2018 by musicians drawn from Cage of Creation, Zatemno, and Licho. Their sound mixes jazz-inflected walking bass and saxophone with dissonant, folk-rooted black metal riffing; their 2025 album Noir (Pest Productions) followed a 2020 split, Konflikt, with Polish band Gruzja.

A Thuringian epic/symphonic black metal band that has drifted steadily toward progressive excess: synthesized orchestration, pagan/folk motifs, and, on 2023's Judasmesse, krautrock passages and a saxophone solo folded into second-wave-derived black metal. Bandcamp tags it avant-garde but most of the catalogue still sits inside melodic/symphonic black metal, with the experimentation concentrated on the later records.

Quest for Blood is a Tokyo black-metal project that grew out of the band Magane (two albums, 1999 and 2003), and in 2005 began collaborating with Yukihiro Isso, heir to a 16th-century lineage of Japanese Noh-flute players. Their 2008 joint album on Ektro Records (Finland) threads Isso's nohkan, shinobue and tsunobue lines through shrieked/howled black-metal vocals and free-jazz-inflected keyboard work, landing somewhere between extreme metal, free improvisation, and classical Noh theater music. Reviewers single out the flute as no gimmick — a genuinely 'hyperkinetic' voice sitting dead-center in the compositions rather than an ornamental one.

Vaina is an active Finnish avant-garde black metal project (formed by siblings in 2014) whose records braid raw black-metal riffing and shrieked/growled vocals with flute, horns, strings, choral and clean singing, and dense ambient/noise passages — critics have compared the effect to Dead Can Dance colliding with black metal. Sung entirely in Finnish, releases run from the 2017 EP Viisikärki through 2024's Unio Mystica (Aesthetic Death, UK).

Sigh is a Japanese avant-garde/experimental metal band formed in Tokyo in 1989, led throughout by multi-instrumentalist Mirai Kawashima. Their 1993 debut Scorn Defeat, released by Euronymous's Deathlike Silence Productions, helped pioneer a surrealist take on black metal before the band expanded into symphonic, orchestral, jazzy and world-music territory, adding saxophone, keyboards and traditional Japanese instruments. They remain one of Japan's most revered and eclectic extreme-metal exports.

Anubi were a Lithuanian avant-garde/experimental black metal band from Kaunas, active 1992-2002, built around frontman Martynas Meskauskas ('Lord Ominous,' also a noted painter) and themed around death and Egyptian mythology. Their sole full-length, Kai pilnaties akis uzmerks mirtis (1997, Danza Ipnotica Records), wove piano, saxophone, accordion, and natural sound recordings into their black metal, and was reissued in 2025 by Inferna Profundus Records. The band dissolved after Meskauskas drowned in a sailing accident on Lake Michigan in March 2002.

Kodel Sustoje Mirties Laikrodziaiplay in the dock

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Formed in 1991 by Alexander Nordgaren and Svein Egil Hatlevik, Fleurety began as a conventional Norwegian black metal band before radically expanding its palette: Min Tid Skal Komme (1995) folded in atonal harmonics and folk elements, and Department of Apocalyptic Affairs (2000) - produced by Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg - spans metal, jazz, trip-hop and electronica. Both records leaned heavily on the Norwegian avant-garde scene for guest performers, pulling in Mayhem's Hellhammer and Maniac, Ulver's Rygg (as vocalist "G. Playa") and Tore Ylwizaker on programming, Arcturus/Winds' Steinar "Sverd" Johnsen, and Borknagar's Knut Magne Valle; a later 2009 EP brought in Mayhem's Hellhammer and Necrobutcher again alongside Thorr's Hammer vocalist Runhild Gammelsæter.

Solefald is a Norwegian avant-garde metal duo formed in 1995 by Cornelius Jakhelln and Lars Are 'Lazare' Nedland. They build on a black-metal foundation while folding in clean vocals, piano, jazz guitar, classical passages, punk, electronic components and folk rhythms, self-described as 'Red Music With Black Edges.'

Ashenspire is a Glasgow avant-garde/progressive black metal act formed in 2015, one of Scotland's most distinctive experimental metal bands. Their acclaimed 2022 album 'Hostile Architecture' (Code666) welds black-metal dissonance to avant-garde jazz, weaving saxophone, violin, Rhodes and prepared piano beneath vocalist Alasdair Dunn's Sprechstimme delivery. Lyrically it is a scathing, class-conscious critique of late capitalism, gentrification and urban design.

The Law of Asbestosplay in the dock

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