Mattias IA Eklundh

Giant Robot was the short-lived mid-1990s trio built around guitarist Buckethead, drummer Bryan 'Brain' Mantia, and keyboardist/producer Pete Scaturro, releasing one self-titled album on the Japanese NTT label in 1996 before Brain's departure broke up the group. The record is a virtuosic, sample-strewn instrumental record splicing film dialogue into dense guitar shredding, with absurdist song titles signaling its jam-session, prank-prone character. It sits adjacent to Buckethead's vast solo catalog but stands as its own band credit -- distinct from the same-titled 1994 Sony Japan Buckethead SOLO album that shares its name and caused the scout's identity confusion.

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Electrocution 250 was a short-lived instrumental trio from Minnesota — guitarist Todd Duane, keyboardist Lalle Larsson, and drummer Peter Wildoer — who recorded a single album, 'Electric Cartoon Music From Hell' (2003/2004), fusing jazz-fusion virtuosity with Carl Stalling-style cartoon-music motifs and occasional thrash-metal bombast. Larsson and Wildoer are separately known for progressive/metal session and band work (Karmakanic, Darkane, among others), but this project stands as a standalone one-off. It is unrelated to the atlas's Ulver electronic era.

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One-man Vienna-based experimental progressive metal project helmed by David Angerer, whose 2026 album Palingenaeon plays like 'a film score at a party' -- neoclassical/symphonic prog metal stitched together with circus music, absurdist black comedy, and a loose concept about botched reincarnation. Extremely new and thinly documented outside a handful of prog/metal press write-ups.

Edge of Reality is a Nashville art-metal quintet whose 2019 album In Static packs jazz-inflected saxophone, carnival theatrics, and djent-adjacent riffing into a maximalist, constantly shifting progressive-metal frame. Reviewers place them alongside Native Construct, Thank You Scientist and Haken: dense, technically ambitious, occasionally overstuffed songwriting paired with a comedic, narrative-driven concept. Guitarist Joey Frevola also plays in UK prog act KYROS and LA's An Endless Sporadic, though neither is part of the EMMA atlas.

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Ruins is a Japanese progressive-rock duo formed in 1985 by drummer/vocalist Tatsuya Yoshida, intended as a power trio until the guitarist never showed, leaving a manic bass-and-drums unit. Heavily indebted to French zeuhl pioneers Magma, Ruins performs written-out, fiendishly complex compositions sung in an invented Kobaian-like tongue, veering through prog, jazz fusion and noise rock. Yoshida, the band's only constant, is one of the pillars of Japanese avant-rock; Ruins released several albums on John Zorn's Tzadik label, including Hyderomastgroningem (1995). The bass seat rotated across the group's history.

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Deli Creeps is guitarist Buckethead's formative avant-garde/funk-metal band, formed in Claremont/San Francisco in the early 1990s and built around Maximum Bob's manic vocals and Buckethead's already-virtuosic, genre-hopping lead guitar. Their sole album, Dawn of the Deli Creeps (2005), compiles re-recorded demo-era material and functions as an origin document for Buckethead's later solo vocabulary — several of its riffs and songs were repurposed on his solo records. Mike Patton has praised the band, and it sits at the root of the Bay Area Buckethead/Praxis/Primus-adjacent avant-metal cluster.

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Titan to Tachyons is a New York instrumental quartet led by guitarist Sally Gates, built around a two-bassist frontline (Trevor Dunn and Matt Hollenberg) with drummer Kenny Grohowski, fusing free-jazz improv, prog counterpoint, and metal violence into sci-fi-themed instrumentals. Their 2022 album Vonals was released on John Zorn's Tzadik label (following 2020's Cactides on Nefarious Industries), and the polyrhythmic, two-bass arrangement gives the compositions an unusually dense, contrapuntal low end. Every member's other credits (Mr. Bungle, Fantômas, Tomahawk, Secret Chiefs 3, Cleric, Imperial Triumphant) wire this band into the Zorn/downtown-jazz and Patton-adjacent avant-metal orbit.

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Oh. is the solo moniker of Greek multi-instrumentalist, composer, and director Olivia Hadjiioannou, who writes, performs, records, and mixes every part of her music herself. Her instrumental progressive-metal EP Metallia (self-released, July 2018) is a six-part concept work built from layered electric/acoustic guitars, violin, keyboards, and shifting time signatures; its 'Red Lion' music video won Best Music Video at multiple festivals, including the French Riviera Film Festival in Cannes.

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Venezuelan-born instrumental guitarist known for playing two self-designed 14- and 16-string guitars simultaneously, tapping both necks to emulate two guitarists at once. Signed to Prosthetic Records, his 2013 debut The Scenic Album is a trio recording with bassist Nathan Navarro and drummer Marco Minnemann, fusing progressive-metal technicality with jazz-fusion vocabulary and a tapping technique inspired by Venezuelan traditional ensemble music.

Primus are a San Francisco Bay Area experimental rock trio led by bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, whose virtuosic slap-and-tap bass, absurdist storytelling and cartoonish character sketches define a sound that fuses funk, thrash, prog and Americana. Formed in 1984, they broke through with Sailing the Seas of Cheese (1991) and Pork Soda, later returning with records like The Desaturating Seven (2017). Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin, a longtime friend of Claypool's, guested on several early Primus recordings.