Mêlée des Aurores

Furia is a Polish black metal band formed in Katowice in 2003, fronted by Michał "Nihil" Kuźniak, considered one of the most influential and boundary-pushing acts in the Polish scene. The band's self-described "Nekrofolk" style fuses raw black metal with Polish folk, psychedelia and post-punk, drawing on the industrial/forested landscape of Silesia; Nihil and bassist Kamil "Sars" Staszałek also play together in MasseMord. Furia performed at Primavera Sound in 2014 and was nominated for Polityka's Passport award in 2023 for the album Huta Luna.

Thorne was a short-lived experimental/atmospheric black metal band from Río Gallegos, Argentina, that recorded one demo (Until Their Ruins Be Our Trench, 2013) and one full-length, Ekpyrosis & Restitutio in Pristinum Status, released as a limited cassette in 2017 by Brotherhood of Light Recordings. The album mixes Spanish-language black metal with lengthy instrumental passages and a lute-song arrangement of Renaissance composer John Dowland's 'Grief'. The band split up after this release.

In their early era Sólstafir, formed in Reykjavík in 1995, played raw, epic Icelandic black/viking metal in the vein of Bathory and Enslaved: cold tremolo riffing, harsh vocals and pagan atmosphere. The debut full-length Í Blóði og Anda ("In Blood and Spirit", 2002) crystallized this sound, and its follow-up Masterpiece of Bitterness (2005, Spinefarm) began folding in the progressive and post-metal textures that would later define the band. This era established Sólstafir as one of Iceland's most distinctive extreme-metal exports before their gradual drift away from black metal orthodoxy.

Í Blóði og Andaplay in the dock

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10:13 is the solo, largely instrumental black-metal vehicle of Southern California multi-instrumentalist Neil Carter, self-released through his own Unclebaby Records since 2019. Debut album "Result of an Iron Age" splices black-metal riffing with acoustic sylvan guitar, out-of-tune harmonica, organ and trip-hop-tinged samples into what one reviewer called "a piece broken down rather than a collection woven together," drawing comparisons to Arcturus' more deranged moments. Carter cites Camper Van Beethoven, Philip Glass and Gentle Giant alongside black-metal names like Xasthur and Darkspace as touchstones, and brought in prog-rock keyboardist Derek Sherinian and guitarist Mario Romero as guests.

Gallows' Forest is the solo Hungarian project of JesterOfDestiny, active since 2018 and built around black metal fused with electronic programming and sampled/traditional instrumentation. Across the self-titled debut, Cerulean, and Cosmic Leviathan, Bandcamp credits confirm real didgeridoo, jaw harp, and a sampled koto performance by guest Sachiko Yoshihara layered into the black-metal base, alongside a stated focus on 'the exploration of electronic soundscapes.' The project also released a 2019 split with fellow atlas act Q'uq'umatz, Waxaklahun Ubah Kan.

Experimental/atmospheric black metal duo from Brooklyn, New York, formed by multi-instrumentalist Brendon Randall-Myers (conductor of the Glenn Branca Ensemble) and vocalist Doug Moore (Pyrrhon). Their 2022 debut 'Aveilut,' released on The Flenser, is a single 45-minute composition built on post-Branca microtonal guitar and cinematic, orchestral scope, written as a requiem for pandemic-era grief. Critics place it alongside Jute Gyte and Krallice; it was engineered by Colin Marston.

Schammasch are a Basel, Switzerland avant-garde black metal band formed in 2009, named for the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash. Beginning in black/death territory, they grew increasingly experimental, peaking with the triple-album Triangle (2016) whose final disc is pure ambient, and Hearts of No Light (2019), which folds clean/post-punk vocals and ritualistic dark-ambient into their black-metal core. Occultism, spirituality and surrealism thread their long-form, atmosphere-first releases on Prosthetic Records.

Jute Gyte is the prolific solo project of Adam Kalmbach, based in Springfield, Missouri, best known for pioneering microtonal black metal on guitars retuned to 24-tone equal temperament, so that unfamiliar intervals create shimmering, dislocating interference patterns. Kalmbach fuses the black-metal template with classical serialism, dark ambient and industrial textures, and releases a parallel stream of purely electronic/ambient 'synth music in a variety of tunings.' Records himself, doesn't tour, and runs the project as an avowedly antifascist enterprise that channels sales to mutual-aid causes.

Golden Cat Pagoda (金猫塔) is a one-man experimental black metal project founded by an artist known as 张 in early 2020, originally based in Shanghai and now working from Vancouver. The project fuses modern black metal's raw hostility with free jazz, ambience, and avant-garde structures, drawing lyrical and conceptual material from folktales of China's Sichuan-Chongqing (Chuan Yu) region. Its 2021 debut album 'Entropy' (熵) was released through the Chinese label Pest Productions and was followed by 'Mí Mí' (弥弥) in 2022, described as incorporating traditional Chinese drumming into hypnotic atmospheric passages.

In the Woods... are a Norwegian avant-garde/progressive metal band from Kristiansand, formed in 1992 from the early Green Carnation lineup. Their debut 'Heart of the Ages' helped shape pagan black metal before the band evolved toward atmospheric, progressive and doom-leaning territory across 'Omnio' and later records, with clean and female vocals broadening the palette. After disbanding in 2000 they reformed in 2014 and continue releasing through Debemur Morti Productions.