NekRock

Raxinasky is a Brussels, Belgium noise-core/mathcore/avant-garde metal outfit formed in 2001, self-described as 'Freemetal' and compared to Zu, Ruins, and Discordance Axis. Their records — the demo Koffie Anhal (2003), Transport de Viandes (2005), and The Anti-apopathodiaphulatophobicoustical Days (2008) — are built on abrupt time/dynamic shifts and swings between harsh extremes and gentler clean sections, with a trumpet in the original founding lineup.

9635 Hangover String Koffie Anhalplay in the dockcompare profiles →

Stagnant Waters is a Franco-Norwegian avant-garde project built around multi-instrumentalist Camille Giraudeau (Smohalla), joined by vocalist Svein Egil 'Zweizz' Hatlevik (Fleurety, ex-Dødheimsgard) and woodwinds/drums player Aymeric Thomas (Pryapisme). Reviewers describe the music as jittering between free jazz, glitch electronics, black metal and mathy dadaist improvisation, with a 2024 comeback album, Rifts, following a 2012 self-titled debut.

Skin Tension is a Nashville, Tennessee experimental duo of Joshua D. Byrd and Edward Longo, working across avant-garde metal, dissonant black metal, mathcore, and free improvisation. Their sprawling discography, including the 27-hour, 131-track compilation Omni, mixes noise, ambient textures, jazz, and glitch electronics with metal aggression. The 2023 album Celebrant marked the project's first fully composed release after years of improvisation-based recording, made at their home studio The Valley of Defilement in Nashville.

Hunab Ku was a Seattle avant-garde metal act built around vocalist Mike Gilmore, guitarist Luke Jaeger (ex-Sleep Terror, joined 2008 replacing founding guitarist Dan Hagerty), bassist Matt Finn, and drummer Mark Villano. Their 2007 debut "The Gaze Inward" (Black Sheep Records) was reviewed as chaotic mathcore-indebted avant metal, drawing explicit critical comparisons to Dillinger Escape Plan, Cephalic Carnage, and Fantomas, with vocals ranging from screams to croons and moans. IMPORTANT DISAMBIGUATION: this is distinct from an unrelated Costa Rican black metal band of the same name (founded 2016 by Lord Eythraz) and a dark-ambient project — the Seattle act is the one matching the chart description and reviews cited here.

Pecking Out My Stained Glass Eyesplay in the dock

Spotify

compare profiles →

Umbah is the solo avant-garde industrial death metal/cybergrind project of UK multi-instrumentalist Cal Scott (formerly guitarist of grind act Necrosanct), running since 1990 and released largely through I, Voidhanger Records. Extremely prolific (dozens of albums across sci-fi/absurdist concept releases like 'Continuum,' 'Xominod,' and 'Obliticus'), the project fuses industrial death/grind with harsh electronics and jazz-tinged arrangements into what reviewers call 'techno-organic metal.'

SADWRIST is a French solo artist and self-described pioneer of the 'trashwave' aesthetic, fusing harsh noise, witch-house, djent, black metal, and trap into dense, glitch-riddled tracks. Song and album titles are rendered almost entirely in stylized Unicode symbols, extending the project's noisy, deliberately unstable identity into its visual presentation as much as its sound.

see uplay in the dock

BandcampSoundCloud

compare profiles →

Solo industrial black/death metal project of Charlie Davis (also vocalist/bassist of sludge band Beggar and of the punk project Wasted Death), based in London, England. Debut album Paroxysms (2022) fuses grinding, blast-beat black metal with mechanized industrial-dub textures, deliberate 'inhuman' digital glitches, and ritualistic chant-like vocal passages, drawing conceptually on Philip K. Dick's VALIS and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

Bologna Violenta is the noise/electrogrind project of Treviso violinist and multi-instrumentalist Nicola Manzan, founded in 2005. Early releases built distorted guitar, strings and electronic drums around samples from 1970s Italian poliziottesco cinema; the project expanded into a duo in 2015 with drummer Alessandro Vagnoni and later shifted toward violin-led arrangements on Cortina (2017) and Bancarotta Morale (2020), with 2026's OBLOMOVISMO returning to its cybergrind roots. Manzan has also worked as a sideman for Baustelle and Il Teatro degli Orrori and collaborated with J. Randall of Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

Vvon Dogma I is the Montreal project of 9-string bassist Chaoth (Frederick F.), formerly of avant-garde metal act Unexpect, formed after that band's split to keep exploring extended-range bass tunings and genre-collision songwriting. With Kevin Alexander (drums), Yoan MP (guitar), and Blaise Borboën (synths/strings/production), they mix progressive/djent metal with industrial-electronic and vocoder-heavy glitch textures — their 2023 album The Kvlt of Glitch even includes a Radiohead cover and was co-produced with Cryptopsy's Chris Donaldson. Some material started life as unfinished Unexpect ideas before being reworked into the new project.

Communionplay in the dock

BandcampSpotify

compare profiles →

London noisegrind/grindcore project (active c.2009-2023, also recording under the alias 'Spastic Burn Victim') blending full-tilt blastbeat grindcore with free-jazz-noise horn skronk and power-electronics-style synth abuse. Aural Aggravation dubbed its 2021 record Blood & Stomach Pills 'Improv-Free-Grind-Noise-Experimental-Avant-Jazzcore,' comparing the horn work to 'John Coltrane quadruple booked on the same stage as Extreme Noise Terror, Swans and The Incapacitants.' Prolific split/cassette output on Cruel Nature, Damien and Slime City Records.