Obuedian Raph

Five Pound Pocket Universe is a Zurich, Switzerland jazzcore trio founded in 2016 by drummer/composer Michel Barengo, saxophonist Andi Bissig, and guitarist Valentin Baumgartner. Their sole album, 'Brain Bubble Party' (2018), swings between pre-arranged jazz-metal themes and improvised noise built from samples and prepared/effected guitar, self-described as 'hyper sweet pastel jazzcore madness... spliced with lost cartoon snippets found in the places between channels.'

Self Spiller is a one-off avant-garde metal studio project helmed by Agalloch bassist Jason William Walton, assembling contributions from fourteen musicians worldwide into the 2015 album 'Worms in the Keys.' Compared to a collision of Mr. Bungle's California and Arcturus' La Masquerade Infernale.

Tub Ring is an experimental rock band formed in Chicago in 1992 and built around the enduring core duo of vocalist Kevin Gibson and keyboardist Rob Kleiner. Their frenetic, hairpin genre-swerving sound — colliding punk, new wave, noise, funk and electronics under sci-fi and cosmological lyrics — earned them a reputation as a kind of Midwestern Mr. Bungle, a comparison sealed when Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance produced their 2001 debut Drake Equation. Their concept-driven album titles (Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, Zoo Hypothesis, The Great Filter) riff on theories about extraterrestrial life.

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Hypomanic Daydream is the Chicago solo project of Manic Dream Girl, fusing dissonant avant-garde death metal with dizzying, 16-bit-RPG-battle-theme synth lines, jazz inflections and Rock-in-Opposition unpredictability. Launched in 2022 explicitly inspired by Homeskin's genre-blending, it has moved from raw EPs through a split with Homeskin to 2025's full-length The Yearning, and more recently into an industrial/electronic-leaning 'Hype-O' offshoot. Critics note it 'doesn't really sound like anyone else' in extreme metal, for better and worse.

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Spires of the Lunar Sphere is a two-piece experimental/avant-garde metal and nintendocore act from Daytona Beach, Florida, formed circa 2015 by Michael Smith and Brandon Jolly, blending chiptune/8-bit synths and programming with mathcore and post-hardcore riffing. Cited influences include Horse the Band, Mr. Bungle, The Number Twelve Looks Like You and Genghis Tron. Releases include the EP "Pangaea Ultima" (2015) and full-length "SIREN" (2017).

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Ground Zero was a Japanese improvising ensemble led by guitarist/turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, formed in 1990 to perform John Zorn's game piece Cobra and active until 1998. Its cut-and-splice orchestra collided free jazz, rock, noise and plunderphonics, pioneering turntables as a free-improv instrument on works like Revolutionary Pekinese Opera (1995), which resampled Chinese revolutionary opera. The band's Null & Void (1995) appeared on Zorn's Tzadik label, cementing its place in the Zorn/Downtown orbit.

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Cojum Dip is an avant-garde jazz-metal project founded by multi-instrumentalist Bora Karaca in Ann Arbor, Michigan around 2004, fusing metal, jazz, opera and math rock beneath a mythology of five costumed fictional 'members' portrayed by live musicians. The band is known for raucous theatrical shows (wrestling masks, capes, acrobatics, on-stage video games) and for the 2012 Videojuegos volumes of instrumental Mega Man covers, while the 2014 self-titled record features guest vocals from Joe Hawley of Tally Hall — a band for which Karaca served as an honorary 'orange-tie' member. It stands well apart from anything currently in the atlas.

Waxwolf is the solo project of Italian musician Federico 'Waxwolf' Di Cera, based in Modena, Italy, fusing progressive/technical death metal with chiptune electronics. Albums such as Civitas Solis, The Golden Room, and the 2025 EP Magic Madness Sadness layer jazz-adjacent acoustic instrumentation (clarinet, bassoon, flute, piano/Rhodes/Hammond, saxophone, banjo) over chiptune synths and death-metal riffing. Drums plus mixing/mastering are handled by Hannes Grossmann (known from Obscura/Alkaloid) at Mordor Sounds Studio.

Cursed Mantis is a 2020 collaborative 'synthgrind' concept album pairing Quebec electronic/industrial producer Gloom Influx with Swedish vocalist Alojla and noise/grind vocalist The Toilet. Subtitled 'A Synthgrind Opera in 19 Acts,' it tells an absurdist sci-fi story of cursed, cheese-obsessed alien mantises, swinging between chiptune interludes, synthwave passages, and blast-heavy grindcore.

High Castle Teleorkestra is a remote avant-fusion "supergroup" assembled during the pandemic by Estradasphere alumni Tim Smolens and guitarist Chris Bogen, with members scattered across the US, Norway, Australia and France. Their 2022 debut, "The Egg That Never Opened" (released on Art As Catharsis), retells Philip K. Dick's "Radio Free Albemuth" through a cacophonous fusion of Eastern European folk, swing jazz, exotica and technical metal. The lineup draws on Estradasphere, Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Farmers Market and Umlaut.