Painkiller

Zu are an Italian avant-jazz/noise-metal trio formed in Ostia near Rome in 1997, built on the unconventional lineup of Luca T. Mai's baritone saxophone, Massimo Pupillo's bass and Jacopo Battaglia's drums. Their heaviest album, Carboniferous (2009), was their first release for Mike Patton's Ipecac Recordings. It features guest appearances by Mike Patton on vocals (notably on "Soulympics") and King Buzzo (Buzz Osborne) of the Melvins on guitar for "Chthonian."

Soulympics (with Mike Patton)play in the dock

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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.

Cleric is a Philadelphia avant-metal band formed in 2003, fusing grindcore, doom, mathcore and free-jazz-informed improvisation into dense, extended compositions built on Matt Hollenberg's mathy, technical guitar work. The band sits squarely in John Zorn's orbit: they're signed to Web of Mimicry (Trey Spruance's label), released Chokhma as part of Zorn's Tzadik box set The Book Beri'ah, and had Zorn himself guest on alto saxophone on Retrocausal's closer 'Grey Lodge' — with Mick Barr also guesting on guitar on the same record. Hollenberg additionally plays guitar in Secret Chiefs 3's UR lineup, giving Cleric a direct personnel tie into that avant-garde ecosystem beyond stylistic kinship.

An Oakland art-thrash unit fusing King Crimson-style tempo shifts and free-jazz saxophone skronk with Slayer-speed riffing, math-rock structure, and post-punk snarl. Signed to Crucial Blast for City of Dis (2005), critics placed them alongside Naked City and Yakuza for pushing metal and jazz into the same collapsing structure.

God were a London experimental collective founded in 1987 around Kevin Martin (later of The Bug and Zonal), fusing ambient, dub, free jazz and noise rock into a saxophone-led 'jazzcore' that passed through the grindcore and industrial-metal scenes. The project ballooned to a nine-piece and drew admirers including Bill Laswell and John Zorn, the latter contributing directly. Justin Broadrick, whose Godflesh Martin had heard on John Peel's radio show, produced the group's early releases before joining as guitarist; the debut EP Breach Birth appeared on Situation Two in 1990, followed by the album Possession on Virgin in 1992.

A Northern California one-man band whose 'Never Was' (2024) and 'Shriek' (Lou Kelly...and Friends) LPs bounce between jazzcore, mathcore, grindcore, crust punk and harsh-noise-wall under a self-described 'Progressive-Violence-Jazz' banner, all written, performed and produced solo. The 'Shriek' record began as a drunken online invitation for strangers to sing over Kelly's instrumentals and grew into a 14-track collaborative curio on the tiny label THE HILLS ARE DEAD Records. Listeners have likened the results to a heavier Mr. Bungle/Mike Patton side-project, though that is a stylistic comparison only — no verified personal connection exists.

Illogo is an experimental band from Ravenna, Italy, whose name is a play on 'il logo' ('the logo') after a stylized emblem designed by Stefano Ricci — the group reportedly avoided printing any band or album name on their physical releases. Their 2007 album 'When Liquids Stay Dry' fuses post-core/grindcore with industrial electronics and jazzy death-metal riffing into what reviewers called a bizarre, treble-heavy, near-avant-garde record; Discogs tags their catalog Death Metal, Grindcore, Industrial, Avantgarde, and Doom Metal. A 2012 follow-up, 'La sorgente del punto di rotazione,' marked a turn toward a leaner, more minimal sound.

Praxis is producer/bassist Bill Laswell's shape-shifting experimental project, built around a core trio of Laswell, guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brain (Bryan Mantia) that fuses funk, jazz, hip-hop, dub and heavy metal into highly improvised music. The 1992 debut Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) drew in P-Funk's Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins, while the harsher 1993/94 album Sacrifist added John Zorn on saxophone and ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris of Painkiller, plus vocalist Yamatsuka Eye. The result swings between noisy speed metal, dub and turntablist collage.

Kurushimi (苦しみ, 'suffering') is a Sydney improv collective founded in 2015 by bassist Andrew Mortensen, built around Zorn/Zappa-style conduction: two conductors flash hand signals mid-performance to steer a five-to-six-piece horn-and-rhythm ensemble through sudden lurches between free jazz, doom, freegrind, dub and noise. Reviewers reach for John Zorn, Ornette Coleman, Bill Laswell, Morbid Angel and Bohren & Der Club of Gore in the same breath to describe it, and the band's own 'doom jazz' tag undersells how far the improvisations range. It's one of the purest Naked City-lineage conduction projects to turn up on the avant-garde-metal chart, even without any documented direct tie to Zorn himself.

Chaos Remainsplay in the dock

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Yakuza is a Chicago avant-garde metal band formed in 1999, led by saxophonist/vocalist Bruce Lamont. They build a metal base with progressive flair, folding in free jazz saxophone and clarinet, world music, doom, grind, and post-rock ambience into a jazz-metal hybrid sometimes tagged 'jazzcore.' Their discography spans Way of the Dead (2002, Century Media), Samsara (2006) and Transmutations (2007, Prosthetic), Of Seismic Consequence (2010) and Beyul (2012, Profound Lore), and Sutra (2023, Svart Records).