Plague Organ

Obscuring Veil is an international avant-garde black metal project assembled in 2018 around Matron Thorn (also of Ævangelist) on guitars/vocals, with Maurice 'Mories' De Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues, De Magia Veterum) on keyboards/synths, H.V. Lyngdal (Wormlust) on bass/piano, Jarle Byberg (Urgehal) on drums, and Kabukimono on voices, releasing through I, Voidhanger Records. Their 2019 debut Fleshvoid to Naught was described by reviewers as black metal 'played by free jazz musicians,' a dissonant, ghostlike plunge into psychedelic murk.

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Avant-garde metal sextet from Poznań, Poland, founded in 2019 by guitarist Marcin Tuliszkiewicz and drummer Krzysztof Kulis. Their self-titled debut (10 January 2025) fuses black/death metal harshness with dark jazz, doomy drone and trumpet (Magdalena Andrys), driven by dual vocals between clean singer Julita Dąbrowska and growler Michał Sosnowski.

Kovtun is the (sur)realist noise/dark-ambient project of São Paulo, Brazil musician Raphael Mandra, active since around 2012-2013 with a large, prolific discography of atmospheric, ritualistic releases. Recent work like Black Goat (2026) layers post-metal and doom weight, calculated black metal flirtations, oppressive drone and improvised jazz textures over a dark-ambient/noise foundation. Mandra also records as Rádio Morto (citing Neurosis, Swans and Burzum as influences) and collaborated with fellow Brazilian act Umbilichaos on the 2018 album Belong to Nothing, conceived after a Neurosis show.

Chaos Echœs formed in Gueberschwihr, Alsace, in 2011, months after the split of blackened death metal trio Bloody Sign, built around guitarist Kalevi Uibo and drummer Ilmar Uibo alongside bassist Stefan Thanneur. Metal Archives tags the project 'Experimental Death Metal/Drone/Jazz,' and reviewers describe albums like Transient and Mouvement as death metal stretched into psychedelic, free-jazz-inflected drone territory, drawing comparisons to John Zorn's Moonchild. Their 2018 release Sustain was a collaboration with free-jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. The band was active until 2019, releasing through Sentient Ruin and Nuclear War Now! Productions.

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Xenoch is a solo New York City black-metal project stacking bardo-metal dissonance against chamber music, modern classical, and free-jazz textures. 2023's 'poison lotus corpse pearl' pairs blackened death riffing with classical and free-jazz Bandcamp tags across five sprawling 'sign' movements, while 2026's 'Shedding Broken Shells like Feathers' pushes further into electroacoustic, glitch, and xenharmonic/microtonal territory. Dense, philosophical liner notes about the 'abolition of the temporal dimension' frame the project as bedroom avant-garde black metal rather than a full band.

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Spintria is a free-jazz-inflected black/drone metal unit from Nashville, Tennessee, built around guitarist Ryan Clackner, keyboardist Edward Longo and drummer Josh Byrd, joined by guest saxophonist Colin Fisher. Their two full-lengths — a 2021 self-titled debut and 2022's Bacchanalia — stretch black-metal drone into side-long, saxophone-scorched free-improv freakouts that deliberately blur the line between written and improvised music. It's a small, DIY discography, but a genuinely strange one, closer to a free-jazz collective that occasionally detonates blast beats than a conventional metal band.

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Sigihl is a drone/doom/avant-garde metal act from the Silesian Voivodeship, Poland, formed in 2012, describing themselves as 'drone jazz from the hellyard.' Their sole full release, Trauermärsche (and a tango upon the world's grave) (2014, Arachnophobia Records), fuses sludge, doom, drone and black metal with saxophone, funereal atmosphere, and tango-inflected song titles.

Kyomdarak is a Japanese atmospheric/experimental black metal project from Gifu Prefecture, active since 2007 with a large self-released Bandcamp catalog (kyomdarak.bandcamp.com). Its sound favors drum-machine-driven rhythmic patterns, warbling synth atmospherics, and low-key drones layered under raw black-metal riffing rather than blast-beat aggression. Albums include "mugen" (2016), "Night and Sleep," and "A new ecosystem" (2024).

Lychgate is a London-based avant-garde black/doom metal band formed around 2011-2012, built on a foundation of pipe/church organ used as the compositional backbone of every track. Their influences span late-19th/early-20th-century art music, Rock in Opposition and musique concrete. They record for Debemur Morti Productions, with a discography running from the 2013 self-titled debut through 2025's 'Precipice.'

Dola are a Polish avant-garde black metal trio formed in Poznań in 2018 and now based in Toruń. Their sound couples a dissonant, aggressive black-metal backbone with ritual ambient, sludge/post-metal heaviness and pronounced jazz elements, the latter carried by Maras's trumpet. Recent album 'Tabernakulum' (2024, Piranha Music) swings between brutal dissonance and the atmospheric avant-garde passages that define the band.