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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

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NekRock is a one-person Russian (Moscow-based) avant-garde/electronic metal project, self-described as 'avant-aesthetique,' fusing cybergrind, black metal, and harsh noise with trance, house, and jazz elements.

XHOHX are a duo who describe their own music, in their own words, as "Chaotic and Organic No Wave, Poly-rhythmic and Atonal Music" — which is both accurate and about as much help as it sounds. Ramon Ribas Coca plays guitar and programs the drums, Oregolakatzor plays bass, and the result is heavy avant-rock built out of angular, disharmonic riffing that never repeats a bar it could complicate instead. Reviewers reach for Ruins, the Flying Luttenbachers and Univers Zero, and hear an industrial edge that comes from the rhythmic construction rather than from any electronics — the programmed drums are deliberately played straight, close enough to a human kit that the review noting them also notes you cannot really tell. Growled shouts surface between the instrumental passages. Two albums in eleven years, then a 2013 split with Ahleuchatistas recorded either side of the Atlantic, and not much since.

Girth is a Seattle instrumental trio — guitarist Dave Webb and drummer Peijman Kouretchian expanding to triple-guitar with Blane Patnode and Mark Corier of Swarming Hordes — playing dense, through-composed 'tech hardcore' described by one zine as splitting the difference between Orthrelm and Guapo with oddball electronic and jazz detours. Their breakthrough 2006 EP 'Sleeper, Awaken!' is a single 19-minute, four-movement piece recorded with engineer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth) and released on Trey Spruance's Web of Mimicry label, directly tying the band into the Mr. Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3-adjacent avant-metal underground. The project wound down after 2009's 'deconstruction.', with members moving on to Wah Wah Exit Wound and Satya Sena.

Vomitatrix is a Jupiter, Florida-based noisecore/acid-grind project whose self-titled debut (July 2022) was recorded in Austin, TX and mixed by drummer Weasel Walter. The band bills itself as building on the legacy of Morbid Florist, delivering ten tracks of abrasive, dada-tinged grindcore. The lineup pairs Weasel Walter (also founder/leader of The Flying Luttenbachers) with bassist Tim Dahl (Child Abuse, Lydia Lunch Retrovirus), guitarist Rick Eye, and vocalist Gyna Bootleg.

The Dillinger Escape Plan was an American mathcore band formed in 1997 in Morris Plains, New Jersey, evolving from the hardcore band Arcane. Founded and anchored throughout by guitarist Ben Weinman, the group fused hardcore intensity, technical metal precision and jarring time changes across landmark releases including Calculating Infinity (1999), Miss Machine (2004), Ire Works (2007), One of Us Is the Killer (2013) and Dissociation (2016). After original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis departed, Greg Puciato fronted the band from 2001 until its disbandment in December 2017. The band reunited in 2023 to mark the 25th anniversary of their debut.

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Upsilon Acrux is an American avant-progressive / math rock band founded in 1998 by guitarist Paul Lai, who started the group near San Diego before relocating to Los Angeles. Built on interlocking twin-guitar counterpoint, odd meters and a frequently rotating cast of players around Lai as the sole constant, they trade in a dense, athletic, largely instrumental 'brutal prog' indebted to King Crimson and Japanese noise-rock forebears like Ruins. They released their most widely heard albums, Galapagos Momentum (2007) and Radian Futura (2009), on the Maryland avant-rock label Cuneiform Records.

Landscape with Gun and Chandelierplay in the dock

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Car Bomb is an American mathcore band from Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York, formed in 2000 from the merger of two local groups, Neck and Spooge. The quartet is known for a harsh, glitch-heavy and disorienting take on metal built on stop-on-a-dime tempo shifts and discordant riffing. After a 2007 Relapse Records debut, the band self-released the albums Meta (2016) and Mordial (2019), with Meta produced by Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier.

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Wetnurse was a Manhattan, New York City experimental metal/hardcore band active in the 2000s, releasing a self-titled album (2004) and Invisible City (2008, Seventh Rule Recordings, produced and mixed by Martin Bisi at BC Studios). Their sound fused early-hardcore urgency, AmRep-style noise-rock abrasion, death-metal heft, and classic-rock melodicism, with the band citing touchstones like Sonic Youth, Helmet, Voivod, Botch, Unsane, and Mr. Bungle. Drummer Curran Reynolds also later joined Today Is the Day; vocalist Gene Fowler has since passed away.

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.