Rejectionary Art
United States · formed 2012
LA duo of guitarist Lee Wanner and vocalist Paula Stefanini, active since 2012, fusing djent, jazz-fusion, blues and country into a genre-scrambling avant-garde metal project. Their two albums, Butterfly (2012) and Exocoetidae: Flying Fish (2013), pair death-metal vocal bursts with virtuosic, humor-laced composition. Guest musicians on Exocoetidae include prog drummers Morgan Ågren and Marco Minnemann.
SCORE PROFILE
Accent numbers counted towards the index. Hover an axis — or hold it on a phone — for what it means.
WHY THOSE SCORES
- Jazzy 6 — Bandcamp/press describe 'bizarre jazz guitar tones' and '20th century avant garde harmonies' on Butterfly (2012).
- Hardcore 2 — Djent-adjacent heavier passages sit alongside the death-vocal bursts.
- Death 4 — Reviewers describe Paula Stefanini's vocals as 'female death metal vocals' mixed with clean singing.
- Technical 7 — Djent/prog fusion with 'impossible rhythms' and polymetric riffs (RYM description of Butterfly).
- Glitch 3 — Exocoetidae: Flying Fish (2013) mixes in 'odd vocal experimentation' and electronic textures.
- Theatrical 3 — Press/fan reviews repeatedly cite humor and unpredictable genre-hopping as part of the project's character.
- Folk 3 — Bandcamp genre tags for both albums include Country alongside Metal/Blues/Jazz/Funk.
MEMBERS
- Paula Stefaninivocals
- Lee Wannerguitar
FURTHER LISTENING
Nearest score profiles in the atlas.
- UnaffiliatedEI 21Tantric BileJazzyTechnicalDeath
Tantric Bile is the solo avant-death/free-jazz project of North American multi-instrumentalist Matt Stephens, who also leads Effluence and Neural Indent; the name is a nod to a Painkiller track. Since 2021 it has released a steady stream of albums on Stephens' own Putrefactive Recordings, blending guttural goregrind vocals with squealing saxophone-adjacent woodwinds, film samples and John Zorn/Naked City-style jump-cut composition, often joined by regular Effluence collaborators Paul Acuña and Ollie Burgess.
- UnaffiliatedEI 17Azure EmoteTechnicalDeathJazzy
Azure Emote is an avant-garde death metal project founded in New York in 2003 by illustrator/vocalist Mike Hrubovcak (Monstrosity, Vile) as an outlet 'to express personal negativity without the genre limitations often present within Extreme Metal.' Built around a core band with guitarist Ryan Moll, bassist Kelly Conlon, drummer Mike Heller and violinist Pete Johansen, the project layers in shifting rosters of guest musicians — female vocalists, saxophone, harmonica, keyboards — to give nearly every song its own distinct color. Releases including The Gravity of Impermanence (2013) and The Third Perspective (2020) have come out on Selfmadegod Records.
- UnaffiliatedEI 16AkphaezyaTechnicalJazzyDeath
Akphaezya are a self-described 'eklektik metal' band from Orléans, France, active since 2002 and built around guitarist/concept-writer Stephan H. Zag-Zero's multi-album story arcs. Reviewers (French-Metal.com, Metal Archives) describe them freely mixing death metal, jazz, gothic, stoner, and cabaret/bal-musette elements, with critics drawing style comparisons to Unexpect, Diablo Swing Orchestra, and Pin-Up Went Down (no documented member/label overlap with those acts was found). Vocal duties have passed from the operatic, ethnically-inflected Nehl Aëlin to current singer Hakata Ooh.
- UnaffiliatedEI 14PeculateTechnicalJazzyGlitch
Peculate is the solo avant-garde/progressive metal project of American composer Ben Norton, self-releasing everything for free since 2012 under a self-styled 'Metal in Opposition' banner. Norton fuses djent and mathcore aggression with 12-tone technique, Zappa-esque jazz-fusion tangents and polished production, occasionally detouring into satirical protest-song territory (2015's viral 'This Sick Beat™'). It reads as a bedroom-scale answer to the Zorn/Zappa strand of metal-adjacent avant-composition.
- UnaffiliatedEI 20CyraxTechnicalJazzyDeath
Cyrax are a Milan progressive metal band formed in 2012 around Marco Cantoni, whose sound has grown steadily more eclectic across three albums (Reflections 2013, Pictures 2015, Experiences 2020, plus 2021 EP Metamorphosis and 2023's Novo Deus). Bandcamp tags the catalog Electronic/Jazz/Metal/Progressive Metal/Progressive Rock/Folk, and RateYourMusic double-tags 2020's Experiences as Progressive Metal and Avant-Garde Metal; reviewers describe it mixing 'celtic, death metal, thrash, jazz fusion, rock prog, bluegrass and Stravinski influences,' with choir passages, ukulele, ambient electronics/soundscape (courtesy of drummer Lorenzo Beltrami), and carnival-style interludes with flutes sitting alongside death-metal growls.
- UnaffiliatedEI 22Mats/MorganTechnicalJazzyGlitch
Mats/Morgan is a Swedish avant-fusion duo of keyboardist Mats Öberg (blind since birth) and drummer Morgan Ågren, playing together since the early 1980s. Their music is a hyper-virtuosic, genre-splicing brew of jazz fusion, avant-prog, free improvisation, electronica and modern classical, delivered with a mischievous sense of humor. Discovered as teenagers by Frank Zappa after he heard them perform in Stockholm in 1988, the pair went on to appear in his Zappa's Universe projects and have recorded prolifically for Cuneiform Records.
- UnaffiliatedEI 10Eigenstate ZeroTechnicalJazzyDeath
Eigenstate Zero is the solo project of Stockholm metal veteran Christian Ludvigsson, launched in 2018 to fuse progressive death metal with Frank Zappa-style jazz-fusion excess. Across Sensory Deception, Machinery of Night, The Malthusian and Shape of God Thought of Sun, Ludvigsson stacks odd time signatures and weird electronic/synth textures over a death-metal chassis, filling 'passages of eclectic weirdness' between the heavy sections.
- ZornEI 13Trevor Dunn's Trio-ConvulsantTechnicalJazzy
Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant is the avant-garde jazz vehicle of Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, active since 1997 and built on the idea of a compositional jazz trio that also wields rock's power chords — AllMusic called the result "moody jazz with convulsive rock." The group debuted with Debutantes & Centipedes (1998, Buzz Records) featuring guitarist Adam Levy and drummer Kenny Wollesen, then re-emerged on Ipecac with Sister Phantom Owl Fish (2004) in a new lineup with guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Ches Smith. That trio returned on Séances (2022, Pyroclastic Records), expanded by the chamber quartet Folie à Quatre — including Sleepytime Gorilla Museum violinist Carla Kihlstedt — for music inspired by the 18th-century French Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard.
- UnaffiliatedEI 13Gonin-Ish (五人一首)TechnicalJazzyDeath
Tokyo progressive/avant-garde metal quintet active since 1997, built around keyboardist Masashi Momota's sweeping piano work and vocalist Anoji Matsuoka's genre-hopping delivery, from spitting growls to a more crooned register. The band favors through-composed 'movements' over verse-chorus form, blending death metal weight with jazz and fusion harmony; their 2005 sophomore album Naishikyo-Sekai reached the West via a 2008 Season of Mist reissue. Early drummer Junichi Harashima left the band (replaced by Gaku Yamaguchi around 2006) to become the longtime drummer of fellow Japanese avant-garde metal act Sigh.
- UnaffiliatedEI 12Killing SpreeTechnicalJazzyDeath
Killing Spree is a French avant-jazz/death-metal duo of saxophonist Matthieu Metzger (Klone, Orchestre National de Jazz) and drummer Grégoire Galichet (Deathcode Society, Kwoon), formed after the pair met on a tour of Japan. Their 2020 debut EP A Violent Legacy reworked Death and Meshuggah tracks through saturated free-jazz saxophone and talkbox, and their 2024 full-length Camouflage (Klonosphere/Season of Mist) pushes further into technical, hardcore-adjacent death-metal-via-jazz territory. Not to be confused with several unrelated straight thrash-metal bands of the same name.