Sarmat

ByoNoiseGenerator are a five-piece avant-garde/brutal death metal and deathgrind band from Perm, Russia, formed in 2014, built around a dedicated saxophone player alongside the standard metal lineup. Their three LPs (Turbulent Biogenesis 2015, Neuromechanica 2018, Subnormal Dives 2025) blend insanely technical grindcore with freeform jazz, funk (Primus-style) guitar work and drum-and-bass detours. Subnormal Dives (2025) drew coverage from Angry Metal Guy, The Progressive Subway and Everything Is Noise for this jazz/deathgrind hybrid.

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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.

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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.

Death, formed in Florida in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Chuck Schuldiner, is the foundational American death metal band - its 1987 debut Scream Bloody Gore is widely cited as one of the genre's first records. Across seven albums Schuldiner, the sole constant member, steered the band from raw, gory death metal toward an increasingly technical and progressive style, culminating in Human (1991), Individual Thought Patterns (1993) and Symbolic (1995). That later era wove jazz-fusion musicianship into extreme metal, drawing on Cynic's Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert and Steve DiGiorgio's fretless bass. The band ended with Schuldiner's death from brain cancer in 2001.

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Ar'lyxkq'wr is a UK/US dissonant blackened death metal project formed in 2022, releasing a rapid string of full-lengths and EPs (Ss'unnhl, N'yxlwrr, R'ynn'wr(yx), Nry'lwn(rh)) through the Centipede Abyss collective/label. Its cryptic, unpronounceable apostrophe-and-diacritic-laden song and album titles mirror a compositional approach aimed at 'disintegrating' the vocabulary of technical death metal — pushing beyond Portal- and Gorguts'-Obscura-style dissonance into near-total structural collapse. Members perform under similarly cryptic pseudonyms and are tied to a cluster of like-minded underground projects (Apothecary, Cave, Act of Entropy) within the same scene.

Dethklok is the real-world melodic death metal act behind Brendon Small's animated series Metalocalypse, with Small performing guitars, lead vocals, bass and keyboards and Gene Hoglan (Strapping Young Lad, Death, Dark Angel) on drums since the 2007 debut The Dethalbum. Powered by Hoglan's blast beats and Small's technical shredding, the studio project became the highest-charting death metal act in Billboard 200 history at the time. Its over-the-top satirical concept culminated in the sung-through metal opera The Doomstar Requiem (2013). The touring lineup has drawn on Zappa/Vai-school virtuosos including Bryan Beller, Mike Keneally and Nili Brosh.

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Panzerballett is a Munich jazz-metal quintet founded in 2004 and led by guitarist-composer Jan Zehrfeld, fusing delicate interlocking funk grooves with brutally hard, polyrhythmic Meshuggah-informed riffs and genuine jazz improvisation. Alongside Zehrfeld's originals they stage virtuosic reinterpretations spanning Deep Purple, Meshuggah and Weather Report, and are known for comedic, theatrical live shows. Signed to ACT Records, their guest-heavy albums (e.g. Planet Z, Übercode Œuvre) recruit elite fusion drummers.

Dagtum is a Filipino death metal trio from Pateros formed by veterans of the local extreme-metal underground, including Adam Carlo Along of Legion and brothers Ronaldo Jr. and Ronnel Vivo of Basalt Shrine. Their 2021 debut Revered Decadence (Eastbreath Records) folds dissonant, sludge-thickened death metal into jazz-inflected improvisation and creepy, horror-soundtrack atmosphere, drawing comparisons to Gorguts, Ulcerate and Portal.

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Ingurgitating Oblivion are a German death metal band (active as such since 2002, roots in 1997) built around founder-guitarist Florian Engelke. Their later work, especially Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light (2017) and Ontology of Nought (2024), moved into progressive, dissonant, avant-garde death metal, lacing Gorguts-style dissonance with jazz guitars, vibraphone, piano and musical saw, and drawing openly on Ligeti, Bartok and jazz. With Defeated Sanity's Lille Gruber on drums for the pivotal 2017 record, they became a fixture of the explorative death-metal underground.

The Dr. Orphyus Project is the solo vehicle of Ryan Morris, a death-metal/jazz-fusion outfit based in Clay City, Illinois and active since 2001 (per Metal Archives) with a discography running from the 2001 self-titled EP through 2011's Death Jazz and 2016's The Roustabout. Morris plays guitar, trombone, and vocals, weaving swing, Latin, grind, and even polka passages into extreme-metal songwriting, citing Mr. Bungle and Agoraphobic Nosebleed as touchstones. Comic-book concept releases (the Death Nouveau series) and an animated Death Jazz feature underline the project's theatrical, genre-scrambling bent.

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