Self Spiller

Solo avant-garde metal/jazz-fusion project of Raphaël Beaudouin, a musician based in Bois-Guillaume near Rouen, France, who writes, performs, and records every instrument himself — electro-acoustic guitar, clarinet, bass, drums, keyboard — layered with 8-bit sounds and glitch electronics. His 20-track album Pahilcé Koot (self-released, March 2020) is a rapid-fire run of short, absurdly titled vignettes, with Beaudouin citing Pryapisme, Igorrr, Mr. Bungle, Pin-Up Went Down, CHON, and Gentle Giant as touchstones.

Travail, Famille, Batterieplay in the dock

Bandcamp

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Sleep Paralysis is a 2025 avant-garde black metal project from San Diego by Stephen Knapp, also known for the dissonant black metal band Cerulean, released via I, Voidhanger Records. The self-titled debut is a concept album about fever dreams, anxiety and sleep paralysis, blending dissonant black metal with jazz, classical, chiptune and vaporwave elements across 11 tracks. The project's only credited guest is Lorenzo Kemp, who contributes a guitar solo on one track.

Cojum Dip is an avant-garde jazz-metal project founded by multi-instrumentalist Bora Karaca in Ann Arbor, Michigan around 2004, fusing metal, jazz, opera and math rock beneath a mythology of five costumed fictional 'members' portrayed by live musicians. The band is known for raucous theatrical shows (wrestling masks, capes, acrobatics, on-stage video games) and for the 2012 Videojuegos volumes of instrumental Mega Man covers, while the 2014 self-titled record features guest vocals from Joe Hawley of Tally Hall — a band for which Karaca served as an honorary 'orange-tie' member. It stands well apart from anything currently in the atlas.

Winterquilt is a Liverpool, UK solo project blending black metal roots (citing Leviathan and early Anaal Nathrakh as influences) with MIDI-based vaporwave production discovered around 2016. The 2020 LP O'discordia, described by its own label as 'multi-genre black metal infused experimental midi vaporwave with baroque undertones,' was pressed on colored vinyl by Repose Records and reissued via Season of Mist, and includes a featured collaboration with Fire-Toolz. The artist has said the project has drawn black metal and vaporwave listeners into each other's scenes.

O'discordia (feat. Fire-Toolz)play in the dock

Spotify

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High Castle Teleorkestra is a remote avant-fusion "supergroup" assembled during the pandemic by Estradasphere alumni Tim Smolens and guitarist Chris Bogen, with members scattered across the US, Norway, Australia and France. Their 2022 debut, "The Egg That Never Opened" (released on Art As Catharsis), retells Philip K. Dick's "Radio Free Albemuth" through a cacophonous fusion of Eastern European folk, swing jazz, exotica and technical metal. The lineup draws on Estradasphere, Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Farmers Market and Umlaut.

The Sprawlcosm was a Vienna, Austria act active 1999-2005 (performing as Sprawl until 2001) that fused black metal's blast beats and shrieked vocals with industrial/EBM electronics, oriental-tinged scales, and jazz-adjacent touches. Their sole full-length, Cybionic Black Art (Silverhead Records, Dec 2000), juxtaposed programmed industrial textures and harsh black metal aggression with acoustic guitar and symphonic keyboard passages.

Grey Aura are a Dutch avant-garde/experimental black metal band from Utrecht, active since the mid-2010s, known for sprawling concept albums — one dealing with a doomed 1596 Arctic expedition, another with a fictional early-20th-century Spanish/Dutch painter. Their work folds flamenco guitar, brass, and jazz-fusion textures into a blackened, noise-inflected framework, and they have performed full-album sets at Roadburn Festival.

Empalot were a French experimental band formed in the Landes in 1998 by Gojira's Joe and Mario Duplantier with friends from Joe's high-school thrash band. Self-described as "terroir metal," they welded alternative metal, jazz fusion, funk rock and avant-garde noise to burlesque, self-deprecating theatre, with members costumed as axes, clouds and flowers on stage. Conceived as the festive antithesis of Gojira, the group toured France between 1999 and 2004 and released a single studio album, Tous aux Cèpes (2002), before going on hiatus. The Duplantier brothers performed under the aliases Vensceslas Podoldo and Daniel Pestous.

Tous Aux Cèpes (full album)play in the dockcompare profiles →

Troldhaugen are a self-described 'circus-metal-prog-folk-rock' outfit from Wollongong, Australia, formed in 2008, fusing Frank Zappa-style genre-hopping with Danny Elfman-esque orchestration and electronic 'Skrillex-ian' edits. The band began as a folk-metal duo before growing into a larger chaotic ensemble, releasing albums including Obzkure Anekdotez and Idio+syncrasies (2017) through Bird's Robe Records.

Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by guitarist and composer Fred Frith (Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew, Naked City). All About Jazz described their sound as existing somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock. The quintet released Ragged Atlas (2010) and The Letter (2012) on Switzerland's Intakt Records, followed by Z Sides (2024). Its lineup draws together members of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with longtime Frith collaborator Zeena Parkins.