Shining (Norway)

Stagnant Waters is a Franco-Norwegian avant-garde project built around multi-instrumentalist Camille Giraudeau (Smohalla), joined by vocalist Svein Egil 'Zweizz' Hatlevik (Fleurety, ex-Dødheimsgard) and woodwinds/drums player Aymeric Thomas (Pryapisme). Reviewers describe the music as jittering between free jazz, glitch electronics, black metal and mathy dadaist improvisation, with a 2024 comeback album, Rifts, following a 2012 self-titled debut.

Mastery is the avant-garde black metal solo project of San Francisco Bay Area musician Ephemeral Domignostika (also of Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, Pale Chalice, and Ulthar), active in demo form since 2004. Its 2015 debut full-length Valis, released on The Flenser, is a Philip K. Dick-inspired concept album that critics called 'free jazz black metal' built from cut-up techniques and spontaneous composition rather than traditional songwriting. Earlier releases include a string of limited demos and the 2011 compilation Barbaric Usurpation of the Hypereonic Black Metal Throne.

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Ephel Duath was an Italian avant-garde metal band from Padua, active 1998-2014 and led throughout by guitarist Davide Tiso. Their sound is 'an unorthodox combination of hardcore punk and jazz fusion,' recruiting players from jazz, blues, funk and progressive backgrounds. Later lineups featured vocalist Karyn Crisis and drummer Marco Minnemann, and the band released through Code666, Earache and Agonia Records.

Tabernacle ov Thee Flesh is a Brazilian avant-garde/experimental black metal project from Joinville, released via Ultra Gash Records, featuring Naboth E. Coli (vocals, keyboards), L. Borgia Rossetti (guitar, also of Esmectatons and Os Legais) and Leal Barroso (drums, also of Esmectatons and Zombie Cookbook). Their sole album Versículos de Autoflagelo (2021) comprises 25 short tracks forming one continuous suite steeped in free improvisation, jazz and noise traditions.

Nirrti is a solo psychedelic black metal project based in Orlová, Czechia, signed to Depressive Illusions Records. The project's music has been described as eerie, dissonant, and 'progressive black metal played through the lens of psychedelics and jazz,' aiming to convey darkness, uncertainty, and glimpses of other dimensions rather than adhering to traditional black metal norms. Releases include 'Psychonautix' (2022), 'Palindromos' (2023), and 'Cyberpsychosis' (2024), the latter continuing the project's cyber/psychedelic conceptual throughline.

Volto! is an American jazz-fusion jam band based in Los Angeles, best known as the side project of Tool drummer Danny Carey. Formed in the early 2000s from improvised sessions with guitarist John Ziegler and bassist Lance Morrison at a San Fernando Valley jazz club, the group spent nearly a decade as a live-only act before releasing its debut album Incitare (2013) on Fantasy Records. Their heady, genre-spinning instrumental sound bridges King Crimson, Liquid Tension Experiment, and 1970s fusion, foregrounding the improvisation that Carey has cited as his main motivation for the project.

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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.

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Steve Blanco is the bassist and keyboardist of New York avant-garde metal act Imperial Triumphant, but his solo catalog runs on piano: the jazz-rooted Steve Blanco Trio records (Contact, Piano Warrior) gave way to increasingly extreme solo works like Misztikus and 2026's Shadow Arc Suite. The latter pairs virtuosic, Coltrane-indebted improvisation and modernist/serialist piano writing with programmed blast beats, atonal guitar, and ambient textures — an 'extreme ensemble' piece dragging free jazz and metal violence into the same room.

In Lingua Mortua is a Norwegian project founded in 1999 by Lars Fredrik Frøislie, fusing 1970s progressive rock with black metal via Mellotron, Hammond organ and harmonica. Its 2010 album Salon des Refusés is frequently cited as a forerunner of the 'blackjazz' sound, featuring guest saxophone and bass clarinet from Jørgen Munkeby of Shining (Norway).

Skin Tension is a Nashville, Tennessee experimental duo of Joshua D. Byrd and Edward Longo, working across avant-garde metal, dissonant black metal, mathcore, and free improvisation. Their sprawling discography, including the 27-hour, 131-track compilation Omni, mixes noise, ambient textures, jazz, and glitch electronics with metal aggression. The 2023 album Celebrant marked the project's first fully composed release after years of improvisation-based recording, made at their home studio The Valley of Defilement in Nashville.