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Dawn of a Dark Age is the main vehicle of Italian multi-instrumentalist Vittorio Sabelli (aka Eurynomos), formed in 2014 and joined on vocals/drums by Emanuele Prandoni (also of Progenie Terrestre Pura) from 2020. A trained classical and jazz musician, Sabelli gives the clarinet and acoustic guitar a leading role within an avant-garde black metal framework, layering in saxophone, choral chant, spoken word, and Italian folk melody. The catalogue includes the five-part The Six Elements series (2014-2017) and the Samnite-history-themed La Tavola Osca (2020) and Le Forche Caudine (2021).

I Regi Tratturiplay in the dock

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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.

Anubi were a Lithuanian avant-garde/experimental black metal band from Kaunas, active 1992-2002, built around frontman Martynas Meskauskas ('Lord Ominous,' also a noted painter) and themed around death and Egyptian mythology. Their sole full-length, Kai pilnaties akis uzmerks mirtis (1997, Danza Ipnotica Records), wove piano, saxophone, accordion, and natural sound recordings into their black metal, and was reissued in 2025 by Inferna Profundus Records. The band dissolved after Meskauskas drowned in a sailing accident on Lake Michigan in March 2002.

Kodel Sustoje Mirties Laikrodziaiplay in the dock

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Ashenspire is a Glasgow avant-garde/progressive black metal act formed in 2015, one of Scotland's most distinctive experimental metal bands. Their acclaimed 2022 album 'Hostile Architecture' (Code666) welds black-metal dissonance to avant-garde jazz, weaving saxophone, violin, Rhodes and prepared piano beneath vocalist Alasdair Dunn's Sprechstimme delivery. Lyrically it is a scathing, class-conscious critique of late capitalism, gentrification and urban design.

The Law of Asbestosplay in the dock

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Solefald is a Norwegian avant-garde metal duo formed in 1995 by Cornelius Jakhelln and Lars Are 'Lazare' Nedland. They build on a black-metal foundation while folding in clean vocals, piano, jazz guitar, classical passages, punk, electronic components and folk rhythms, self-described as 'Red Music With Black Edges.'

Pensées Nocturnes is the avant-garde black metal project of French composer Léon Harcore (formerly Vaerohn), founded as a solo studio endeavor in Paris in 2008 before Harcore assembled a live band in 2016. Fusing black metal fundamentals with musette, cabaret, tango, and neoclassical orchestration, the project's Grand Guignol Orchestra (2019) and Douce Fange (2022) have been called 'the most French a black metal album can possibly be.' The band records for Les Acteurs de l'Ombre Productions and has performed at festivals including Hellfest (2018).

Gnole, Torgnoles et Roubignolesplay in the dock

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Bjeima is the Oslo-based solo vehicle of a Norwegian multi-instrumentalist who also records as Alfa Obscura and has played bass for Virus. NoHoN (2024) folds Japanese Noh-theater aesthetics into a dissonant, avant-garde black-metal base, self-tagged as art metal, avantgarde metal, black metal, ethnic, oriental, progressive metal and world music. It sits in the disharmonic lineage of Virus and Ved Buens Ende, pulled toward theater rather than straight aggression.

Henget is a Finnish avant-garde black metal project founded in late 2021 by guitarist Jesse J. Heikkinen (also of The Abbey and Iterum Nata) and vocalist King Aleijster de Satan (of Saturnian Mist), signing to Season of Mist in September 2022. Their debut album Beyond North Star (May 2023) pursues a violent hallucinatory journey rooted in psychedelia, the occult, and ancient shamanism.

Henkivallatplay in the dock

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A Thuringian epic/symphonic black metal band that has drifted steadily toward progressive excess: synthesized orchestration, pagan/folk motifs, and, on 2023's Judasmesse, krautrock passages and a saxophone solo folded into second-wave-derived black metal. Bandcamp tags it avant-garde but most of the catalogue still sits inside melodic/symphonic black metal, with the experimentation concentrated on the later records.

Formed in 1991 by Alexander Nordgaren and Svein Egil Hatlevik, Fleurety began as a conventional Norwegian black metal band before radically expanding its palette: Min Tid Skal Komme (1995) folded in atonal harmonics and folk elements, and Department of Apocalyptic Affairs (2000) - produced by Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg - spans metal, jazz, trip-hop and electronica. Both records leaned heavily on the Norwegian avant-garde scene for guest performers, pulling in Mayhem's Hellhammer and Maniac, Ulver's Rygg (as vocalist "G. Playa") and Tore Ylwizaker on programming, Arcturus/Winds' Steinar "Sverd" Johnsen, and Borknagar's Knut Magne Valle; a later 2009 EP brought in Mayhem's Hellhammer and Necrobutcher again alongside Thorr's Hammer vocalist Runhild Gammelsæter.