Troldhaugen

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.

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SNAILFORCE! is the genre-hopping instrumental project of Greg Eldridge and Adam Stacey, based in Portland, Oregon, blending metal, Balkan, prog and other styles into what the band calls a "musical slime project." Adam Stacey is also known for recording with Estradasphere, Atomic Ape, Secret Chiefs 3, High Castle Teleorkestra and Igorrr. The band's debut, the two-track EP "Greg and Adam's Wilderness Adventure," was released on May 24, 2024, mixed and mastered by Justin Phelps at The Hallowed Halls, with a rotating cast of guest players on strings, horns, shamisen and more.

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.

Chryst is the solo, present-day moniker of Christof Niederwieser, who founded the Austrian avant-garde black metal band Korova in Innsbruck in 1990, continued it as Korovakill from 2000, then released the sole Chryst album PhantasmaChronica (2011). Niederwieser also sang on Angizia's first two studio albums.

Paris's 6:33 build unpredictable, theatrical avant-metal around rotating lead vocalists and songs that swerve from grinning electronic pop hooks ('I'm a Nerd') to widescreen prog-metal bombast. Signed to Kaotoxin Records for 2015's Deadly Scenes, the band draws comparisons to Devin Townsend's maximalism and Diablo Swing Orchestra's genre-hopping theatrics. Multi-vocalist trade-offs and electronic texture keep the material feeling more like a revue than a conventional metal band.

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Rabbit Rabbit Radio is the song-a-month art-pop duo of Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi, both formerly of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Founded in February 2012, the project releases a new song to Bandcamp subscribers on the first day of every month, collecting them into yearly volume albums. Drawing on art song, folk song, industrial and improvised music and heart-wrenching balladry, their songs are described as raw, beautiful, sparse and rich. The core duo is expanded in performance and recording by Jeremy Flower and Jon Evans.

Ensoph is an Italian avant-garde gothic/industrial metal project from Venice, active from 1997 (emerging from the prog-doom band Endaymynion) into the 2010s and signed at various points to Cruz del Sur Music. Their name, Hebrew for 'infinity,' signals the band's abiding interest in esotericism, Kabbalah and apocalyptic theology, filtered through a sound that moved from dense avant-garde gothic metal on early records toward techno/industrial-driven arrangements by 2009's Rex Mundi X-Ile. Critics likened aspects of their sound to The Kovenant and Marilyn Manson, though the arrangements were often described as 'busy' to the point of overcrowded.

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.

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Creatvre is the solo project of French multi-instrumentalist Raphaël Fournier (Paris), who performs every instrument himself — guitars, bass, drums, synths, trombone, trumpet, and saxophone. His 2025 album Toujours Humain (released via I, Voidhanger Records) is described by critics as progressive black metal fused with electronica, industrial metal, and choral/symphonic elements, built around a 'cyber-industrial' concept of humanity dissolving into technology. The prior album Eloge de l'Ombre (2021) was named album of the year by Metal Hammer Spain.

Flagman is a funk-metal/avant-metal band founded in 2015 in Orlando, Florida by bassist-vocalist Sam Stewart and guitarist Cody Singleton, later relocating to Seattle, Washington. Their sound centers on Stewart's Les Claypool-indebted slap bass and theatrical, character-voiced vocals, wearing clear influences from Primus, Mr. Bungle, System of a Down, and Faith No More across releases like 'Thank You, Come Again' (2022), 'Tastes Incredible' (2024), and the industrial-tinged EP 'Before The Blast' (2025). Press coverage has also compared their more recent, blunter material to 'funky Chat Pile.'

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