Violent Magic Orchestra

Crystalline Thunderbolts Pierce the Sacred Mountain is a synth-driven raw black metal / dark ambient project of prolific Dutch multi-instrumentalist Maurice 'Mories' de Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues, Cloak of Altering, De Magia Veterum, Obscuring Veil, Aderlating, Seirom). Releases like Blessed Hands Touch the Ophanim Under the Golden Rainbows (2023) and Shine Like the Suicidal Madness of the Sacred Amethyst (2024) are built from 'wild keyboard music exclusively' — chaotic, saturated electronic textures layered with black-metal atmosphere and grandiose, scripture-tinged song titles about celestial beings. It's tagged avant-garde/symphonic/black metal on metal.academy and functions as one more mutation in de Jong's sprawling, genre-blurring catalog.

The Kovenant are a Norwegian band formed in 1992 (as Covenant) in Hamar that began in symphonic black metal and reinvented itself as industrial/cyber 'space metal' after its 1999 rename. The pivotal 1998 album Nexus Polaris, released on Nuclear Blast, drew in Mayhem drummer Jan Axel 'Hellhammer' Blomberg, who has remained the band's drummer. Fronted by Lex Icon (ex-Dimmu Borgir) and Psy Coma, their programming-drenched sound sits at the electronic edge of the Norwegian avant-black scene.

Choronzon is a merger of two unrelated American projects — Florida black-metaller P. Emerson Williams and San Francisco industrial artist Demitria Monde Thraam — who discovered each other online in 2002 and combined forces. What resulted, starting with 1998's Samoth-signed Magog Agog, is ritualistic, electronics-soaked black-industrial metal conceived explicitly as ceremonial music for occult initiates. Williams' background in London's FoolishPeople theatre troupe, where he literally played the demon Choronzon on stage, leaks into everything the band does.

Perdurabo (Magog Agog)play in the dock

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The Wicked was a short-lived (1999-c.2005) Finnish melodic black/industrial/avant-garde metal act from Uusimaa, released on Spikefarm Records, built around Necrotron (guitars, keyboards - real name Henri 'Trollhorn' Sorvali, also of Moonsorrow and Finntroll) and vocalist Lucius M.K. Their two albums, ...For Theirs Is the Flesh (2002) and Sonic Scriptures of the End Times (2004), pile industrial beats, voice-over samples, and symphonic/new-age keyboard writing onto a black-metal chassis, drawing comparisons to a metal Danny Elfman scoring a Tim Burton film. It's a genuinely odd, theatrical corner of the late-90s/early-2000s Finnish extreme scene.

Occulted Death Stance is the central sonic-ritual vehicle of English outsider collective Anti-Social Kultur England (A.S.K.E.), fusing raw black metal with power-noise electronics, industrial abrasion, and oi-punk snarl across a steady stream of cassette and vinyl releases (Feathered Serpent, Crush Your Enemies, Wake & Hate). The music favors confrontational noise-collage and ritualistic atmosphere over conventional song structure. It reads less like death metal and more like black metal's junk-electronics/noise fringe.

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Liturgy is an American avant-garde black metal band from Brooklyn, founded in 2005 and led by composer-guitarist-vocalist Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix. The project is built around a self-authored 'transcendental black metal' philosophy and ranges from blast-driven maximalist black metal to the glitch/IDM electronics of The Ark Work and the choral, orchestral scope of later records like 93696. Critically prominent, The Ark Work was named the #1 avant-garde album of 2015 by both Spin and Rolling Stone.

Parisian avant-garde post-black metal project led by AK (also of Merrimack and Vorkreist, both off-atlas), pairing abrasive tremolo-driven black metal with electro/industrial samples and symphonic passages. The discography runs as two philosophical concept trilogies — the first drawing on neurologist Henri Laborit, the second (starting with 'Johannes,' 2021) on Soren Kierkegaard, continuing through 'Wilhelm' (2025). Released on Agonia Records.

Diev Videplay in the dock

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Folgers is the 'Cult of Folgers' — a Tennessee bedroom project built around raw black metal and harsh noise, entirely fixated on the Folgers coffee brand as a running joke/lore concept (album titles include 'Damn Right, It's Folgers!' and 'Folgers Hates Maxwells'). Main contributor Hystalgia handles vocals/screams/growls, guitar, bass, synths, noise and production, blending household-object noise sources (shower, microwave, coffee maker) into the black-metal base, with Sikaydah contributing cover art and noise. The project is absurdly prolific — dozens of releases since its founding in December 2021 via the DIY label Lucid Haze Productions — culminating in the 2024 full-length 'Summoning of the Folgers.'

Xpelleir is a long-running, deliberately absurdist Birmingham (UK) cybergrind project fusing raw/industrial black metal with vaporwave and Y2K internet-culture aesthetics — programmed blasts, sampled telephone tones, and mock-corporate conceptual staging (its 2022 album Blackmetal.com imagines black metal fandom as a virtual marketplace). Active on and off since 2009 under mainstay Lazer Rot, with a rotating cast of guitarists and vocalists.

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A one-man Icelandic project from scene veteran Thordur Bjornsson (also of Illkynja, Hrae and Endalok), built on cavernous, chaotic black metal soaked in murky, oppressive atmosphere. Schizomenous // (2020) and Canvas of a New Dawn (2021) weave in drum machine, synths, field recordings and unsettling radio-broadcast samples. Released through UK label Onism Productions in small limited runs.

Paraklēsisplay in the dock

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