Vomitatrix

Car Bomb is an American mathcore band from Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York, formed in 2000 from the merger of two local groups, Neck and Spooge. The quartet is known for a harsh, glitch-heavy and disorienting take on metal built on stop-on-a-dime tempo shifts and discordant riffing. After a 2007 Relapse Records debut, the band self-released the albums Meta (2016) and Mordial (2019), with Meta produced by Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier.

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Nailbomb was an industrial-thrash side project formed in 1993 by Max Cavalera, then frontman of Sepultura, and English musician Alex Newport of Fudge Tunnel, welding grinding industrial metal and thrash to crust punk and sludge. Their lone studio album, Point Blank (Roadrunner, 1994), was cut largely by the duo with session help from Sepultura bandmates Igor Cavalera (drums) and Andreas Kisser (guitar) plus Fear Factory's Dino Cazares. The band played only a warm-up show and a set at the 1995 Dynamo Open Air Festival, documented on the live album Proud to Commit Commercial Suicide, before disbanding; its harsh, sample-laced attack became a cult touchstone of 90s extreme metal.

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The Dillinger Escape Plan was an American mathcore band formed in 1997 in Morris Plains, New Jersey, evolving from the hardcore band Arcane. Founded and anchored throughout by guitarist Ben Weinman, the group fused hardcore intensity, technical metal precision and jarring time changes across landmark releases including Calculating Infinity (1999), Miss Machine (2004), Ire Works (2007), One of Us Is the Killer (2013) and Dissociation (2016). After original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis departed, Greg Puciato fronted the band from 2001 until its disbandment in December 2017. The band reunited in 2023 to mark the 25th anniversary of their debut.

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Napalm Death are an English extreme-metal band formed in Meriden, near Coventry, in 1981, who - with landmark records Scum (1987) and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988) on Earache - practically defined grindcore by welding crust punk to death metal in extremely short, noise-filled blasts. Drummer Mick Harris, who joined in December 1985, popularized the blast beat before leaving to found the industrial/dub project Scorn. The pre-Scum lineup also briefly included guitarist Justin Broadrick, later of Godflesh.

Retox was formed in San Diego in 2011 by vocalist Justin Pearson and drummer Gabe Serbian, who had already spent years detonating grindcore convention together in The Locust. Trading that band's sci-fi costumes for stripped-down nihilist hardcore, Retox specialized in short, sharp blasts of noise-punk — their Ipecac debut Ugly Animals burns through eleven tracks in about thirteen minutes. Two further albums, YPLL (2013) and Beneath California (2015), followed on Epitaph before Pearson and guitarist Michael Crain carried the lineage into Dead Cross with Dave Lombardo and Mike Patton.

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Converge is an American band formed in 1990 in Salem, Massachusetts by vocalist/visual artist Jacob Bannon and guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou, and are pioneers of metalcore and its subgenre mathcore. Their fourth album, Jane Doe (2001), recorded when the classic four-piece lineup solidified with bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller, is a landmark of the genre. Guitarist Kurt Ballou runs GodCity Studio, making him one of heavy music's most prolific producers, while Bannon founded the label Deathwish Inc. in 1999. In 2021 the band released Bloodmoon: I, a collaboration with singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe.

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Cavalera Conspiracy is a Brazilian-American heavy metal supergroup formed in 2007 by brothers Max Cavalera (vocals/rhythm guitar) and Igor Cavalera (drums), reuniting the pair for the first time since Max left Sepultura in 1996. Trading in a raw fusion of thrash, groove, and death metal, the band made its debut with Inflikted (2008), on which Gojira's Joe Duplantier handled bass alongside guitarist Marc Rizzo. The project functions as a family channel for the brothers' primal, tribal-tinged riffing, running in parallel with Max's Soulfly and Igor's other work.

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Raxinasky is a Brussels, Belgium noise-core/mathcore/avant-garde metal outfit formed in 2001, self-described as 'Freemetal' and compared to Zu, Ruins, and Discordance Axis. Their records — the demo Koffie Anhal (2003), Transport de Viandes (2005), and The Anti-apopathodiaphulatophobicoustical Days (2008) — are built on abrupt time/dynamic shifts and swings between harsh extremes and gentler clean sections, with a trumpet in the original founding lineup.

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The Abodox (styled The AbodoX on some releases) were a Seattle band who formed in 1999 — the same year Dillinger Escape Plan's Calculating Infinity landed, which REDEFINE's review of their third album treats as the founding coincidence of the whole spazz-core lineage. Their thing is riff density taken past the point of sense: "riffs give way to riffs which give way to riffs within riffs, and by the time you start thinking 'that was cool, why didn't they stick to that for a while?' they've already cycled through eight more." Songs average about two minutes and Up The Excalibur (2009) is over in twenty-five. Blaine Patnode joined on second guitar from Seattle instrumental band The Swarming Hordes, making a two-guitar band out of a three-piece; the rhythm section pulled double duty in Seattle stoner prog outfit Lesbian. They ran 1999 to 2008 with occasional reunion shows after.

Psyopus was an American mathcore band from Rochester, New York, formed in 2002 and led by guitarist Christopher "Arpmandude" Arp, the only constant member throughout its history. Known for Arp's unorthodox, extremely technical guitar work, the band fused controlled noise, jazz influences and abrupt melodic precision across dark thematic material. They released three studio albums: Ideas of Reference (2004), Our Puzzling Encounters Considered (2007) and Odd Senses (2009), the latter two through Black Market Activities / Metal Blade Records. The group went on hiatus in 2010 and briefly reunited in 2012.