Worm Hero

Spires of the Lunar Sphere is a two-piece experimental/avant-garde metal and nintendocore act from Daytona Beach, Florida, formed circa 2015 by Michael Smith and Brandon Jolly, blending chiptune/8-bit synths and programming with mathcore and post-hardcore riffing. Cited influences include Horse the Band, Mr. Bungle, The Number Twelve Looks Like You and Genghis Tron. Releases include the EP "Pangaea Ultima" (2015) and full-length "SIREN" (2017).

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Dead Cross is a Southern California crossover-thrash/hardcore supergroup formed in late 2015, uniting drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer, Fantômas, Mr. Bungle), bassist Justin Pearson (The Locust, Retox), and guitarist Michael Crain (Retox). The Locust's Gabe Serbian was the original vocalist but left after the debut was recorded; Mike Patton replaced him in December 2016, rewriting the vocals over the existing instrumentals. The band has released two albums via Patton's Ipecac Recordings — the self-titled debut (2017) and II (2022) — delivering short, violent blasts of thrash and hardcore punk.

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HORSE the Band is an American band from Lake Forest, California, whose fusion of 8-bit video-game synth textures with metalcore made them pioneers of "nintendocore" — a term frontman Nathan Winneke coined as a joke that ended up naming the whole style. Their core run of albums The Mechanical Hand (2005, Combat Records), A Natural Death (2007, Koch Records), and Desperate Living (2009) defined the genre's chiptune-meets-heaviness axis. The band has gone to lengths to distance itself from the label, insisting it describes the sound rather than the substance.

Tub Ring is an experimental rock band formed in Chicago in 1992 and built around the enduring core duo of vocalist Kevin Gibson and keyboardist Rob Kleiner. Their frenetic, hairpin genre-swerving sound — colliding punk, new wave, noise, funk and electronics under sci-fi and cosmological lyrics — earned them a reputation as a kind of Midwestern Mr. Bungle, a comparison sealed when Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance produced their 2001 debut Drake Equation. Their concept-driven album titles (Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, Zoo Hypothesis, The Great Filter) riff on theories about extraterrestrial life.

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Today Is the Day is an American noise-rock and experimental-metal band led by guitarist/vocalist and producer Steve Austin, formed in Nashville in the early 1990s. Blending grindcore, hardcore and avant-garde metal with heavy sampling and unhinged, erratic arrangements, the group became a touchstone for the noisecore and mathcore underground. Their 1999 Relapse album In the Eyes of God featured a young rhythm section of bassist Bill Kelliher and drummer Brann Dailor, both formerly of Lethargy, who soon left to co-found Mastodon.

Bologna Violenta is the noise/electrogrind project of Treviso violinist and multi-instrumentalist Nicola Manzan, founded in 2005. Early releases built distorted guitar, strings and electronic drums around samples from 1970s Italian poliziottesco cinema; the project expanded into a duo in 2015 with drummer Alessandro Vagnoni and later shifted toward violin-led arrangements on Cortina (2017) and Bancarotta Morale (2020), with 2026's OBLOMOVISMO returning to its cybergrind roots. Manzan has also worked as a sideman for Baustelle and Il Teatro degli Orrori and collaborated with J. Randall of Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

Cursed Mantis is a 2020 collaborative 'synthgrind' concept album pairing Quebec electronic/industrial producer Gloom Influx with Swedish vocalist Alojla and noise/grind vocalist The Toilet. Subtitled 'A Synthgrind Opera in 19 Acts,' it tells an absurdist sci-fi story of cursed, cheese-obsessed alien mantises, swinging between chiptune interludes, synthwave passages, and blast-heavy grindcore.

Zelophilia is the solo studio project of Lou Kelly, based in Ukiah, California, releasing one full-length, Lust, Loathing & Love, in December 2011. Blends death metal, hardcore, and mathcore with baroque classical touches and absurdist, humor-laced songwriting.

Monastat 7 was a Cheyenne, Wyoming grindcore trio whose 1993/94 debut 'Now Available Without A Prescription' — produced by Dan Lilker of Brutal Truth and reissued on Relapse — paired technical cybergrind riffing with heavy sampling, comedy/rap interludes and skits (a track built around a grocery-store clerk's price-check announcement over the PA). The lineup leaned into avant-garde instrumentation for a 1993 grind band, with Henkaboo E. Boltz credited on guitar, programming AND violin alongside Dr. Stat3's bass/keyboards. A 1995 follow-up EP, 'Operatic Genitalia Of 7 Bowel Movements,' continued the project on the same Japanese DIY label, Lost Frog Productions.

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San Diego's insect-costumed answer to the question of how much chaos fits in thirty seconds: The Locust fused grindcore and powerviolence velocity with squealing new-wave synths, delivering albums like Plague Soundscapes (2003) as swarms of sub-minute songs with abrupt, inconsistent time-signature changes. On stage the quartet performed in skin-tight full-body nylon insect suits, lined up across the front of the stage like a hive presenting itself. Formed in 1994, the band dissolved in 2022 after the death of drummer Gabe Serbian, leaving a body of work The New York Times framed by declaring that if noise-rock had superheroes, The Locust would surely be among them.

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