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OPETH Content Orchid CELESTIAL SEASON Solar Lovers AVANT-GARDE METAL 1 A Brief And Incomplete History MR. BUNGLE Of An Ongoing Experiment Disco Volante VED BUENS ENDE... Written In Waters 1980s 4 FLEURETY Min Tid Skal Komme CELTIC FROST MISANTHROPE Into The Pandemonium 1666...Theatre Bizarre VOIVOD RRRÖÖÖAAARRR 1996 25 VOIVOD Nothingface BAL-SAGOTH Starfire Burning On The Ice- Veiled Throne Of Ultima Thule early 1990s 8 MYSTICUM SCORN In The Streams Of Inferno Vae Solis OXIPLEGATZ DISHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Worlds And Worlds Not To Be Undimensional Conscious ARCTURUS Aspera Hiems Symfonia THE 3RD AND THE MORTAL Sorrow AMORPHIS Elegy ULVER Vargnatt 1997 33 CYNIC Focus BETHLEHEM Sardonischer Untergang DIABOLOS RISING Im Zeichen Irreligiöser 666 Darbietung UNHOLY SEPTIC FLESH The Second Ring Of Power The Ophidian Wheel TIAMAT SIGH Wildhoney Hail Horror Hail ANUBI 1995 17 Kai Pilnaties Akis Uzmerks Mirtis KOROVA OPETH A Kiss In The Charnel Fields My Arms, Your Hearse ARCTURUS La Masquerade Infernale 1999 55 ENOCHIAN CRESCENT CARNIVAL IN COAL Telocvovim French Cancan STRAPPING YOUNG LAD THE KOVENANT City Animatronic THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN ARCTURUS The Dillinger Escape Plan (EP) Disguised Masters IN THE WOODS... IN THE WOODS... Omnio Strange In Stereo ANGIZIA SAMAEL Das Tagebuch Der Hanna Anikin Eternal SOLEFALD 1998 47 Neonism BEYOND DAWN DøDHEIMSGARD Revelry 666 International OXIPLEGATZ PECCATUM Sidereal Journey Strangling From Within STILLE VOLK OPETH Ex-uvies Still Life KOROVA Dead Like An Angel 2000 65 THE KOVENANT AGHORA Nexus Polaris Aghora BAL-SAGOTH FLEURETY Battle Magic Department Of Apocalyptic Affairs ULVER Themes From William Blake's The RAM-ZET Marriage Of Heaven And Hell Pure Therapy DøDHEIMSGARD FANTOMAS Satanic Art The Director's Cut Imprint 68 them their own. Avant-garde metal takes AVANT-GARDE this notion to the extreme. METAL From the 1980s to the 1990s In the 1980s, truly experimental metal A Brief And Incomplete History bands were few and far between. Thrash Of An Ongoing Experiment and heavy metal bands generally advanced by changing tempos, using Experimental metal, or what we on this more complex time signatures or website call avant-garde metal, strives increasing the distortion. to cross self-imposed borders But there were some and throw off the shackles of important formative bands convention. As a genre, that pushed the limits. In metal is unusually volatile 1987, Swiss thrashers and forward-thinking—some CELTIC FROST released the will scoff at this suggestion, heady "Into the but if you consider how far it Pandemonium” to a then has come since NWOBHM largely confused audience; and thrash, you’ll see what I the album featured pop, mean. industrial, classical and Modern elements never Most of this change has been before heard on a heavy incremental: a little faster, metal album. heavier, uglier, more complex, etc. In trying to be more extreme or less Celtic Frost were followed by fellow accessible, metal bands continuously, Swiss countrymen CORONER, who almost pathologically, one-up the bands combined thrash with jazz and industrial that came before. But avant-garde metal elements, pushing a sound that was bands take a different approach. Instead more abrasive and technical than much of playing faster or slower, an of what came before it. Coroner and the experimental band will look outside the archetypal American death metal band genre itself, attempting to locate sounds Death had a significant influence on the and aesthetics from elsewhere, bands of the late 1980s and the early ultimately creating music that doesn’t 1990s. quite sound like metal but is too heavy to be anything else. Meanwhile, grindcore exerted a strong influence in the United Kingdom, with There is no avant-garde sound and it experimental industrial-grind bands isn’t a genre. Anyone with talent and O.L.D. and GODFLESH building on creativity can do it simply by availing Napalm Death’s violent ambiance, themselves to the wider world of music, developing in the process a new kind of both popular and academic. Music is far grind with dancey techno beats and too sludgy industrial rhythms. These two wonderful a bands helped inspire both the bleak gift to dub soundscapes of SCORN and the squander hectic free jazz grind experiments of on musical NYC composer JOHN ZORN schematics (Painkiller and Naked City) in the and tried 1990s. and tested formulas— Zorn’s own work would lay the the best foundation for hyper-eclectic composers pastiche bands like FAXED HEAD, and SECRET CHIEFS 3 and MR. BUNGLE. musicians don’t simply replicate the sounds handed down to them, but make Throughout the nineties, these bands (with composer Trey Spruance as the 1 anonymous figure linking them) Black Metal Insurgency combined death metal and grind with every other conceivable genre (jazz, The Norwegian black metal explosion of pop, country, contemporary classical, the early 1990s revolutionized metal to soundtrack, exotica, punk, Persian folk the extent that even its earliest, most music, surf rock, big band, funk, hip hop, primitive practitioners could arguably be electro, industrial, etc.) in impossibly called avant-garde. Atmospheric bands entertaining ways— like EMPEROR added so eclectic they spacey synthesizers and were, the metal Romantic melodies to itself largely super-fast metal while disappeared. the more rustic In other parts of the sounding Ulver (still in United States, their infancy) equalized thrash/death metal the flute/acoustic bands ATHEIST, guitar/hymn to metal CYNIC and ratio. Viking metal BELIEVER bands like ENSLAVED introduced went even further, significant jazz adding piano lines and fusion and later psychedelic rock to the heroic progressive rock sounds, creating formula laid out by Bathory in the late extreme metal with unusually melodic 1980s. richness and harmonic depth, even going so far as to introduce "positive” lyrics All of this was very interesting, but more into a genre traditionally given to interesting was what it inspired in the machismo and misanthropy. In Austria, latter part of the 1990s. Several bands DISHARMONIC ORCHESTRA released who started in the black metal scene "Not to Be Undimensional Conscious” in quickly abandoned it for more 1992, an album that introduced jazzy adventurous terrain. For example, after funk-inspired bass lines and silly tiring of folk and balls to the wall black surrealist lyrics to grindcore. These metal, ULVER began tampering with bands would inspire other technical, electronics, trip hop and ambient music. jazz-inflected metal bands, including Their 1998 take on Blake’s romantic MESHUGGAH and EPHEL DUATH, right up prose poem, "The Marriage of Heaven to the present. and Hell,” broke all the rules of black metal, creating a daringly expressive The international thrash and death metal sound in the process. scenes produced several avant-garde bands throughout the nineties, including Several Norwegian black metal bands SEPTIC FLESH and ON THORNS I LAY sought to put their own strange spins on (Greece); MISANTHROPE and metal music. Some bands STILLE VOLK (France); ELEND adopted elements of jazz (Austria); PAN-THY-MONIUM and post punk (FLEURETY (Sweden); THE 3RD AND THE and VED BUENS ENDE); MORTAL (Norway); ORPHANED others took a theatrical, LAND and PEOPLE (Israel); and almost operatic turn NEUROSIS (United States). (ARCTURUS, ATROX and While none of these bands PECCATUM); some went sounded like one another, they industrial (THE KOVENANT, were unified by the same RED HARVEST and commitment to unrestrained DODHEIMSGARD) while others embraced creativity and the simple fact of their a fey 1970s aesthetic (IN THE WOODS). unclassifiable nature. My personal favorites are SOLEFALD and BEYOND DAWN. Solefald seized upon the pastiche style of Mr. Bungle, but without ever abandoning the rough metal undercurrent—their lyrics are among the 2 most inventive in metal music. Beyond jaunty arrangements and traditional Dawn started with a dark Swans-like instrumentation. Finland’s FINNTROLL atmosphere before embracing classy fused indigenous humppa music with electro-pop. beer-swilling black metal, while the now- defunct EMPYRIUM (Germany) brought Black metal’s influence was global, and romantic hymns and pastoral music to bands across the world would follow a bear on black/doom metal. Folk metal similar path. One bands, including ORPHANED LAND band that was (Israel) and HANTAOMA (France), noticeably weird continue to flourish throughout the metal from the world. beginning was Japan’s SIGH. The 21st Century Sigh was not merely content to Avant-garde metal has not slowed down; play their thrashy in fact, it has only continued to evolve style of black and expand. Bands like KAYO DOT, metal in a JESU, ISIS, DIABLO SWING ORCHESTRA, vacuum, but instead saw fit to SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM and incorporate a whole slew of outside many of the bands covered above influences, including disco, funk, continue to explore the outer limits of country, old school heavy metal and experimental music, creating heavy impossibly strange, analog sound effects. music without rules or self-imposed Sigh is not merely a black metal band, limitations, creating unique sounds but fits within the broader spectrum of simply because they can and must. Japanese experimental music (including These are the bands that this website the Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple and was designed to commemorate, Melt Banana). celebrate and inspire. One of the most productive avant-garde metal scenes emerged from the Austrian black metal movement. Even pure black metal stalwarts like ABIGOR and SUMMONING are strange and otherworldly by the standards of the genre; Abigor specializes in chaotic, atmospheric arrangements, while the Summoning duo composes long, repetitious, trance- inducing songs. Avant-garde metal Metal evolves with baby steps; avant- bands KOROVAKILL and ANGIZIA take garde metal bands are the random things much further with ridiculously mutations that make the process punchy songs rooted in industrial and interesting, fun and worthwhile to me. I vaudeville/musical theater respectively.