Avant-Prog Metal
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Deliberately strange, through-composed metal that treats the avant-garde as method, not seasoning. Expect abrupt genre cuts between blast-beat brutality, hushed chamber-folk and free-jazz skronk; detuned and prepared guitars sit beside violin, cello, glockenspiel, accordion, clarinet and hand-built junk percussion. Vocals lurch from operatic croon to spoken word to shrieked dissonance, meters and tonality shift constantly, and structures favor unsettling collage and dynamic extremes over verse-chorus form, yielding a theatrical, dreamlike, often grotesque mood.
History
Roots reach back to avant-rock forebears — King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Univers Zero and the RIO (Rock in Opposition) movement — refracted through extreme metal in the late 1990s. Massachusetts band maudlin of the Well, led by multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver, issued the twin albums 'Bath' and 'Leaving Your Body Map' (both 2001) fusing death metal, jazz and chamber music; Driver then formed Kayo Dot, signed to John Zorn's Tzadik label in 2003. On the West Coast, Oakland's Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (members of the RIO band Idiot Flesh) built invented instruments and a doom-laden theatrical aesthetic across 'Grand Opening and Closing' (2001) and 'Of Natural History' (2004). Norway's Arcturus and Italy's Ephel Duath pushed black/jazz hybrids in parallel, while Mr. Bungle and Estradasphere fed the same anything-goes ethos.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- The Blue Ghost / Shedding Qliphoth(2001) — maudlin of the WellSpotifyYouTube
- Sleep Is a Curse(2001) — maudlin of the WellSpotifyYouTube
- Sleep Is Wrong(2001) — Sleepytime Gorilla MuseumSpotifyYouTube
- FC: The Freedom Club(2004) — Sleepytime Gorilla MuseumSpotifyYouTube
- The Manifold Curiosity(2003) — Kayo DotSpotifyYouTube
- The Throne of Tragedy(1997) — ArcturusSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Wikipedia: maudlin of the Well
- Kayo Dot
- Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
- Arcturus
- Ephel Duath
- ProgArchives: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum 'Of Natural History' (2004)
- maudlin of the Well 'Leaving Your Body Map' (2001)
- Toby Driver / Tzadik label biography
- The Toilet ov Hell interview with Toby Driver