Avant-garde metal

The avant-garde experimental metal sometimes called (or sometimes metal avant-gardist in French), is a stylistic tendency related to the heavy metal which is characterized by a broad tendency to experimentation and a taste for sonorities, instruments, or structures of not very conventional songs. The first examples of avant-garde metal go back to Celtic Frost, Fleurety and Ved Buens Ende.

Characteristic

One must note that there is no yet common acceptance within the community metal on the correct use of the avant-garde term. But the fans and the actors of this kind agree to say that this kind does not aim to have a common esthetics as it is the case of the other kinds. As Wesley D. CRAY underlines it:

" The avant-garde metal cannot be treated like the other kinds, such as the black, the death, the doom, the thrash, etc These kinds are enracinées in similar esthetics and ideologies thus leading to many point commun runs which link the groups under a common kind. With the avant-garde, on the other hand, there is no esthetics or of common ideology. The groups must be taken on a case-by-case basis, and evaluated individually rather than on the total esthetics of the genre."

On the other hand in technical term, in spite of the diversity of esthetics from one group to another, one can note certain a number of common features between the groups classified like " avant-garde metal":

• the use of not very conventional arrangements.

• a emphase on the research of stamps and new sonorities.
• of the frequent loans to the industrial Metal, the Modern music, the experimental popular musics, even sometimes with the Jazz (particularly the Free jazz).
• a use of not very conventional harmonies (Recourse to the Polytonalité, use of harmonizations of not very frequent modes, even sometimes flirte slightly with the Atonality)
• a recourse to techniques vocal or instrumental unusual leaving the framework of the normal use of those.

But also sometimes following the example the progressive one:

• a use of structures of not very conventional songs.

• a use sometimes also of rates/rhythms and measurements nonusual (but it is not inevitably one of the aspects which is proposed.)

The groups of avant-garde metal are often related to the extreme scene and generally Black metal and much of these groups often started by playing of the black metal, but they are generally measured by the purists of the scene black metal, who consider the elements of before guard metal, like the use of synthetizers (even of feminine voices), as of the element foreigners which have nothing to do with the true black metal. This said, even if they is especially groups with orientation black or death seems the most touched by this tendency the caractéristisques ones of the avant-garde can apply to any under kind of metal.

The most notorious groups of the avant-garde metal are Arcturus, Peccatum, RAM-Zet, Ulver, Naked City, Fantômas.

Difference with progressive metal

So just like the progressive Metal, the avant-garde metal is a kind which supports the nonconventional experimentation and musical ideas, there is however a broad difference between the two forms. One of the most outstanding differences being that the experimentation in progressive metal lies more in research of rates/rhythms and complex structures, but sticks to a relatively traditional instrumention, whereas in the avant-garde metal, the use of unusual sounds plays a fundamental role. The majority of the artists who play of the avant-garde metal generally privilege dark atmospheres.

For including/understanding well the difference Ethan Mittel suggests this metaphor:

" Let us take two architects. For the needs for this discussion, their names will be John Petrucci, which will represent progressive metal and Mike Patton for the avant-garde metal. They try both to create a large manor while using of their knowledge first. Pettruci takes its treaty of harmony and each directive follows from there to the letter. Mike Patton, on the other hand, balances the treaty of harmony to the dustbin, and lets her only imagination guide it for construction. At the end of the day, the two manors are finished. John Pettruci built a manor massive and worked out with elliptic corridors, but in a more traditional architectural style. The Manor of Patton on the other hand resembles more something of the book of the Dr. Seuss. There are doors with eccentric forms, angles rounded, decorations of any form, and a large collection of other odd details. More simply progressive metal and before guard metal are as different one from the other as the Venus Earth. "

List groups of avant-garde metal

• Alchemist (group)
• Age Off Silence
• Angizia
• Ansur
• Apocryphal Voice
• Arcturus
• Northern Atrox
• Blut aus (recent album)
• Beyond Dawn
• Borknagar
• Buckethead
• Carnival in Coal
• Celtic Frost (Death/thrash)
• Code
• Control Human Delete
• Darth Vegas
• Diablo Swing Orchestrated
• Diabolical Masquerade
• Dødheimsgard
• Gift Salsa

• Dureforsog (albums of the beginning)
• Ebony Lake
• Ephel Duath
• Estradasphere
• Fantômas
• Fast Eddie
• Fleurety
• Frantic Bleep
• Gorguts
• Green Complexion
• Headkase
• Hollenthon
• In the Woods…
• Karaboudjan
• Kayo Dowry
• Kekal

• Korova
• Lightning War
• Lux Occulted (recent albums) off
• Madder Mortem
• Maudlin the Well
• Moonspell (Album: The Butterfly Effect)
• Mr. Bungle
• Naked City
• Nuclear Rabbit
• Organ:
• Orthrelm
• Pan.Thy.Monium
• Peccatum
• Radiation 4
• Rakoth
• RAM-Zet
• Sculptured
• Sigh

• Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
• Smohalla
• Spektr
• Solefald
• Source off Tide
• Stolen Babies
• Subterranean Masquerade
• Transcending Odd?
• The Axis Off Perdition
• Ufych Sormeer
• Ulver
• Unexpect
• Ved Buens Ende
• Vicious Hairy Mary
• Vintersorg (recent albums)
• Virus
• Whorange
• Windham Hell