Awesome shout outs to those who mentioned Type O Negative (personally, I consider them a mix of Black Sabbath and the Beatles (which, for me, is the only reason the Beatles existed, such as Elvis with Danzig lol), with that slower Carnivore thrashcore (?) sound.
What about Life of Agony perhaps? (by which I mean the "River Runs Red" album, pretty much.) The emotions captured on that album are quite unique, both cold and comforting, one of those albums that gives you reason to exist one minute, then rips that away in the next verse. One of my fav albums.



It probably should be, I came here to post Mr. Bungle and Fantomas for my votes.

As for Unexpect... I have no comment.

Akercocke, they are tagged blackened death metal but they are way more complex than that.

Definitely agreed, they get credited as creators of "symphonic metal", but to be honest there aren't really bands who sound like them.

Voivod, Primus, Lugubrum, Mr. Bungle, Melvins, Portal, Deathspell Omega, Vulgar Pigeons, Deadhorse, and Acid Bath.

DSO did spawn a whole assortment of clones and worshippers, but truth be told, none are quite as good as the original.

Emptiness, on the album - Error, doesnt sound like anything i've ever heard. Imagine Portal playing some kind of Atmospheric Sludge with some surprising melodies.

I sometimes feel Type O Negative are what would have happened if someone invented doom-metal in the 1950s. "Doom noir" is a phrase which popped into my head one day, to describe them to people.

yes! huge props for mentioning them, they are really underrated. Error is one of my favorite surprises of the year. They play a really strange and weird (in a good way) style of black/death metal. People are always complaining about how there's no originality in death metal these days but when a band actually comes out with something that's different and is a new take on the genre, no one pays attention to it or they completely write it off

I would say Kyuss, Vektor and Sigh.

That's a real fitting term.
I also agree with Type O Negative being a genre of its own. Peter had such a talent in expressing himself through music, and he was an extremely special person.

Die Apokalyptischen Reiter - if you know anyone making similar music point me in their direction. They are borrowing from punk, death/black metal and folk alike in a pretty unique way and the result is not just a salad but a coherent synthesis that sounds like its own thing - at least to me.

I've never heard anything that sounds remotely like Windham Hell. They are tagged here as ambient neoclassical avante-garde, which is about right I guess!

Cattle Decapitation, at least on their last two albums. They have come far from being an average/mediocre goregrind band.

Yeah man, its really disappointing(and kinda strange) how these guys don't get the recognition they so deserve for coming up with such an original take on the genre. Its not like they are just some go lucky newbies, their previous album is also awesome.

Anaal Nathrakh fer sure could be put into this category, s'not like there's a ton of Blackened grindcore bands out there that also employ some gothenburg-esque melodies (In the constellation of the black widow being a prime example from start to finish) in between the massive walls of distortion and chaos.

lol I just listened to So Be It off of that album, too, you couldn't be more correct.

You guys should check out Hopelorn then. I wouldn't be surprised if they were influenced by AN.

Meshuggah and Periphery come to mind!

For the most part, i usually fit the rest of the bands i know into categories much easier.

In my opinion, Periphery for the most part is a lesser copy of some of Meshuggah's works.
Meshuggah, on the other hand, is quite original.

Agreed, though you could definitely bring up Fukpig as black/grind and Mistress as a more sludgy black/grind, imo... though I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that they're side projects of the dudes in AN, hehe. Fukpig's more grind-oriented than Anaal for sure.

Has anyone mentioned Mastodon? I didn't see them mentioned here, and they sound pretty different to the rest of the bands. I have to say that I like their music a lot, but I have a bad time with the singers. I think that their voices and way of singing ruin the rest of their music.

I find Fen pretty easy to categorise: Boring Slint rip off with a half baked black exterior

Bal Sagoth
Is it symphonmic black metal?
Is it power metal?
Wtf is it?
Bal sagoth, thats what it is.


Also summoning.

I wouldn't call them their own genre, but they're definitely unique. Speaking about that sound, current Cattle Decapitation sounds like Anaal Nathrakh but with more death/grind influence. Check this song out, replace the growls with more shrieks/rasps, it will sound as if it came of AN's current work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAH7y2OLUx8



Check out Anaal Nathrakh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhR5c2w7zk0

interesting. . . .

I think I drew that comparison when I listened to Cattle Decapitation. I think Anaal Nathrakh style monumental choruses were what I was hoping for, but Cattle Decapitation do that a lot less - It's something I hope they explore more though.

I don't think I've ever heard anything like Kvelertak's weird fusion of punk and folk/death metal, it's just the most plain fun band I know. I'm surprised you don't talk about Kvelertak that much around here, actually. Another band I'd offer up for consideration are Nokturnal Mortum. While I know they're generally considered NSBM for their lyrical content, I've not heard any black metal as mellow or chill as My Dream Islands, or as hauntingly beautiful as Valkyrie. While I'm only really familiar with Voice of Steel and I don't listen to much NSBM at all so I'm unsure if that's just what the genre tends to sound like, I don't think I've heard anything like it - although if anyone would recommend me some, then I'd be delighted.

Bolt Thrower- apparently there are people here who claim to know hundreds of bands that sound just like them, but can't seem to come up with any examples of some band that actually has a released an album. If there are any, I'd like to know.

Psycroptic- "technical death metal" doesn't quite cover it. They sound nothing like the usual boring and lame bands that play that genre. In particular with The Inherited Repression, they are hard to categorize. All of their albums have pushed the envelope in some different way.

Eluveitie- sure there are plenty of folk metal bands, but I can't think of many folk death metal bands that don't sacrifice either the "folk" part nor the "death metal" part and are so consistent in their sound.

I was considering bringing up fukpig as well but it's pretty much a more grind-based Anaal Nathrakh (makes sense seeing as how Mick Kenney founded the band and all). I think the main reason why I actually kinda liked Cattle Decapitation's new album was the change in vocal style, I never cared for their previous stuff (first two albums were pretty good Death/grind though) but something really caught my ear about Monolith of Inhumanity... not sure if it deserves a 97% average on here though.

Paysage D'Hiver is a genre unto itself. I have never heard anything like it, and has been a source of inspiration for my own musical creations over the years.

I have to agree with Bal-Sagoth. I have never heard a band that sounds like them. What makes them stand out from the rest (in my opinion) of all those 'symphonic' bands is that they actually make riffs that go perfectly with the keyboard parts instead of letting the keyboard do all the work. Chris Maudling is among my favourite metal guitar players; sick, sick riffs.

Another band I have to mention but I wouldn't really classify as Metal (though they do have some metal in their sound) is Tool. It's amazing listening to such complex, yet amazing and atmospheric music. I wonder if there's any other band out there that sounds remotely like them. Just a fucking great band with fucking great musicians.

If this applies for Non-Metal bands, then i say Coil, the Industrial/Ambient band (well, and many other genres too, but that was later) Pretty unique, indeed.
For Metal bands..hmm, i don't know... Possessed to me is very unique too. Not precisely heavy and brutal like the Deatb Metal bands, but i think it sounde more evil than the Thrash bands, more evil and satanic. The atmosphere they have created is amazing, is one of my favorite bands.

So Be It is a great track, and more representative of their current material... but this one is so much better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDVzUArJPGA

Also, agreed on the new Cattle Decap, I have similar feelings to their new album as I do the new Dying Fetus. Early albums were decent, but the new stuff blows a lot of their middle-era material out of the water.

they have a distinctive sound that hasn't been replicated, but genre wise they're hardly outside classification

When I run into stuff that sounds somewhat "different" people generally just throw the blanket terms "experimental" "progressive" or add on "-core" to whatever they are trying to describe to me. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it seems to cover a lot and no one can really articulate what they specifically mean. (I guess that's the hard part about describing music without experiencing it, right? Telling a blind person what a color is and so forth). There are bands that genre-hop a lot but I don't know if that qualifies, and there are bands that sounds really distinct but that could really just be because they are really prime examples of what they do. I mean a lot of bands I immediately recognize and can compare stuff to but I don't know if they qualify as their own genres, stuff like Gwar or Fear Factory for example. Is it just the vocals? I don't know. It's really hard to describe a band like Cephalic Carnage or Kekal to someone especially when they change up what they are doing from song to song. Is that it's own genre? What I really don't understand is when bands just start making up their own genres like "literacycore" (Bloodhag).

I guess I don't really know how to answer this question because it's hard to pin down where a specific genre ends and where another begins...

I haven't read the whole thread so I don't know if they've been mentioned already, but I will anyway. Hail Spirit Noir has got to be one the most original acts nowadays, with a sound that's so peculiar that I dare to say no other band sounds like them. Mixing black metal with prog rock and psych rock is already noteworthy enough, but to have the recording process be all in "old school" fashion is just something else. They've recorded the album using a load of old techniques for it not to just sound like the old stuff but to be exactly like it.

As someone said on a RYM commentary, if you want to know how BM would have sounded in the 70s just check Pneuma.