I was listening to Todesstoss and got to thinking about outsider music and metal. That whole music world is chocked full of only the most out there stuff, for better or worse. It doesn't always necessarily have to be avant-garde music, but it's generally all so askew and presented in absurd and unheard of ways.

So I tried thinking about some other stuff that could fit this concept, and wanna throw open a discussion for furthest fringes of the metal mind.

I haven't listened to a whole lot of Todesstoss yet but he's pretty much the poster boy for outsider metal if there ever was any. It's obvious that it might be a difficult and unorthodox to say he isn't competent is silly. I think there's a lot of inventive guitar stuff coming through, it's like the Jandek of metal


Jute Gyte could probably fit. His metal stuff is in a field of its own due to the microtonal arrangements which make for superior mastery or the total opposite depending on your tastes. Also, loud and noisy and louder.


So many of those one man bands like Striborg et al could make a case, but I'm gonna pinpoint Xasthur out of the bunch. Some of the stuff is just so inharmonious and raw that you can't even tell up from down


Furze is an interesting anomaly that seems to blend like acid rock with long drawn out weird black metal. Discography could stand to be more consistent though


Hard to say what really makes this quirky. The production is almost without-fi of any kinds with cymbals punctureingly shrill. The vocals are objectively bad though almost charming. Making out any real experimentation isn't easy, but it still comes out perplexing. The riffs are generally basic but in terms of timbre and tone and chord progression there's some moments that are unlike anything you'd ever heard.


these two groups are pretty bedroomy stuff that bring in more retro psych rock sounding stuff and here and there some moments totally indescribable, the lo-finess brings it out more and skews traditions


Hybernoid do something novel with ethereal dream pop guitars and death metal, like extreme Cocteau Twins

Hey Amber Gray, I'm not totally sure about "outsider" as a tag, but I would throw Oxbow and Buckethead into the equation. The former are a kind of nuts avant-doom/blues freakout whose debut album was recorded as a suicide note (and still going after more than 20 years), the latter is a one-man guitar project that makes whatever the fuck is deemed music by Mr Bucket. Some of this stuff is more accessible, some of it is just the most angular noise you can find out there.

Lugubrum fits perfectly in the definition of outsider metal, in particular from De Totem onwards.
Any attempt to describe them results in insanity, but if i had to try.. i'll say that they are black metal played by evil jazz farmers. Anything they play feels odd

Despite the success i would also argue that Peste Noire's La Balade... fits in the outsider criteria. Black metal, folk rock, punk, almost progressive sections, weird interludes... That album is a real mess

Would Celtic Frost and Triptykon count? Their music has always been pretty weird and experimental, throwing together neoclassical and new wave influences on top of their atypical riffs but they've been really influential and commercially successful at the same time.

I second Buckethead and Xasthur.

Maudlin of the fucking Well. One of the weirdest, most gratifyingly risk-taking metal bands ever. Also one of the most underrated. Their sound is kind of impossible to describe except for that is has everything you could want in an atmospheric-based metal band. There are no other records to compare something like Bath or My Fruit PsychoBells...A Seed Combustible to, though all of their works are mighty.



They're not on the Archives, but there's a band called Blind Idiot God that I guess fit the description of 'outsider metal' - they play an instrumental avant-garde hybrid of heavy metal, dub and progressive rock with elements of noise and neo-classical. Totally bonkers, insane music made by musicians who otherwise are pretty much unheard of. May not be pure metal but some of their stuff is heavy as hell, especially the first two albums.



Splinterskin, who is on the Archives but is definitely not metal, also fits the bill - dark/horror folk music played by some Rasputin-looking loner motherfucker from Ohio. Wayward Souls plays like Nick Drake's possessed, satanic step-brother, very good album, have yet to hear the follow-up though.



French bm band Spektr sound like they have no friends, and their take on industrialized black metal verges on the truly bizarre, experimental side of things, making them a definite point of interest for freaks and scoundrels.



Devil Doll pretty much fit the bill too, no? With Mr. Doctor being pretty much an enigma and all and all of their albums kind of existing in a vaccum. Really would love to hear more. Did they ever really top The Girl Who Was Death, though?

Happy listening.

Definitely Windham Hell, two-man bedroom-production project fusing neoclassical, death, doom, and ambient all together in a way that doesn't really sound like anyone.

While I'm not familiar with much of his later stuff, early Traumatic Voyage was pretty out-there, riffing often close to second-wave black metal though independent of that scene (afaik at least; maybe he saw Mayhem in their late 80s shows), and with ambitious, somewhat messy compositions that gradually built in tension between many assorted bridge sections.

Even though they're more of a proper band and many of their members were prolific and therefore not really outsiders, I'd argue that Mekong Delta, especially for their first three or four albums, were something of outside artists. Self-published and the mastermind of Ralf Hubert (who was previously not even into metal), their sound was totally distinct from the other tech-thrash bands. While Hubert is quick to acknowledge that the entire basis of the band came from a single Fight Fire With Fire riff, their approach of one guitarist playing tight speed/thrash riffing and a second dedicated to odd accent emphasis is very distinctive, and all the classical and prog rock influence is in a totally different direction from what any neoclassical band was doing.

And when it comes to old-school and odd accents, Confessor was in a totally different league, not only in the metal world but even influencing some of the formative math rock bands. But maybe the wrong kind of "outsider" for this thread.

Dreadnot was a really weird band, they started with a fair amount of Celtic Frost influence but gradually became more experimental up to their 1991 Cypothiensis demo, which is really jazzy and unusual in a way that most bands after still don't come close to. They cited zeuhl and avant-prog stuff like Magma and Univers zero as influences and it shows, and the sound was dominated by synthesizer as well. The band used to have everything on YouTube and their Facebook but unfortunately they seem to have deleted all of that, can't provide a link unfortunately.

Paul Chain has to be something of an outsider too even if he's an early cult icon in metal. His vocal style and murky psych-drenched style alone makes even the most Sabbath-influenced songs bizarre and fascinating, let alone when he's experimenting outside of metal. And in the same breath might as well name other catacomb-dwelling Mediterranean dudes like the sympho-pomp weirdness of Devil Doll or the sprawling nature of early Arpia.



Celtic Frost and Hellhammer are definitely outsider imo, pretty much the godfathers of outsider metal, certainly there was very little like them at the time and they had an experimental streak and total defiance of usual metal scenes (at least until Cold Lake which was still pretty damn weird).

More embedded song links please. Cool thread.

Let's not confuse "sounding different than Darkthrone" with "outsider art". Outsider art is art that does everything "wrong". A metal band mixing a little of this or that genre or having a thin sound isn't doing things in a way so out of step with normalcy that you can't think of them as firmly rooted in the overall metal movement. Damien Storm is metal outsider art, it sounds like someone described Mercyful Fate to someone and they tried to replicate it without having ever heard metal. If it weren't for the fact that the artist was involved in other normal bands, indicating it was a one off experiment, Jewicide would be a good candidate for metal outsider art.

I don't want to add anything just now, but merely to say this is an awesome thread and now I have some interesting-sounding things to check out. I can think of a couple more but I don't have time to search for links or anything right now, so I'll come back later. Definitely agree with some of the mentions here already. Furze and Lugubrum are fantastic, as is Paul Chain, and yes, they all definitely fit. Although I don't really think they're good most of the time, Maudlin of the Well sure belong here as well.

anubi from lithuania definitely belong here, as do mussorgsky, who were kind of pre- or co-arkona (POL) or whatever.

I was actually going to come back and mention PN. This album too. At their most unhinged they sound like blackened pub music.

this is some weird stuff with fun descriptions all over the web

"Put out in the unconventional live EP format, these Ukrainians have created an unholy union of death metal and occultist folk. Flutes jig with wonky Beefheartian noise guitar, and there's a good bit of croaking thrown into the mix just for good measure. If I wanted my death metal fix I'd probably go elsewhere ... but this isn't the kind of thing you can forget about."

This is all relatively traditionally-rooted metal, but their execution makes me quality i believe... topic immediately made me think of Fireaxe. I guess the music is relatively ordinary for power/prog/thrash, but the synthetic production, squeaky amateurish vocals (done in characters), overbearing conceptual lyrics, weird art, and the face that this album is literally FOUR FUCKING HOURS ON 3 DISCS is pretty unbearably weird. Despite the songwriting being kinda cool in parts, the overreaching epicness of it makes it near unlistenable. It's like if a brand new, competent musician that was starting his first band immediately jumped into writing Virgin Steel - House of Atreus.



And of course, Damien Storm and Keydragon, essentially for the same reasons. Equally divorced from reality, just way way shittier musically.

- Voivod, who are well-known around here, and who deserve every bit of praise and adulation. Some of their albums took me years of growth and maturation to understand and appreciate (e.g. Dimension Hatröss, Killing Technoogy) while others clicked upon first listen (e.g. Angel Rat, The Outer Limits). Not a band I listen to regularly, but Voivod's undeniable genius hits me every now and then and I'll go through their records almost religiously on those occasions.

- Master's Hammer, who have always been too weird for me, but they've got their share of dedicated fans too. Someone once posted a link to English translations of their equally outlandish lyrics here on MA.



Anubi's "Mirties metafora" never leaves my top 5 of best demos of all time. Absolutely brilliant stuff that has had me hooked for over 20 years now. When Lord Ominous died - rest in peace - I managed to get hold of one of his own copies of said demo, and it shall stay with me until the end of my time.

That is indeed a bizarre EP I picked up a copy years ago before word got around. Found it in a box of random old metal singles in a local record shop and bought it simply because it looked weird and boy was that right.

If you haven't already check out Graal - Sigullum Naturae. It's basically the continuation of Brainstorm and includes several songs from the Brainstorm EP but properly recorded and even without the murky recording quality it's not much less bizarre.

Opium Warlords, the current project of former Reverend Bizarre frontman Sami Hynninen, fits in here and, IIRC, even used the term "outsider doom metal" or something on an album sticker on their/his first or second album. Really bizarre (no pun intended) but totally non-random stuff with influences from doom, drone, black metal, apocalyptic folk and noise, mostly done by Hynninen playing everything himself.

Soon Be Here, Prince of Sleep (from Live at Colonia Dignidad)
Slippy (from We Meditate Under the Pussy in the Sky)
Solar Burial (from Taste My Sword of Understanding)
"Closure" (from the brand new Droner)

Anyone familiar with Dwarr? I wouldn't know what link to post, because I'm not very familiar with them (him?), but that stuff always struck me as very outsider-ish. I forgot about Dwarr for a long time until recently. A friend and I used to hang around his apartment listening to that stuff while high as hell and talking about all sorts of esoteric stuff, but for whatever reason I never really looked into getting the albums myself. I wasn't even sure they were on MA until yesterday because I don't actually remember a lot of metal in the Dwarr sound, but I guess it is in there somewhere, because behold, they are here (no reviews either ... hey guys!). Anyway, I expect fans of Paul Chain would be particularly interested in this guy's music. Totally weird and esoteric psychedelic stuff with ... christian and horror themes, I guess?

And yes, Anubi are fucking great. Not too familiar with that demo but I own the full-length and following 7, and the album in particular is a real treasure. Nothing quite like it out there. magical.

come to think of it, I'd say that gonkulator and goatthrower are pretty much outsider metal, in terms of music as welll as aesthetics.

and, related to fudgeworthy records, there's also black mass of absu (who are getting a full discography compilation early 2018). great shit, especially that one 7"

This fucking guy. https://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Bob_Macabre/6126



Playing in 54 bands and 78 solo projects that all sound like a fifth-rate Mortician isn't very insider.

Yggtyrhyrkkh Hin Dystre must be mentioned - utterly baffling 90s Danish black metal that sounds like it’s being played backwards most of the time, featuring the most razor-thin guitars ever. Highlight is 3:00 or so with the goofy-ass wilting arpeggios mixed with the somber funeral bass drum.

Multiple people have already mentioned Maudlin of the well, but not their continuation, Kayo Dot. Their album "Choirs of The Eye" seems to be the fan-favorite and an important album in avant-garde, but I like their more recent stuff more. Last two albums have definitely not been metal though, they have more of an eighties new wave vibe incorporated into the framework of Kayo Dot's experimental tendencies.

From Coffins on Io (2014):


Ephel Duath is one of the few bands that I think has successfully combined jazz and metal. I'm not talking about "progressive" metal bands that will go into a random jazz section in the middle of the song just for the hell of it -- they're both balanced and integrated, and you can often hear both of them at the same time.

Painter's Palette is the best example of this:


I don't even know what to say about Unexpect, they have a chaotic sound, strange instrumentation, and little bits of many genres. Their bassist has a nine-string, which is pretty cool.

Here he is doing a play-through of one of their songs:


I have to mention Hail Spirit Noir, those guys are great. Black metal mixed with all kinds of 70s vibes - psychedelic stuff, surf rock, old-school prog rock.

I Mean You Harm from Mayhem In Blue (2016):


And of course there's Sigh from Japan.



I don't see Forgotten Silence mentioned nearly enough. It's hard to find their albums sometimes, so there's only one that I'd say I'm very familiar with.

Kro Ni Ka: Three songs, one hour. Almost has the feel of a jam:

Sigh and Hail Spirit Noir are the exact opposite of outsider music - they’re professional musicians drawing upon professional backgrounds to make progressive and complex things. This thread is about idiots stumbling upon originality and genius because they don’t understand how to music.

EDIT: Same goes for Maudlin of the Well and Unexpect (among others mentioned) - anti-outsider in every way.

Could call it Luc Mertz syndrome if you want. Some guys just absolutely love the process of playing and recording metal regardless of their personal lack of talent. I suspect they don't really intend for anyone to really listen to or enjoy the vast majority of their work, and it's really for their own satisfaction. That certainly makes them industry outsiders but I'm not so sure about them being artistic outsiders as their work is aggressively conventional.

Extremely intelligent point! Let's get this thread back on track and discuss metal musicians who are genuinely weird in their artistic outlook and process.

I'll try to think of more examples later since I love stuff like this, but I think the Metal Enterprise ripoff bands all sound pretty outsider. Killer Fox, in particular, is probably the kitschiest, most insincere heavy metal ever - the musical equivalent of a 1950s commercial or a Thomas Kinkade painting.

I think this qualifies. Funny stuff. Total nobody loser band and they aren't good whatsoever. But those vocals....

"Outsider metal" has been very loosely defined for this thread, but my impression is that like any "outsider" art it is made by people with very little connection to or consideration for typical conventions. I'm thinking of DIY type stuff, unprofessional recordings, crazy/insane/widely unconventional takes on metal. It may come off as "avant-garde" in execution but not by intention because inside the outsider's mind, they aren't ever trying to be "avant-garde" or experimental because their hodge-podge of styles and strange takes on metal come from a perfectly organic process. Their strangeness is never contrived. Which does not necessarily make these artists "idiots" or untalented music-wise. I think Furze, Jute Gyte, Buckethead and even to some extent Maudlin of the well are perfectly fitting examples for this thread yet I wouldn't consider any of them to be idiots or bad musicians.

Anyways, I think this thread is definitely in need of some Njiqahdda. Take a gander at their MA page and you'll see another extremely prolific discography which seems to be a trend for a lot of bands in this thread. Njiqahdda have experimented with so many different styles and takes on black metal that you can pick almost any two albums/EPs/splits from their discography and they'll sound drastically different in style and scope. There are certainly some duds, some unfleshed out ideas and some releases not as strong as others but for the most part it's very impressive how consistently diverse, interesting, fresh and (most importantly) good the bulk of that large discography is. Whether it's an almost tender take on black metal drenched in psychedelia, a Burzum meets 18-minute rock jam session, hypertechnical yet atmospheric black metal, progressive sludgey Agalloch-ish post-metal, or even a slight venture into a somewhat symphonic territory.

I haven't even come close to covering the gamut of what this band has to offer. Well worth exploring for some crazy twists and turns and totally unique sounds. While a lot of their stuff has an improvised jam-session nature to it they also have full albums cohesively written with a grand vision in mind. Nji. Njiijn. Njiiijn and Yrg Alms are practically atmospheric black metal masterpieces.

Everything about them is just perfect for this thread. Even beyond the music, their whole aesthetic and themes are completely outsider. All the crazy unpronounceable song titles and albums are from a language they made up and derived on their own. Even the album art has a sort of psychedelic realism to it. It totally has that unprofessional feel to it yet it's still so unique and captivating. I fucking love this project, holy shit.

@ThePoop: I see your point, but you could perhaps say I was limiting the term such that it applied to the types of things I’m interested in. I love Jute Gyte, but would be somewhat hesitant to label it as outsider music due to the sheer amount of delicate thought and traditional music theory placed into the compositions. Perhaps it is outsider music from the perspective of metal, but not an outsider approach to music in general because in several genres it is certainly the norm that the songwriting process is so academically informed. The same applies to Buckethead, more or less. I will have to be convinced - and am open to any attempts to do so - that Maudlin of the Well qualifies, as my limited impression of the band paints them as a bunch of Boston hipsters with diverse musical backgrounds who just mixed wildly different things together, which has been a trope in progressive music for 60 years.

At any rate, I usually find things like the above less interesting than something that seems to defy conception by anybody who isn’t the musician involved. Stuff like The Shaggs, Jandek, Wesley Willis, Y. Bhekhirst, Viper, and so on. And the best way to accomplish that is with a musician who doesn’t understand anything about what makes music good. I call them an “idiot” purely for facetious and/or shorthand reasons.

i read this and instantly thought of red in the sky is ours

anyway, i'm a little hazy as to what would count in the context of this thread (witch i intend to fully scour when i have more time), but i'll go ahead and throw vuvr in to the mix - at least fans of stuff in this thread should probably like it
it's not like they're super weird, but still a rather esoteric and fun fusion album

I am mad about that guy calling us idiots.

I have a friend who makes avant-garde death metal with lyrics consisting of toilet humor and dad jokes. Talented enough guy and quite intelligent on top of that, but certainly an acquired taste that I probably don't have.

MutantClannfear has point though, a lot of what has been posted isn't really outsider music in the true sense. Sure a lot of it is weird and wonderful in some sense, but a lot of it isnt coming from an outsider perspective. Jute Gyte for example is obviously coming at black metal from a different perspective from the norm but he is clearly a highly proficient musician and has an understanding of the genre and his music while abnormal is consciously so. Something like Unexpect is too self conscious and intentional to be outsider music (anyway it's just Avant Garde metal) and id argue the same of Maudlin the Well, those dudes knew metal, its not like someone described disgorge to a group of jazz musicians with no knowledge of metal and told em to have a crack at brutal death metal. Generally outsider music in my experience usually comes from some combination of a profound lack of understanding, musical ineptitude and/or the product of a skewed mind/thought process.

An example of the first would be some of the strange heavy and extreme metal bands/records that came from behind the iron curtain which came about from trying to replicate a sound/style going on the minimal material they had exposure to. I cant think of specific examples but I have come across stuff like this in the past.

The second well there are plenty of bands that are the product of inept musicians taking a shot at recording their chosen music Damien Storm, Striborg or The Shaggs are a good example of this.

I'd say Nuclear Death' Carrion For Worm is a good example of the third, Carrion For Worm is clearly not the product of a clear mind, the band obviously know the death/grind genre and while not the best musicians they can at least play but the musical and stylistic choices are so strange and fucked up. Unlike a band like Portal there strangeness doesn't seem self concious it just seems fucked up. Xasthur would probably fit this one as well.

I keep coming back to the idea of Wesley Willis being outsider music and I can’t think of a metal equivalent.

Probably because metal is more niche, so one would generally have to go seeking it out which implies some awareness of the artistic conventions and because making metal requires either multi-instrumentalism or a band, both of which tend to rule out the truly weird and off-kilter. Wesley Willis songs consist of him reciting his very formulaic lyrics over pre-programmed tunes (slightly modulated from track to track). Jandek is also a good example of true outsider music, and his work can hardly be called complex for all it's obtuseness. Same goes for Muslimgauze. It's just not that easy to throw music together haphazardly and have it come out as metal. Damien Storm and that fake Killer Fox did it (for different reasons I imagine) but I posit it isn't really possible for one person to do that on a massive scale and create a huge volume of outsider metal willy-nilly. The massively productive one man operations out there (the Luc Mertzs and Bob Macabres of metal) are certainly odd and do make poor quality work, but are, as I said, very conventional musically.

Wow, good choice! I wouldn't've even thought of them, but Nuclear Death is kind of outsider, both the early deathgrind/thrash and that later stuff Lori Bravo made with solo Nuclear Death, which is some of the weirdest music imaginable. If you bother looking her up on Facebook nowadays, she's pretty weird even now. TYPES LIKE THIS IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY and sells period blood paintings.

Hell look up the guitarist on YouTube he posted a couple of nuclear death guitar play-throughs and his vids have some really fucked up intros. His other videos are pretty weird, the guy does not seem right at all not exactly.surprising given the shit that came out about him.

Ouch! Savage!

i meant that in a good way tho' - it's a really naive album full of weird ideas, but they made it work; i love it

I'm pretty cynical when it comes to the idea behind this thread - the term "outsider" here should apply to guys like Wesley Willis and Tommy Wiseau, but that doesn't fit with metal as easily. There are lots of obscure small black metal labels churning out d-grade Lifelovers but they don't really meet my requirements - that's a pretty established "scene" that largely exhibits its own little cliches and tropes, weird as they may be (think Todesstoß - low-fi bm with a harmonica over it? That's more "what's the most unexpected thing I could chuck in?" than a heartfelt attempt). But by the same note I'd probably apply to the term "outsider" to at least a few bands with large-ish fanbases - Manilla Road, for instance. Their sound is unconventional by trad standards and there's an unfazed nerdiness to their image that qualifies them imo. I'd even say Celtic Frost/Triptykon are bordering on it - Triptykon in particular takes itself so damn seriously, and is also seriously inaccessible. I also agree on Voivod, at least their earlier stuff.

Yeah, if you think Lori is weird, Phil Hampson is another world entirely. Without going into the stuff he's been accused of, it's not so surprising since he's not only composed all the music, but also wrote all the lyrics and created the iconic artwork for "Carrion...". I'm not sure if Nuclear Death could really be considered "outsider" though, they do sound the part but judging by what both Phil and Lori have said in interviews since then, it seems more likely they knew what they were doing and the weird/surreal atmosphere of the artwork, lyrics, and presumably music itself, was all intentional. Lori actually posted a pretty informative YouTube video where she went in depth as to the band's influences and their songwriting approach. That said, intentional or not I guess it doesn't matter since knowing a bit of the backstory myself, I know it isn't the product of a clear mind (at least, as that pertains to Hampson).

it might be abundant, but I wouldn't personally call ineptitude a requirement of outsider music. Jandek is legitimately a transcendent guitarist drawing inspiration from a wide spectrum of styles to mold one that is distinctly proficient, all the while abandoning musical conventions. Seriously some awe inspiring musicianship throughout his vast discography.

There's a list for this (it might just be for black metal though) on RYM, and it's a hell of a lot tighter and deeper than what you'll get here.