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Avant-garde metal
Stylistic origins	Varied
Cultural origins	Varied
Typical instruments	Guitar – Bass guitar – Drums – Keyboard – Synthesizer – Sampling – Various string and wind instruments
Other topics
Experimental music - Experimental rock

Avant-garde metal or experimental metal is generally regarded as a cross-genre reference to metal bands or more exactly as a stylistic adjunction with specific traits (just like progressive, symphonic, folk-). It is characterized by large-scale experimentation and by non-standard sounds, instruments, and song structures. Some of the earliest instances of a band being classified as avant-garde lie with Celtic Frost, Master's Hammer,

Characteristics

“ Avant-Garde Metal cannot be treated like other genres, such as Black, Death, Doom, Thrash, etc. Those genres are rooted in similar aesthetics and ideologies, leading to strong commonalities amongst bands united under one genre. With the Avant-Garde, on the other hand, there really is no common aesthetic or ideology. The bands have to be taken on a one-by-one basis, evaluated individually rather than on genre aesthetics. ”

The term avant-garde metal refers to bands and musicians who "incorporate new and innovative elements in metal, who break conventions, tear down walls, violate borders." The genre has also been described as "the art of creating deep and strange atmospheres by experimenting with new instruments and sounds, strange vocals, unconventional song structures, rhythms and harmonies, unusual lyrics or uncommon artwork" or alternatively, "progressive, psychedelic, surrealistic, phantasmagoric, expressionistic, dissonant or extravagant interpretations of extreme metal."

Michael Haas of Angizia notes that avantgarde is "a conscious distance from traditional listening and composing habits" while Svein Egil Hatlevik of Fleurety identifies avant-garde metal as "an aesthetic ideology" to "make music that's more than just average metal." He also notes that heavy metal music is a "field where it still makes sense to be avantgarde" because it is "one of the most conservative fields of artistic practice in the world." Not everyone agrees with the use of the term to establish a subgenre of metal, however. Jeff Arwadi of Kekal warns that "when another sub-genre has become established, it would create nothing but limits, and I don't think it's wise if we try to establish sub-genre [sic] that limits creativity and expression." Chlordane of The Amenta takes issue with the tendency in heavy metal music for "anyone who does something slightly weird" to be considered avant-garde. He contends that the term should not be used unless a band is "pushing music forward," further suggesting that the mere use of classical music in heavy metal is not avant-garde as it "has been done," "is not new" and "offers nothing."

Some common elements

Nevertheless, technically speaking, avant-garde metal statistically tends to be characterized by a certain number of common traits such as:

• Use of and search for unconventional arrangements in particular
• An emphasis on new timbres and sounds
• Use of unusual harmony (unusual and frequent dissonant chords, uncommon scales, obsessive and persistent ostinato, polytonality, bimodality and sometimes even atonality)
• Use of unconventional vocal or instrumental techniques
• Frequent loans from industrial metal, from contemporary classical music (also known as avant-gardist classical music) and sometimes from jazz (especially free-jazz and/or avant-jazz), experimental rock and occasionally from other genres.

But also sometimes (just like progressive metal):

• Use of unconventional song structures
• Use of unusual rhythms and time signatures

Difference with progressive metal

While progressive metal, like avant-garde metal, is also a genre which favours experimentation and non-standard ideas, there are rather large differences between the two forms (although, confusingly, there is also quite a bit of overlap between the two genres). One of the most striking differences is that the experimentation of progressive metal lies mostly in complex rhythms and song structures, while the genre usually sticks to a more traditional instrumentation, whereas in avant-garde metal the use of unusual sounds usually plays a fundamental role. In other words, Progressive is more orthodox in its use of unconventional structures and still refers to established Western musical theories, whereas Avant-garde is more iconoclast and more instinctive in its experimentation. Avant-garde metal has been compared to the RIO movement in progressive rock and to avant-progressive rock in general, under which it may be subsumed.

For better understanding, Ethan Mittel suggests this analogy:

"Let's say there are two architects. For the sake of this discussion, their names are John Petrucci, who represents progressive metal, and Mike Patton, who represents avant garde metal. They are each trying to create a large mansion using their prior knowledge. Petrucci breaks out his rulebook and follows every guideline all the way down to the punctuation marks. Mike Patton, on the other hand, tosses the rulebook in the trash, and lets his imagination guide him through the construction. At the end of the day, both mansions are complete. John Petrucci has built a massive, elaborate mansion with winding corridors, but has a more traditional architecture. Mike Patton's mansion looks more like something from a Dr. Seuss book. There are eccentrically-shaped doors, rounded edges, decor of every form, and a great collection of other oddball detailing. Put simply, progressive metal and avant garde metal are about as different from each other as Earth is different from Venus."

While Mittel's analogy may be useful and clearer for some, it is not entirely true. While avant-garde metal musicians indeed ignore many conventional habits and are less concerned with theoretical considerations, they still refer intuitively to certain basic principles of the tonal language (the common musical grammar almost all Western music uses), even though they tend to deviate very much from them.

Difference with alternative

Avant-garde metal must also be distinguished from alternative metal with reference to several traits: Even though alternative tends to use innovative musical ideas, avant-garde metal is generally regarded as more adventurous in terms of musical language and aesthetics. Furthermore, avant-garde metal tends to use unconventional structures and often unconventional instruments or sounds, while alternative tends to use more standard song structures and a more traditional instrumentation.

Origin and debates about the term

Though already existing before, the "avant-garde metal" term has begun to be commonly used in the early 2000s by journalists specialized in metal and by fans.

But the term as defining certain stylistic traits is sometimes still debated:

• because of its marginality, it doesn't have a large mainstream audience yet (even among metalheads), so many are still ignorant of its existence.
• because many confuse the peculiarity of avant-garde metal with progressive metal or with alternative
• because there is no unifying aesthetic of avant-garde metal (concerning that issue, see the characteristics chapter)
• because there is often confusion about the fact that individual bands may be associated with several styles in the course of their career (e. g., Arcturus and Ulver were black metal before, Celtic Frost were first known for their thrash/proto-black orientation). But during recent years the term has gained wider acceptance. And its specificity begins to be slowly recognized as such.

List of avant-garde metal artists

• The 3rd and the Mortal
• Age of Silence
• Angizia
• Arcturus
• Atrox
• Bassinvaders
• Blut aus Nord
• Buckethead
• Carbonized
• Carnival in Coal
• Celtic Frost
• DEVILWORX (Septic Flesh side project)
• Diablo Swing Orchestra
• Dodheimsgard
• Dog Fashion Disco
• Ephel Duath
• Estradasphere
• Fantômas
• Fleurety
• Gorguts
• Hurt
• In the Woods...
• Kayo Dot
• Kekal

• Korovakill
• Lux Occulta
• Manes
• Master's Hammer
• maudlin of the Well
• Meshuggah
• Mr. Bungle
• Pan.Thy.Monium
• Peccatum
• Pinkly Smooth
• Ram-Zet
• Sigh
• Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
• Solefald
• Stolen Babies
• Strapping Young Lad ( Album: The new black , 2006 )
• ThanatoSchizO
• The Amenta
• The Dillinger Escape Plan
• Ulver
• Unexpect
• Ved Buens Ende
• Waltari

Sources

• Christe, Ian, "Avant-Garde Metal", Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal, Harper Paperbacks, ISBN 0749083514
• Nieder-wiesen, Chrystof (December 2007), "About Avant-Garde Metal" (PDF), Avantgarde Metal Magazine, 1 (1), retrieved 2008-03-27

External links

• Avantgarde-Metal.com

Category:Heavy metal subgenres * Category:Music genres

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