While these bands were influential in a wild and woolly way, it was probably the Norwegian band Ved Buens Ende with the landmark album “Written In Waters.” that gave permission to the more extreme black and death metal bands to reach for the stars.Īfter that seminal release, avant-garde and experimental metal began to flourish all over the globe with bands like Japan’s Sigh and Lithuania’s Anubi popping up, but perhaps one of the absolutely strangest metal bands to have emerged from the 90s came from the unassuming city of Sumy located in the northeastern part of the Ukraine. Once the 90s hit it seemed like the floodgates opened for alternative everything and suddenly bands like Old, and Faxed Head were going into ever weirder places. Bungle were crafting ever more bizarre metal music. While Celtic Frost was the first extreme metal band to go hog wild into the avant-garde, other bands like Finland’s Funcunt and California’s Mr.
By the 1980s metal was an established force to be reckoned with and while Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were becoming household names, other bands were seeking more adventurous avenues to unleash their metallic fury upon.