10 Amazing Metal Bands That Totally Defy Genre

The American speedsters Astronoid describe their individual brand of heavy metal music as “dream thrash”: in laymen’s terms, a fusion of the frantic pace of speed metal with the ambience and ethereal liminality of dream rock.

This combination made their full-length debut, Air, one of the very best metal albums of 2016, landing right on the border between manic and lovely. This, in turn, has let the band ditch the extreme metal mainstay of harsh vocals in a seemingly simple yet underused strategy, with growls being annoyingly omnipresent in the metal scene of the 2010s (hell, there’s only one other entry on this list that don’t regularly roar their lungs out).

Astronoid are a truly heavy, thrashing band that actually have an appeal outside of the metal niche, their beauty rivalled only by such popular names as Skyharbor and Ulver. It wouldn’t be hard to convert fans of more subdued or progressive music over to the dark side with the help of these beloved metallers.

And with some of their recent live runs including tours with Ghost Bath and TesseracT, it may not be long until the dulcet tones of Astronoid begin infecting more and more ears like the most luscious of viruses.