Heavy music has never been short of rules. Fortunately, plenty of its most interesting artists have never been especially interested in following them.
A metal riff can sit beside a pop chorus, a jazz-influenced passage, a hip-hop vocal or a traditional rhythm—and still hit just as hard. Sometimes the contrast makes the heavy moment feel heavier. Sometimes it opens a song up emotionally, offering a pause before the next twist. And sometimes it simply sounds brilliant because nobody stopped to ask whether the ingredients were supposed to belong together.
Recent records from Sleep Token, BABYMETAL and Bloodywood show just how many directions heavy music can take. But the idea didn’t arrive yesterday. Metal has been borrowing, colliding and reinventing itself for decades. To hear that freedom in full flight, we can start with a record from 2015.
Between the Buried and Me: a whole world inside one album
Start with: “The Coma Machine” and “King Redeem / Queen Serene”
Album: Coma Ecliptic (2015)
Between the Buried and Me’s Coma Ecliptic is a perfect reminder that progressive metal can be an adventure rather than a demonstration of how many notes a band can play. It follows a comatose character through different lives, and its music moves with the same sense that another door could open at any moment.
“The Coma Machine” moves between shifting rhythms, heavy guitars and striking clean vocals. There is theatrical colour in its melodies, but it never forgets the weight and tension that make it metal. “King Redeem / Queen Serene” stretches the palette further, with piano and jazz-flavoured moments woven into the heavier passages. Later, the long “Memory Palace” makes room for both force and a calmer, more spacious ending.
What makes the album rewarding is the way those changes become part of the story. You might arrive for the riffs and find yourself drawn into a strange progressive-rock detour—or be pulled back from a gentler passage by a sudden surge of heaviness. For listeners who enjoy jazz fusion and prog as well as metal, there is plenty here to get lost in.
Watch “The Coma Machine” — official video from Metal Blade Records
Sleep Token: the space between the intimate and the enormous
Start with: “Caramel”
Album: Even in Arcadia (2025)
Sleep Token approach contrast from another angle. Rather than packing every song with technical detours, they let atmosphere, melody and groove do much of the work. On Even in Arcadia, elements of pop, R&B, electronic music and rap sit alongside the band’s progressive and metal roots.
“Caramel” is a useful way in: its melodic pull and rhythmic feel invite you close, while the heavier textures give the song a different kind of scale. For some metal fans, that polish will be the sticking point; for others, it’s precisely what makes the band interesting. Either way, the appeal lies in the tension between vulnerability and power.
BABYMETAL and Poppy: sweetness with teeth
Start with: “from me to u”
Album: METAL FORTH (2025)
BABYMETAL have long made a virtue of putting pop brightness and metal intensity in the same room. On “from me to u”, featuring Poppy, that meeting becomes a collaboration between artists who both understand the thrill of a sudden change in tone.
Melodic vocals and an infectious pop sensibility meet heavy instrumentation and Poppy’s screams. The effect isn’t a gentle compromise between two sounds: the difference between them is part of the fun. It’s loud, theatrical and catchy, and it makes a strong case for letting a metal song be playful without losing its bite.
Bloodywood: heavy music with roots and momentum
Start with: “Nu Delhi”
Album: Nu Delhi (2025)
Bloodywood bring another set of colours to the picture. The New Delhi band combine metal and hip-hop with Indian folk and bhangra influences, making rhythm as central to their sound as the force of the guitars.
“Nu Delhi” is a tribute to the city that shaped them. It is a good place to hear how the band’s identity and influences belong together: the groove pushes forward, the vocals add urgency, and the heavy parts land within a much broader rhythmic framework. This isn’t metal borrowing a flourish for decoration; those different sounds are part of the music’s character.
Imperial Triumphant: jazz and metal in a darker place
Start with: “Eye of Mars”
Album: Goldstar (2025)
If you want to take the jazz connection somewhere more unsettling, New York’s Imperial Triumphant offer a very different prospect from the melodic, theatrical journey of Coma Ecliptic. Their avant-garde approach places extreme metal alongside jazz sensibilities, using dissonance and restless movement to create an uneasy atmosphere.
“Eye of Mars” is an intense introduction rather than an easy one. It shows how jazz influence in heavy music doesn’t have to mean a tidy solo break: it can live in the feel, the tension and the unpredictable shape of the music itself.
Keep the doors open
These artists don’t all sound alike—and that’s the point. Between the Buried and Me build long-form progressive journeys; Sleep Token lean into atmosphere and modern melody; BABYMETAL and Poppy make contrast a spectacle; Bloodywood put diverse rhythms at the heart of their sound; and Imperial Triumphant push into something stranger and more abrasive.
Metal can still be crushing, noisy, emotional and confrontational while welcoming ideas from elsewhere. For curious listeners, that openness means there is always another route in—and another record waiting on the other side.
What metal album has surprised you with the range of styles it brings together?
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