Artist Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Metal brutality and prog-rock pageantry have spawned many perfectly healthy cross-breeds. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is the secret grotesque offspring that survived a childhood locked away in a shed, and emerged all the stronger for it. Violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt embraces technical chug-outs as comfortably as the band does creepy, near-choral layerings of vocals and homemade instruments that sound like some kind of medieval mass infiltrated by the occult. For all the influences anyone could pick out, albums like 2007's In Glorious Times create the planetarium-like illusion that SGM inhabits its own murky realm, where complex composition meets insane theatricality—something the band's live show only accentuates, humorously drunk on its own absurdity.

Updated 04/06/2010