Animals as Leaders
Though it doesn’t hold a candle to AAL, one of the first albums I remember in this specific genre is the soundtrack for Sauerbraten produced by Mark A. Pullen. Two Minute Warning
Animals as Leaders, Angel Vivaldi, Intervals, and Polyphia (well, now they are genre indeterminate, really) are my favorites.
I don’t know if they are “instrumental metal”, but Nightwish is quite good.
instrumental means not having vocals, or if you want me to slap you, not having “singing” or spoken word but other mouth noises are allowed.
metal means the music when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well.
Plague of Carcosa. One of their members is a poster on here and they shred, really heavy doom metal stuff.
CHON’s early stuff has a lot of distortion. But they’re more proggy kind of than metal but still really good instrumental band. I will plug CHON whenever possible
edit: also Haunted Shores is cool. It’s the guitarists from Periphery but without the cringe vocals
hmm I’ve heard a couple of their songs. Not a huge fan but I do like this one which features CHON https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfICVryUd6g