Top 10 Metal Drummers with the Best Side Projects | MetalForge

The metal drummers with the most impressive side projects, ranked. Mike Portnoy, Dave Lombardo, Danny Carey, Igor Cavalera and more — drummers juggling multiple bands at once.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which metal drummer has the most side projects?

Mike Portnoy is the most commonly cited answer, actively co-founding and maintaining Liquid Tension Experiment, The Winery Dogs, Transatlantic, and Sons of Apollo alongside his main Dream Theater work — a spread of simultaneously active bands unmatched in metal. Gene Hoglan is the alternative answer for sheer volume of band memberships across his career, having played in more than 20 bands including Dark Angel, Death, Testament, Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad, and Fear Factory.

What is the difference between a side project and a session credit?

A side project is a band or creative venture the drummer helped found, co-writes for, or maintains an ongoing creative stake in — think Mike Portnoy's Liquid Tension Experiment or Danny Carey's Volto!. A session credit, by contrast, is typically a one-off or short-term hired role recording or touring for someone else's band without a lasting creative partnership. Many drummers do both: Navene Koperweis runs his own side projects (Entheos, Fleshwrought) while also taking session dates for Job for a Cowboy and Machine Head.

Do side projects ever become more important than a drummer's main band?

It happens. Igor Cavalera's Mixhell electronic project became a genuinely separate creative identity from his Sepultura and Cavalera Conspiracy metal work, and Charlie Benante's 2022 Pantera reunion stint put him behind the kit for one of metal's most legendary bands decades after Anthrax became his flagship. In both cases, what started as a side commitment grew into a career pillar in its own right.

Why do metal drummers take on so many simultaneous projects?

Side projects let drummers explore sounds, genres, or creative relationships that don't fit their main band's identity or release schedule. Danny Carey's Volto! and Legend of the Seagullmen give him creative outlets during Tool's notoriously long gaps between albums, while Morgan Ågren's parallel work in the Mats/Morgan Band, Kaipa, and with Fredrik Thordendal lets him pursue jazz fusion, prog rock, and metal simultaneously rather than choosing just one.

Gear Deep Dives & Articles

1. Mike Portnoy — Half a dozen active bands at once. Mike Portnoy co-founded and remains actively involved in Liquid Tension Experiment, The Winery Dogs, Transatlantic, and Sons of Apollo alongside his ongoing Dream Theater work — a spread of simultaneous creative commitments unmatched by any other drummer on this list. Each project has its own distinct sound, from Transatlantic's symphonic prog-rock to The Winery Dogs' bluesy hard rock, showing genuine range rather than the same band under different names. Portnoy earns rank #1 for the widest span of genuinely active, co-founded side projects in metal.
2. Dave Lombardo — From Slayer to free jazz and everything between. Dave Lombardo's side-project catalog spans Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Cross, Mr. Bungle, and Fantômas — bands that pull him from thrash metal into hardcore, avant-garde noise, and free-jazz-adjacent experimentation, often within the same touring year. That genre range, maintained alongside his ongoing Slayer legacy, makes his side-project work some of the most stylistically unpredictable in metal. Lombardo earns rank #2 for side projects that span the widest genre distance from his flagship band's sound.
3. Danny Carey — Tool's foundation, plus two creative outlets beyond it. Danny Carey has maintained Volto! and Legend of the Seagullmen as ongoing creative outlets throughout his decades with Tool, giving him space to explore ideas — funk-inflected fusion in Volto!, more freewheeling rock experimentation in Legend of the Seagullmen — that don't fit Tool's methodical album cycle. That balance of a slow-moving flagship band with faster-moving side projects lets Carey stay creatively active between Tool's famously long gaps between releases. Carey earns rank #3 for side projects that specifically fill the creative space his main band's pace leaves open.
4. Igor Cavalera — From Sepultura to a completely different electronic identity. Igor Cavalera co-founded Cavalera Conspiracy with his brother Max after leaving Sepultura, and separately built an entirely different creative identity as an electronic music DJ and producer through Mixhell — a side venture with no metal component at all. Few drummers on this list maintain a side project this far removed stylistically from their metal roots, running two genuinely separate creative careers in parallel. Cavalera earns rank #4 for the most complete genre pivot among this list's side projects.
5. Gene Hoglan — More bands than most drummers have albums. Gene Hoglan has been an active or founding member of Dark Angel, Death, Testament, Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad, and Fear Factory, often holding overlapping memberships across several of these at once rather than moving sequentially between them. That volume of simultaneous creative commitments across genuinely different bands — thrash, death metal, animated-show metal-comedy, industrial — sets him apart even among this list's most prolific names. Hoglan earns rank #5 for sheer volume of concurrent band memberships.
6. Navene Koperweis — A solo electronic career running alongside two metal bands. Navene Koperweis splits his creative output across Entheos, his own solo electronic project released as "Navene K," and the technical death metal project Fleshwrought — where he plays every instrument himself rather than just drums. That combination of a full band, a fully solo multi-instrumental project, and an electronic production identity running simultaneously is a rare three-way split even among prolific side-project drummers. Koperweis earns rank #6 for maintaining a genuinely solo project alongside his band commitments.
7. Charlie Benante — Four decades of Anthrax, plus a thrash supergroup and a reunion stint. Charlie Benante has maintained Anthrax as his flagship since 1983 while also co-founding S.O.D. as a fast, satirical thrash side project and, more recently, joining Pantera's 2022 reunion touring lineup — three genuinely distinct creative commitments spanning over 40 years. That combination of longevity in one band and willingness to take on a completely separate high-profile drum chair decades into his career is a rare late-career side-project move. Benante earns rank #7 for balancing a four-decade flagship band with an entirely separate legacy band's reunion.
8. Shannon Larkin — A career built across five different bands before settling in. Shannon Larkin played in Wrathchild America, Souls at Zero, Ugly Kid Joe, and Amen before joining Godsmack in 2002, and even briefly filled in for Black Sabbath in 1997 — a résumé that shows a drummer whose identity was built across multiple simultaneous and sequential projects long before he found his longest-running home. That range across hard rock, alternative metal, and one-off legacy-band fill-in work is unusually broad even by side-project standards. Larkin earns rank #8 for a pre-Godsmack career built entirely on juggling multiple bands.
9. Morgan Ågren — Zappa tributes, Swedish prog, and a Meshuggah collaboration all at once. Morgan Ågren has run the Mats/Morgan Band since 1981, joined Swedish progressive rock band Kaipa in 2002, and recorded the collaborative album "Sol Niger Within" with Meshuggah's Fredrik Thordendal — three simultaneously active creative relationships spanning fusion, prog rock, and metal that rarely overlap in any other drummer's career. That breadth is documented enough to have inspired its own 2013 documentary, "Morgan Ågren's Conundrum: A Percussive Misadventure." Ågren earns rank #9 for maintaining the most stylistically diverse simultaneous project list on this ranking.
10. Raymond Herrera — Industrial metal's architect, splitting time across three bands. Raymond Herrera co-founded Fear Factory in 1990 and later co-founded Arkaea with former Fear Factory bandmates, while also maintaining an ongoing role in Brujeria since 1993 — a three-band spread that runs from mechanically precise industrial metal to Brujeria's satirical death-grind persona. That combination of a flagship band, a spin-off formed from its former members, and a completely separate long-running project rounds out this list's range of side-project structures. Herrera earns rank #10 for a side-project career that includes both a direct spin-off band and an unrelated long-term project.

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