"I'd love to say I had a genius plan but the whole thing was a fluke," says Timfy James, guitarist and founder member of the band Hacktivist. Ostensibly exponents of djent – a complex, technically formidable form of heavy music – the young five-piece from the Milton Keynes suburb of Wolverton combine thunderous riffs and quick-fire grime rhyming in a fashion poised to take this obscure scene overground. But as James tells it, their genre cross-pollination came about almost by accident.

"I was recording some grime stuff with my friend J Hurley, who's been an MC for years," James says, looking every inch the surly hardcore archetype with his asymmetrical haircut and box-fresh skate gear. "One day I was tinkering around with this metal track and he really liked it and asked if he could try some lyrics on it. I just thought: 'Why not?' We put it up on Soundcloud and it just took off from there. The rest of it is a blur. We've gone from zero to hero in next to no time.

"Right place and right time, basically, " he adds.

Hacktivist self-released their debut digital single, Unlike Us, six weeks ago. Within 48 hours the song was at No 2 in the Amazon metal charts: a significant achievement for a band formed within the year, never mind one that melds such seemingly incompatible styles.

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"For me, what they're doing is akin to what was happening in the mid-90s with rap-metal and the Aerosmith and Run DMC thing before that," says Nathan Phillips, boss of Basick Records, a label that has played a major role in the development of the djent scene. "They've stumbled across this formula by themselves. They have a frontman who comes from the grime scene and knows nothing about the metal scene at all. It all seems very real as a result and it's not contrived. It just works."

Although Hacktivist represent the cutting edge of djent, several other bands are also making waves: Reading's TesseracT, named best new band at the recent Progressive Music awards, as well as US six-piece Periphery and London-based Monuments (both of whom tour Europe and the UK this autumn). Thanks to an extraordinary level of international support that has evolved almost entirely online, djent has been growing steadily for several years away from the mainstream. Visit the forums on websites such as got-djent.com and witness fans from Europe, the US and Australia expressing their fanatical support for the genre. In fact, there are obvious parallels with the dubstep scene. Djent is created primarily by suburban nerds with laptops using state-of-the-art music software that is then used to power and control live performances.

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"Djent is definitely metal but if you listen to dubstep, our music is around the same tempo, with the same syncopated rhythms," says James, who at 24 speaks with the assurance of a veteran. "I love dubstep, hip-hop and drum'n'bass and I use a lot of that ambience in our stuff. We're uniting a lot of people. People have said, 'I've never listened to metal before but you make it speak to me,' and others have said, 'I really hate hip-hop but I love what you're doing.' That's really exciting."

The creation of djent is usual attributed to maverick Swedish metal band Meshuggah, who established their blend of bewildering polyrhythms and intricate riffs in the early 90s and continue to confound conservative fans of heavy music today. But this new generation is taking that blueprint and gleefully mixing it up with anything that strays on to their radar, regardless of how it might polarise opinion.

"There are people from the dance arena who see Hacktivist as something with similar crossover potential to something like the Prodigy," says Phillips, exuding fatherly pride for the scene his label has nurtured. "They're pricking up ears outside of the metal world and that speaks volumes."

Several labels are currently buzzing around Hacktivist, sensing that something remarkable is happening. It certainly helps that the band's live performances have more in common with a low-key grime or hip-hop gig than a bright and blustery metal show. Shrouded in darkness and dressed in hoodies or black skate wear, the quintet exude an air of menace that fits perfectly with their gritty, urban sound. Frankly, you wouldn't mess with them even before the monstrous riffs and ultra-precise beats kick in. Hurley's lyrics combine braggadocio and rebellious sloganeering with an underlying sense of bleak urban unease. "Volcanoes erupt from beneath," he barks on Cold Shoulders, "as we stand here gritting our teeth …"

With a self-titled debut EP released on 12 November to coincide with a first headlining tour of the UK, the band are eager to maintain their independence. But it's not hard to imagine a future where this forward-thinking music gatecrashes the mainstream.

"Djent is evolved music," says John Browne, guitarist with Monuments. "If you listen to the pop charts you just hear Michael Jackson over and over again. But with this, it's not a blatant copy of anything. It's taking elements of great things and making them into something that's new and hopefully great, too. It's just the evolution of more complex music and it really seems to connect with people."

"This scene proves that people can do what the hell they want and reach the other side of the planet without big labels interfering," James says. "People are doing it on their own. It's just a new way of making music. I can make up a band name, put some songs up on Soundcloud and YouTube, and if it's got the right spark it'll go global."