Los Angeles' Hexen bring melodic sophistication and progressive ambition to the thrash template, threading complex arrangements through otherwise hard-hitting material. Their approach reflects the technical tradition of the LA metal scene while reaching toward something more compositionally adventurous.

A recent arrival from Santa Rosa, California, Hexen House entered the black metal underground in 2024 with the urgency of a band that has been waiting too long to start. Raw and immediate, their early work sounds less like a debut than a declaration.

Franklin, Indiana's Hidden Dagger blend stoner haze and doom weight with groove metal's rhythmic snap, arriving at something simultaneously lumbering and propulsive. Since 2018 they've proven that mid-tempo heaviness can carry as much punch as anything faster.

Akron's Hieros draw on the melodic black metal tradition to create music that is sweeping without being saccharine, atmospheric without surrendering aggression. Since 2020 the project has built a sound that sits somewhere between the triumphant and the grim.

Relentless Black Metal from Denton.

Los Angeles' Highland have been working a raw and confrontational strain of black metal since 2013, finding in the city's sprawl and contradictions a fitting backdrop for music this harsh and austere. The project operates at the margin of the local scene rather than its center.

From the small town of Wilmore, Kentucky, Highmass have cultivated a brand of black metal since 2012 that carries the weight of geographic isolation. Their sound is cold and deliberate, indifferent to the underground's shifting fashions.

Tampa's Hiilessa — whose name derives from a Finnish word meaning to smolder — arrived in 2023 with black metal that lives up to the slow burn the name implies. Situated in Florida's historically fertile extreme metal environment, the project carves out a colder, more Nordic-flavored space.

Portland's Hinterlands blend black metal with punk's stripped directness, arriving at something rawer and more physically immediate than pure black metal tends to be. A recent formation, they sound like they're more interested in communicating urgency than mastering the genre's intricacies.

Philadelphia's Hivelords collapse the boundaries between black metal, doom, and sludge into a dense, oppressive mass that borrows from each tradition without fully belonging to any of them. Since 2011 they've occupied a particularly unpleasant corner of the extreme metal underground, and they seem comfortable there.

Richmond, Virginia's Hoboknife weld black metal's nocturnal hostility to thrash's speed and aggression, cutting through the mid-ground with serrated efficiency. Active since 2013, they belong to a Richmond scene with a long tradition of making extreme metal feel physically threatening.

Ferocious blackened death horde active 2007-2025. Debuted with 'Serpent' on Ibex Moon Records. Known for intense, bulletbelt-and-PBR-fueled live shows.

Born in Los Angeles in 2020, Hohlgeist fuses raw black metal with shoegaze, wrapping tremolo-drenched noise in hazy, atmospheric drift. The result is something hollow and haunted, as if the void itself has a texture.

Apopka, Florida's Hollentor deal in the epic and the anthemic, blending heavy metal muscle with power metal's soaring sensibility since 2017. Their name — German for "gateway to hell" — hints at the grandiose drama they pursue.

A California black metal project active since 2021, Hollow Husk traffics in desolation and stripped-down hostility. What remains after the flesh is gone — hollow, cold, and unrelenting.