Sweeping and desolate, Oaken Palace craft atmospheric black metal that conjures the grey skies and frozen stillness of the upper Midwest. Their sound trades brutality for texture — cavernous, layered, and haunted by a deep sense of place.

El Paso black/thrash veterans active since 1992. Named after the Bathory track. Prolific catalog of war-themed filth spanning three decades.

San Diego's Obsidian Rite began in doom before gravitating toward black metal's harsher cold, and the tension between those two impulses gives their music its distinctive, brooding character. Formed in 2023, they're already building something that feels genuinely ominous.

Ruthless Melodic Death Metal from Fort Worth.

Chicago's Obskurum carve out black metal that feels at home in an urban landscape — cold, isolating, and relentless, shaped by the Midwest's grey winters and underground metal culture. Formed in 2020, they bring a rawness to the Windy City's extreme scene that refuses to be polished away.

California's Occult Mountain traffic in raw black metal and dungeon synth with the lo-fi intensity of a project that has nothing to prove to anyone. Born in 2025, their sound is primitive, isolated, and entirely committed to the underground's most uncompromising traditions.

Raw Symphonic Black Metal from Austin.

Thunderous Blackened Sludge Metal from Dallas/Denton, Texas / New York, New York.

A deliberately obscure American black metal outfit, Old Cave operate in the shadows with a rawness that feels genuinely ancient rather than performative. Since 2009, their music has suggested isolation and intent in equal measure.

From the Sierra Nevada foothills of Placerville, Old Moon bring a raw, rurally-inflected black metal that feels rooted in landscape as much as tradition. Since 2020, they've channeled California's wilder, more isolated geography into cold and unforgiving darkness.

Louisiana's Olivia Tree Darkness blend black metal's corrosive cold with ambient drift, conjuring something atmospheric and deeply unsettling. Formed in 2022, their music feels less like performance and more like ritual — dark, searching, and rooted in the bayou's own gothic mystery.

Scorching Black Metal from Hammond, Louisiana (early); Houston, Texas (mid); United States / Colombia (later).

A freshly emergent black metal force, Once upon Atrocity arrived in 2025 with a name that reads like a dark fable opener and music to match — corrosive, misanthropic, and steeped in cold dissonance.

Portland, Oregon's Oppressive Descent craft black metal that suits the Pacific Northwest's perpetual overcast — dissonant, ominous, and dense with atmosphere. Since 2016 they've built a reputation in Portland's underground for uncompromising darkness.

Parker, Arizona's Orden splice black metal with punk rawness for something lean, venomous, and stripped of any pretension — a desert-baked approach to a genre often glutted with ceremony. Formed in 2020, they channel aggression rather than atmosphere.