Founded in 2017, Reminisce sits at the intersection of depressive and post-black metal, favoring cascading walls of sound that ache with longing rather than just punish. Their compositions stretch outward into atmospheric spaces while never abandoning the raw, lo-fi emotional core that defines the depressive black metal tradition. It's introspective and crushing in equal measure.

A North Carolina black metal project born in 2022, Reminiscent Delusion trades in the kind of cold, unadorned blackness that owes more to the Norwegian second wave than any modern reinterpretation. The name itself suggests a preoccupation with fractured memory and psychological darkness, themes that infuse the music with a harrowing personal quality. Raw, uncompromising, and newly forged.

From Tamaqua, Pennsylvania — a small Appalachian coal town that breeds hard music — Rended conjure a raw, regionalist black metal that carries the weight of the anthracite landscape. Formed in 2020, their sound evokes isolation and cold without relying on polish or convention. There's something distinctly American and rural about their particular strain of darkness.

Reproach have been walking the line between death and black metal since 2006, building a sound that is simultaneously punishing and atmospherically charged — the blast-furnace intensity of death metal filtered through black metal's icy misanthropy. The project has maintained consistent activity over nearly two decades, a testament to the conviction behind the music. Ferocious and unrelenting.

La Crosse, Wisconsin's Revanent arrived in 2024 with a black metal aesthetic rooted firmly in raw, primitive aggression rather than atmospheric ambition. Their sound is cold and unadorned — the kind of black metal that owes more to Darkthrone's stripped-down orthodoxy than to the post-black wave, built from corroded riffs and venomous vocals that suit the frozen midwestern winters perfectly. For a brand-new band, they carry themselves with the conviction of true believers.

Kenosha, Wisconsin's Revel in Rot have been fusing thrash's velocity with black metal's malevolence since 2020, crafting a crossover sound that's equal parts beer-drenched pit fuel and satanic swagger. The thrash/black collision they traffic in evokes the filth of early Venom and the tightly coiled energy of bay area speed demons, but with a nastiness that feels distinctly Midwestern — blunt and unpretentious. There's no pretension here, just riffs built to destroy.

Seattle's Reviled have been fusing black and death metal into something caustic and extreme since 2017, drawing on both traditions without fully surrendering to either. The black/death combination gives their music a fevered quality — the atmospheric menace of black metal colliding with death metal's sheer physical force — and Seattle's grey, rain-soaked environment seems like a fitting birthplace for something this unrelenting. The Bandcamp URL referencing Texas adds an intriguing wrinkle to what is otherwise a thoroughly Pacific Northwest-rooted sound.

Tulsa, Oklahoma's Ridden have been carving out a black metal identity in an unlikely corner of the country since 2017, proving that the Great Plains can generate darkness as effectively as Scandinavia ever did. Their sound is unadorned and stripped of any post-black metal softness — raw, misanthropic, and committed to the genre's most orthodox values. Oklahoma's isolation gives Ridden a particular bleakness that feels genuine rather than performed, the work of a band forged far from any established metal scene.

Cincinnati's Riesenwolf — German for 'giant wolf' — have been forging a black/heavy metal hybrid since 2022 that draws on the epic qualities of traditional heavy metal while blackening the edges with tremolo-picked menace and harsher vocal work. The Cincinnati underground doesn't always get its due nationally, but Riesenwolf represent a strain of Midwestern metal that combines the grandeur of classic metal songwriting with genuinely extreme sonic aggression. Two years in, they sound like a band already fully formed in their vision.