Gilbert, Arizona's Scissor Dungeon arrive with one of the more memorably absurdist band names in the post-black metal underground, formed in 2022 with a sound that balances the raw, aggressive foundation of black metal with the atmospheric and melodic expansions of the post-black wave. The Phoenix suburban sprawl is an unlikely incubator for this kind of music, making their existence all the more idiosyncratic.

One of the longer-running black metal acts in the northern Virginia underground, Fairfax's Scorn has maintained an uncompromising presence since 1992 — outlasting trends, line-up shifts, and the general churn of the American black metal scene. Their output is rooted in the raw, hateful aesthetic of second-wave black metal: tremolo-drenched riffing, blasphemous atmosphere, and a commitment to the form that three decades haven't softened. They remain one of the quiet veterans of the East Coast underground.

Scour is a black metal supergroup formed in 2016 featuring Phil Anselmo of Pantera alongside members of Cattle Decapitation and Misery Index — and their sound is exactly as unhinged as that collaboration suggests. Dispensing with any of the atmospheric or philosophical trappings that define more artful black metal, Scour strips the genre down to its most primal violence: blinding blast beats, shrieked vocals, and riffs that feel like static electricity at lethal voltage. They are a study in pure, focused extremity.

Emerging from Alabama in 2022, Screams of Desolation operate in the depressive and suicidal black metal tradition — a subgenre defined by its emotional rawness, lo-fi production values, and a willingness to dwell in psychological extremity that most metal won't approach. The Bandcamp URL itself signals their alignment with that scene's specific intensity. There's something fitting about this kind of inward, desolate black metal being born in the Deep South, where isolation takes on its own particular texture.

Named for the Hockomock Swamp — a legendarily haunted stretch of southeastern Massachusetts that Native Americans called a place of evil spirits — Weymouth's Screams of Hockomock have been channeling that unsettling regional folklore into melodic death/black metal since 2018. The swamp's history of mysterious lights, cryptid sightings, and indigenous warning legends makes it an appropriately eerie muse for music that blends melodic death metal's emotional sweep with black metal's atmospheric menace. Local mythology as metal fuel, executed with genuine craft.

Pittsburgh's Scrying Blade emerged in 2020 working in raw and ambient black metal — a pairing that uses minimalist production and sparse, hypnotic repetition to evoke something occult and introspective rather than violent. The project draws on the more meditative, lo-fi wing of the black metal tradition: static-drenched recordings, long atmospheric passages, and a sensibility more aligned with ritual than performance. In Pittsburgh, a city whose industrial weight and grey skies suit this kind of heavy, searching music, they've found natural footing.

Formed in California in 2019, Seas of Winter channels the cold, atmospheric fury of black metal into a solo project that feels both intimate and vast. The project leans into the bleakness the name implies — glacial tremolo lines, suffocating atmosphere, and a rawness that puts sonic texture ahead of accessibility. It's the kind of black metal that rewards patience and solitude.

Los Angeles's Sebek — named for the ancient Egyptian crocodile deity — forge a blackened thrash attack that's as feral and aggressive as their namesake. Active since 2015, the band channels the raw, speed-obsessed chaos of early black/thrash into something that feels genuinely dangerous rather than merely nostalgic. Their LA origins ground them in a city with deep extreme metal roots, and they honor that lineage without sounding derivative.

Fresh out of Huntington Beach, California, Secularis arrived in 2025 as one of the newest entries in the American black/death underground, combining the icy hostility of black metal with the visceral attack of death metal. Even at this early stage, the project signals a willingness to operate in the extremes where both genres converge most violently.