Boston's Wicked Weird formed in 2023 fusing black metal's icy hostility with the harder-hitting structures of traditional heavy metal — a blackened heavy metal approach that fits naturally in New England, where the cold and the defiant have always gone hand in hand. Their name might suggest irreverence but the sound is dead serious, built on atmosphere and riff alike.

Feral black/thrash/punk that blurred genre lines with sadistic intensity. Active 2011-2019 before splitting up.

St. Louis's Wieldsayer have been practicing a cold, methodical strain of black metal since 2018 — the kind of music that carries the genre's Norwegian roots while planting them firmly in the Midwest's bleak winters. There's a no-frills intensity to their approach that fits the working-class grit of their city.

Philadelphia's Wild Beyond formed in 2023 at the caustic junction of black metal and thrash — burning fast and mean in the tradition of blackthrash's most venomous practitioners. Philly has long fostered a taste for extreme music, and Wild Beyond carry that energy forward with a sound built on speed, spite, and riffs that cut.

Environmentalist blackened crust. Doom, d-beat, and black metal fused with lyrics about nature's resilience and civilization's collapse. Released on Prosthetic Records.

One of the older acts in the American underground, Jackson, Michigan's Wind of the Black Mountains have been producing raw, orthodox black metal since 1996 — nearly thirty years of fidelity to a sound that most fair-weather fans abandoned long ago. They represent the true American black metal underground: isolated, uncompromising, and indifferent to trends.

Elizabeth, New Jersey's Windfaerer have been weaving black metal ferocity together with folk instrumentation and melody since 2009, creating an atmospheric hybrid rooted equally in pagan tradition and modern extreme metal. Their New Jersey origins are easy to forget when the music is this sweeping — Windfaerer conjure landscapes far removed from the Garden State's industrial corridor.

Brooklyn's Winds of Gladsheimr have been conjuring Norse-influenced black metal in New York City since 2016, drawing on the mythological imagery and atmospheric sweep of Scandinavian black metal while rooting it in one of the world's most urban environments — a contrast that only sharpens the music's otherworldly quality. Their work is dense with atmosphere and pagan intent.

Perrysburg, Ohio's Winter Heart have been developing atmospheric black metal since 2013, embracing the genre's most expansive, ambient-leaning qualities to craft music that is less about shock and more about immersion. The flat, grey landscapes of northwest Ohio make for a fitting backdrop for this kind of cold, contemplative black metal.