Urbana, Illinois's Wormwood formed in 2015, fusing the tremolo-driven ferocity of black metal with death metal's crushing low end. Active in the Midwest underground, the band inhabits the blackened death territory where sonic extremity and bleak atmosphere reinforce each other.

Portland, Oregon's Worn Hearth arrived in 2022 with a black metal approach that fits naturally into the Pacific Northwest's well-established tradition of cold, atmospheric extremity. A young band still defining its voice, Worn Hearth contributes to Portland's active underground metal community with raw-edged black metal that keeps the genre's darkness intact.

Minneapolis's Worn Mantle formed in 2022, grafting the corrosive texture of sludge metal onto a blackened death metal framework — a combination that suits the Twin Cities underground's affinity for heavy music that is both abrasive and emotionally oppressive. The band brings a multi-genre brutality to a city with a strong tradition of extreme metal.

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Atlanta's Wounds of Recollection emerged in 2014 from the intersection of funeral doom and black metal, building monolithic walls of grief before expanding into post-black metal and post-rock territory. The band's evolution traces an arc from suffocating heaviness toward something more expansive and bittersweet, without ever fully letting go of its funeral roots.

Indiana's Wraith formed in 2017 to channel the raw energy of blackened speed metal and thrash punk into something that feels genuinely dangerous. Drawing from the crossover spirit of the 1980s and electrifying it with black metal venom, they play with the kind of aggressive simplicity that leaves little room for anything but forward motion.

Raw Death / Black Metal out of Texas.

A Washington State act formed in 2019, Wraithborn fuse the abrasive extremes of death metal and black metal with the modern heaviness of deathcore, creating music that's equal parts atmospheric menace and crushing brutality. Their approach refuses easy categorization, pulling influences across the extreme metal spectrum into something deliberately unpredictable.

Rising from Flint, Michigan in 2020, Wraithlord channel the bleak atmosphere of their surroundings into cold, unadorned black metal that bears the marks of a city with little patience for pretense. The project leans into the raw and the grim, delivering music that feels less composed than conjured.