Portland, Oregon's Diabolic Oath have been conjuring black/death metal in the Pacific Northwest underground since 2018. Their sound traffics in the most merciless intersection of both genres — cavernous production, blasting tempos, and a total disregard for comfort or accessibility.

California's Dick Wolf have been navigating the space between raw black metal and post-black metal's more atmospheric impulses since 2012. Their sound resists easy categorization — bleak but textured, aggressive but willing to breathe, operating comfortably in the margins between the genre's orthodox and experimental wings.

Bellingham, Washington's Dioghaltas — whose name means "vengeance" in Scottish Gaelic — have been crafting black metal since 2020 in the rain-soaked corner of the Pacific Northwest where the Cascade foothills meet Puget Sound. Their music carries the linguistic weight of the old world set against a landscape that demands its own dark mythology.

Greensburg, Indiana's Dis have been wielding black/death metal in the rural Midwest since 2018, an unlikely setting that only sharpens the isolation and fury in their sound. There is something fitting about extreme metal emerging from small-town Indiana — it sounds like it has nowhere else to go.

Dark, grim black/thrash from Houston with crustpunk and doom influences. Released Under Grim Skies in 2022.

Venomous Black Metal from Dallas.

Redwood City, California's Disruption emerged in 2022 as part of a new wave of West Coast black metal practitioners, carving their niche from the Bay Area's fertile underground. Young but focused, they approach the genre with the cold, abrasive conviction that black metal demands, drawing on Northern California's increasingly active extreme metal scene.

Baltimore's Distend emerged in 2020 at the intersection of black metal's raw hostility and post-black metal's atmospheric expansiveness, channeling the grit and mood of a city with a serious underground pedigree. Their post-black metal lean brings texture and space to the tremolo-and-blast template, a natural fit for a scene that's never been shy about pushing at genre boundaries.

Santa Fe, New Mexico's Distorted Evil fuse black metal's cold fury with thrash metal's driving aggression, a blackened thrash approach that suits the high desert isolation their hometown provides. Formed in 2022, they've leaned into the raw, rehearsal-tape energy that makes the subgenre's best material feel genuinely dangerous rather than polished into submission.