Burlington, North Carolina's Hermaeus Mora began as an atmospheric black and death metal act in 2015 before evolving toward metalcore, always guided by a cinematic heaviness and an appetite for transformation. Named for the Daedric Prince of forbidden knowledge, they've pursued their own sonic secrets across several years of restless genre movement.

Fort Worth's Herniated have been delivering brutal death metal since 2016 with the industrial-grade aggression you'd expect from Texas's hard-working metal underground. Dense, punishing, and unapologetically extreme.

San Francisco's Herpes lean into D-beat and goregrind with the kind of self-aware punk nihilism that the Bay Area's underground has always nurtured since their 2010 formation. The name tells you everything about their attitude toward conventional good taste.

One-man black/death project by Brungard, risen from the ashes of Howls of Ebb. Released on the prestigious I, Voidhanger Records.

Named after their Inland Empire hometown, Hesperia (CA) have been trafficking in death metal since 2018 with a directness that reflects the working-class sprawl of their surroundings. Unadorned brutality from a corner of California metal that rarely gets the attention it deserves.

Named for Hawthorne's condemned outsider, Kansas City's Hester Prynne channel that defiant energy into a brutal blend of deathcore and straight-ahead death metal. Active since 2009, they pair pulverizing low-end chug with genuine death metal menace.

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From Saugerties, New York, Hexe Krieg weaponize the convergence of thrash, death, and speed metal into something relentlessly kinetic. Since 2012 the band has pursued a style that is as mechanically aggressive as it is single-minded in purpose.

Los Angeles' Hexen bring melodic sophistication and progressive ambition to the thrash template, threading complex arrangements through otherwise hard-hitting material. Their approach reflects the technical tradition of the LA metal scene while reaching toward something more compositionally adventurous.