Crushing Crust / Death Metal from El Paso.

San Antonio's Sacrificial Possession arrived in 2023 with a black/death metal sound rooted in hostility and ritual darkness — the kind of band that treats genre conventions as a launchpad rather than a ceiling. Their approach fuses the savagery of death metal's low-end brutality with the icy tremolo malevolence of black metal, carving out a uniquely Texan corner of the underground.

Boston's Sacrum have spent their career since 2008 fusing death and thrash metal into something that carries the intellectual weight of New England's metal scene alongside uncompromising brutality. Their sound is precise without being sterile — angular, riff-forward death/thrash that owes as much to the Bay Area as it does to Europe's extremity.

Sadus is a thrash and death metal band from Antioch, California, formed in 1984 by vocalist Darren Travis, guitarist Rob Moore, bassist Steve Di Giorgio, and drummer Jon Allen. Known for blending technical thrash with death metal aggression, the band debuted with Illusions (later reissued as Chemical Exposure) in 1988 and built a cult following through albums such as Swallowed in Black and A Vision of Misery. Bassist Steve Di Giorgio, who also played with Death and Testament, became one of the most celebrated technical metal bassists of his generation, and the band returned in 2023 with The Shadow Inside, their first new record in over two decades.

Mesa, Arizona's SaintBreaker have been pummeling audiences since 2015 with a thrash/death hybrid that carries the desert's unrelenting heat in every riff — aggressive, stripped-down, and unwilling to waste a note on anything that doesn't serve the assault. They sit comfortably in the tradition of bands who treat the thrash/death crossover not as a compromise but as a force multiplier.

Devastating Death Metal / Hardcore from Austin.

Ruthless Melodic Black / Death Metal from Brownwood, Texas (early); Austin, Texas (later).

Tucson's Salent are a newly formed progressive thrash/death outfit drawing on the Southwest's history of technically inclined metal — music that values both aggression and complexity, where time signatures shift as naturally as the rhythm section locks in. Their progressive death/thrash approach promises a band willing to let songwriting sprawl as much as it punishes.

Progressive death metal from Dallas.