Baltimore's Shakeface sit in the grim intersection of doom and death metal, piling on cavernous, slow-grinding riffs that carry the suffocating quality that the city's underground scene has long produced. Since 2011, the band has refined a sound built around dense low-end heaviness and the kind of deliberate pacing that makes every note feel earned.

Shalrath is an American solo or small-unit project operating in the crushing overlap of funeral doom, black metal, and death metal — a trio of extreme forms rarely fused with this much deliberate patience since the project's 2013 formation. Their sound moves at glacial tempos with a suffocating atmosphere drawn equally from the void-seeking qualities of each genre.

Charlotte's Shanked are fresh off the launchpad as of 2025, delivering death metal and hardcore in a blunt combination that prioritizes brutality and aggression over subtlety. The band slots into North Carolina's growing extreme metal underground with a sound that owes as much to caveman deathcore as it does to the old-school hardcore they're drawing from.

Birmingham, Alabama's Shapeless Being deal in unadorned death metal since forming in 2021, contributing to the city's tradition of cultivating extreme metal acts outside the more commonly celebrated Southern sludge and doom sounds. Their approach is direct and punishing, focused on riff density and structural heaviness without excessive ornamentation.

Memphis, Tennessee's Shards of Humanity have been combining death and thrash metal since 2023, drawing on a lineage that runs through Florida death metal and Bay Area thrash while planting their roots firmly in the Mid-South. Their approach is aggressive and technically grounded, channeling both genres' mutual appetite for precision and brutality.

Phoenix, Arizona melodic death metal outfit formed in 2011, blending the melodic sensibilities of the Gothenburg tradition with the heavier, sun-scorched aggression of the American Southwest.

Hailing from Hudson, Florida, this death/thrash hybrid tears through riff-heavy territory with the swampy intensity expected from the Sunshine State's underground, formed in 2011.

Emerging from Asbury Park, New Jersey in 2024, Shattered Realm grafts metalcore's intense breakdowns and melodic hooks onto a foundation of death metal brutality.

Cleveland, Ohio death metal unit formed in 2013, drawing from the Midwest's blue-collar underground to deliver punishing, no-frills death metal steeped in the tradition of the genre's American roots.