Charleston's Hate Machine have been producing death metal out of the South Carolina Lowcountry since 2021, a region not typically on extreme metal's radar — making their presence there all the more notable. Raw and unpolished in the best tradition of underground death.

New Orleans's Hate Seed arrived in 2019 carrying death metal into a city already thick with extreme music traditions. The NOLA atmosphere lends the music a murky, humid quality — death metal soaked in bayou air.

Akron's Hate Theory have been working the fertile middle ground between death metal and metalcore since 2017, building a sound with the brutality of the former and the structural hooks of the latter. Ohio's industrial heritage informs their heavy, purposeful approach.

Detroit's Hate Unbound pull from death, thrash, and groove metal simultaneously since 2015, creating a thick, multi-layered attack built for the floor of a club. The Motor City's working-class aggression runs through every downpicked riff.

Baltimore's Hatebeak hold a singular place in underground metal history: their vocalist is a Congo African grey parrot named Waldo, whose screeching squawks front a grinding death metal assault. Since reforming their activity around 2019, they remain one of extreme metal's most genuinely surreal propositions.

Sterling, Virginia's Hatefuck have been grinding out their caustic blend of brutal death and grindcore since 2013, delivering short, unrelenting volleys of noise and violence with no regard for subtlety or mercy.

Madison, Wisconsin's Hatefuel run on pure adrenaline and aggression, channeling the classic thrash tradition into a sound built for whiplash and fist-pumping fury since 2019.

Raleigh's Hateful Transgression drag the blackened and the brutal into the same pit, fusing the ice-cold atmospherics of black metal with the punishing low-end density of brutal death into something genuinely venomous.

Out of De Pere, Wisconsin, Hatekill treat death metal and grindcore as interchangeable weapons, blasting through material with the kind of blunt efficiency that leaves little room for breath or reflection.