Saint Paul's Ghost Hook have been operating in the Minnesota death metal underground since 2015, crafting heavy, no-frills death metal with a meat-and-potatoes directness that owes as much to the Midwest work ethic as to Florida's swamp-drenched originators.

Los Angeles's Ghost Hour blend death metal aggression with the suffocating weight of doom, crafting music that feels like dusk settling permanently over the city. Active since 2015, their death/doom churns with a cinematic, West Coast density.

Newly forged in Chicago in 2024, Ghost of Agony arrive on the death metal scene with no interest in easing anyone in gently — their name alone announces a commitment to the genre's most unflinching traditions of torment and devastation.

Naperville, Illinois's Ghost of Mendea have been sharpening their melodic death and black metal hybrid since 2013, weaving icy tremolo riffs through melodic leads that hint at darker, more mythological subject matter than the Chicago suburbs might suggest.

Denver's Ghost Spawn conjure death/doom with a high-altitude coldness, their music moving at the pace of tectonic plates and hitting just as hard. Active since 2019, they are among Colorado's more reliably crushing underground acts.

Seattle's Ghostblood have been trading in death/thrash metal since 2015, combining the precision and brutality of death metal with thrash's kinetic urgency in a way that fits the Pacific Northwest's tradition of technically focused extremity.

Purcellville, Virginia's Ghosts of the Mud bring the visceral, down-tuned fury of deathcore and death metal out of the Northern Virginia countryside since 2022, their music as heavy as the clay soil their name invokes.

Covington, Kentucky's Ghostslug have been dragging death metal and grindcore through the Ohio River valley since 2013 — fast, filthy, and economically violent, with the genre's characteristic contempt for anything leisurely or refined.

Oakland's masked and anonymous Ghoul have been delivering horror-obsessed death/thrash and grindcore since 2000 under elaborate fictional personas, building one of the most cult-beloved bodies of work in Bay Area metal — grotesque, theatrical, and genuinely dangerous.

San Diego's Ghoulgotha have been tunneling through the earth's dark layers with death/doom metal since 2015, their cavernous sound drawing on the city's deep underground tradition to produce something ancient, doomed, and fully subterranean.

Michigan City, Indiana's Ghoulish Grin surfaced in 2024 with a black/death metal attack that wears its malice openly — primitive, lurching, and lit from within by the kind of necromantic enthusiasm that makes new death metal worth paying attention to.

Named after the hunger hormone, Tucson's Ghrelin are a 2023-formed death metal and grindcore act whose music has the ravenous quality their name implies — short, punishing outbursts of extreme metal from the Sonoran Desert, always hungry for more damage.

From Sierra Vista, Arizona — a border town in the shadow of the Huachuca Mountains — Ghâshthrak have been channeling death metal, black metal, and grindcore into something raw and geographically extreme since 2019. The desert's harshness runs through every blast beat.

Plano's Giant of the Mountain fuse progressive ambition with the raw extremity of black and death metal, building sprawling, technically demanding compositions that refuse to settle into any single genre. Their work since 2010 rewards patience and repeated listening.

Named after a three-headed kaiju, Merced's Gidorah bring a corresponding multi-pronged assault of death metal brutality, groove-driven rhythm, and metalcore intensity. Their music hits like a creature that attacks from every direction at once.