Nashville, Tennessee deathcore outfit Cult Breather bring punishing breakdowns and brutal death metal riffing to the Southern underground. Their sound is dense, technical, and relentlessly heavy.

San Antonio technical death metal/deathcore. Precision brutality.

Lowell, Massachusetts's Cunt Cuntly started as a bedroom solo project before expanding into a full band that pressed progressive ambition into a deathcore and death metal framework. Active from 2011 to 2017, they built an eclectic discography that showed a restless willingness to cover everything from Judas Priest to Creedence Clearwater Revival alongside their original extremity.

Reno death metal, deathcore, and metalcore band fusing modern extreme metal's heaviest elements into a punishing hybrid. Cyanate layers crushing breakdowns and guttural death metal aggression over a metalcore song framework.

Philadelphia's Daeva is among the more exciting black/thrash acts to emerge from the East Coast underground, building on the ancient rites of Aura Noir and Nifelheim with their own fierce, forward-moving attack. Since 2011 they've become a reference point for the style's modern practitioners.

Virginia's Dahmed tears through brutal death metal, deathcore, and hardcore without stopping to consider where one ends and the other begins — the result is chaotic, punishing, and deliberately overwhelming. Since 2017, they've built a reputation in the underground for unrelenting intensity.

Out of North Lewisburg, Ohio, Damnbuilding merges the chug-heavy punishment of deathcore with old-school death metal's murk, building a sound that is as claustrophobic as it is crushing. Since 2014, the band has been leveling expectations with brute-force heaviness.

Chicago's Dance Club Massacre have spent two decades defying easy categorization, careening from mathcore and deathcore into symphonic black metal territory across an evolving and ferociously chaotic discography. Few bands demonstrate this level of restless genre reinvention while maintaining sheer extremity.

Tampa's Dark Sermon occupies the brutal crossroads where blackened death metal crashes into deathcore, channeling the city's storied death metal legacy through modern extremity since 2013.