California's Vilis (Latin for "worthless" or "base") have navigated raw and depressive black metal's harrowing emotional terrain since 2015, using the genre's minimalism as a magnifying glass for despair. Their Bandcamp handle vilesxmd underscores the project's commitment to keeping things corroded and unpolished.

Omaha, Nebraska's Void Overdose have been active since 2020, playing depressive black metal laced with post-rock influences — long, emotionally raw compositions that use black metal's corrosive textures as a vehicle for something more introspective and devastating than pure aggression. The Bandcamp handle "v-od" distills their identity efficiently: this is music about excess, collapse, and the interior experience of both. Omaha's underground is small and serious, and Void Overdose fits that character exactly.

Out of Oakland, California since 2016, Vortex of Narvik operates in the suffocating register of depressive black metal layered with ambient drift. The name evokes the desolate Arctic port city that became a symbol of brutal attrition, and the music follows suit — long, spiraling compositions that trade in anguish and cold isolation. Ambient passages erode into raw black metal without warning, keeping the listener perpetually off-balance.

Barely a year old, Vulnera arose from the rural quiet of Hallstead, Pennsylvania in 2024, pursuing a strain of depressive black metal that leans heavily on atmosphere and desolation. The isolation of small-town northeastern Pennsylvania seems to inform every note of their bleak, introspective sound.