San Diego's Hanging Garden have cultivated a strain of depressive black metal since 2013 that leans heavily into isolation and despair, letting long, suffocating passages take root in the mind.

Frigid Depressive Black Metal from Sarasota, Florida (early); San Antonio, Texas / France (later).

Hatefog emerged from Aberdeen, Washington in 2024 — Kurt Cobain's rainy hometown — with depressive black metal steeped in the Northwest's characteristic bleakness. Sparse, desolate, and drenched in the kind of grey that comes from overcast skies rather than theatrical performance.

Born from the grey skies of Seattle in 2024, IFeelSick channels the rawness of depressive black metal into unfiltered expressions of anguish — lo-fi and visceral, with no interest in comfort.

Los Angeles depressive black metal project Klär has been excavating the genre's most desolate emotional terrain since 2012. Beneath the city's sprawl and glare, the project carves out a space of suffocating melancholy and slow-burning atmospheric despair.

Venomous Depressive Black Metal from Houston.

Portland's Master Burial conjures suffocating walls of raw, atmospheric black metal soaked in despair and Pacific Northwest bleakness. Formed in 2021, the project channels depressive DSBM traditions through a lo-fi haze that feels genuinely harrowing.

Tennessee-based Mourn work in the most isolationist and despairing territory of depressive black metal, crafting slow, suffocating music that prioritizes emotional annihilation over technical display. Active since 2015, the project is a severe and uncompromising voice from the American South's extreme metal underground.

A Massachusetts depressive black metal project active since 2017, Mourning Moonlight pursue the most introspective and despairing end of the genre — raw, lo-fi, and built around an aching, solitary intensity.