Denver's WarCrown formed in 2021 with an approach to progressive doom metal that emphasizes space and architecture as much as weight. Their songs move through extended passages of shifting dynamics, pairing the patience of doom with the structural ambition of progressive metal. In a city already saturated with excellent heavy music, they carve out a distinct identity through careful, deliberate composition.

Heavy Stoner / Doom Metal out of Texas.

Winston-Salem's We Follow the Earth formed in 2023, delivering sludge and doom metal that feels rooted in the Piedmont Triad's particular brand of Southern heaviness — unhurried, low, and immovable. Their name suggests reverence for something older and larger than the human scale, which matches a sonic approach built on patience and deliberate weight. Another entry in the long roll of North Carolina bands that understand how to let a riff breathe.

Formed in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1998 by bassist and vocalist Dave "Dixie" Collins, a veteran of the sludge act Buzzoven, Weedeater channel the heaviest elements of Southern doom and noise rock into a characteristically filthy, low-register rumble. Their debut ...And Justice for Y'all (2001) and Sixteen Tons (2003) appeared on Berserker Records before the band joined Southern Lord for God Luck and Good Speed. Their most recent album, Goliathan (2015), continued the uncompromising approach that made them central figures in the North Carolina heavy underground.

Brooklyn's Weightlessness have been combining doom and death metal since 2014 in the dense, eclectic crucible that New York's underground provides. Their sound leans into the death-doom tradition's love of contrast — the crush of doom, the precision of death, the grief that lives between them — with a Brooklyn sourness that keeps it from ever becoming merely atmospheric. Slow, dark, and specific to the place that made them.

Gainesville's Wharflurch formed in 2019, emerging from the North Florida college town that has always punched above its weight in underground music with a death-doom sound that feels genuinely swamp-adjacent — slow, putrefying, and emanating something deeply unpleasant. Gainesville's humidity and proximity to old Florida wilderness seeps into everything, and Wharflurch sounds like it grew up from the ground rather than being constructed. Death-doom for the subtropics.

Lebanon, Connecticut's When the Deadbolt Breaks have been building sludge-doom structures since 2006, making them one of the longer-running acts in New England's slow and heavy underground. Two decades in a small Connecticut town have given them a patience and a commitment to the low end that only comes from knowing exactly what you are doing and never feeling the need to rush it. Rural New England produces a specific grimness, and this band bottles it.

West Greenwich, Rhode Island's Whisky Fyre have been playing stoner-doom metal since 2015, which makes them one of the longer-running bands in a New England scene not typically associated with warm, fuzz-drenched heavy psychedelia. They pair the narcotic slow-burn of stoner metal with doom's bleaker undercurrent, finding the space where pleasurable heaviness tips into something more unsettling. Rhode Island's density and insularity seems to suit the form.

Nashville isn't often associated with death-doom, but Wicked Sorcerer — formed there in 2023 — arrive dragging heavy metal, death metal, and doom together into something genuinely sinister. The city's outsider quality suits this kind of music well, and the band's willingness to pull from multiple extreme subgenres gives their sound a lurching, unpredictable weight.