Springfield, Massachusetts's Palace in Thunderland have been building towering psychedelic stoner-doom architectures since 2007, where fuzzed-out riffs slowly collapse into themselves like ancient stone ruins. Every song feels like an altered-state ritual stretched across geological time.

Oakland's Palace of Worms began as raw black metal and evolved over the years into something far more grotesque — a churning death-doom force that sounds like the Bay Area underground rotting from within. Since 2007, the band has been one of the West Coast's most singular and unsettling metal acts.

Pennsylvania's Pale Divine have spent nearly three decades perfecting a strain of heavy doom that draws equally from Sabbath's funeral processions and the occult solemnity of early electric folk. Since 1997, the Glen Mills band has been one of the East Coast's most dependable doom institutions.

Columbus, Ohio's Pale Grey Lore steep their psychedelic doom in haze and hypnosis, letting riffs unspool slowly enough that you lose track of where they started. Formed in 2016, they occupy the blurry zone where heavy rock and doom metal blur into something genuinely cosmic.

Pallbearer is a doom metal band from Little Rock, Arkansas, formed in 2008 by guitarist Brett Campbell and bassist Joseph D. Rowland, later expanding to a four-piece. Their 2012 debut Sorrow and Extinction on Profound Lore Records earned immediate critical acclaim including Pitchfork's Best New Music designation, and their follow-up Foundations of Burden (2014) topped Decibel Magazine's year-end list. The band's subsequent releases — Heartless (2017), Forgotten Days (2020), and Mind Burns Alive (2024) — have progressively incorporated progressive rock and alternative textures alongside their foundational doom metal architecture.

Saginaw, Michigan's Pancreas wade through the slow-motion collision of doom and sludge, creating something physically oppressive enough to match the post-industrial weight of their struggling rust-belt city. Active since 2012, they build riffs like they're pouring concrete.

Patriarchs in Black is a New Jersey doom and sludge metal band formed in 2021 by guitarist Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Vessel of Light) and drummer Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, A Pale Horse Named Death). Their debut album Reach for the Scars arrived in 2022, establishing a heavy, riff-centered sound indebted to classic doom and southern sludge, with subsequent releases including My Veneration and Visioning maintaining steady output. The band regularly features rotating guest vocalists and instrumentalists from across the heavy rock and metal worlds.

California's Peacepipe deals in the slow and heavy currency of stoner doom — hazy, fuzz-drenched riffs that drag like tar through desert heat.

Penance was a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania doom metal band formed in 1989 from former members of thrash act Dream Death, evolving the classic doom metal tradition toward progressive rock over the course of five studio albums. Their debut The Road Less Travelled appeared in 1992 on Lee Dorrian's Rise Above Records, followed by Parallel Corners (1994) on Century Media and three subsequent releases through 2003. The band's gradual incorporation of progressive and psychedelic textures made them an outlier in American doom metal, never achieving broad commercial recognition but earning lasting regard among underground listeners.