San Francisco's Cult of the Cosmic Bong are a fully instrumental doom trio who trade in psychedelic weight, wringing hypnotic, heavy riffs from guitar, bass, and drums without ever reaching for a vocal hook. Their 2025 album The Relentless Engine of Creation distills their approach to creative, immersive, riff-centric music.

Ocala, Florida's Cultellarii are a female-fronted doom outfit whose sludgy, pitch-black sound draws on Cathedral, Celtic Frost, and Type O Negative to explore themes of gender dysphoria and institutional oppression. Their 2013 album Black Urth Cabal makes clear they are as interested in lyrical weight as they are in gravitational heaviness.

York, Pennsylvania husband-and-wife duo Cultic fuse early death/doom, first-wave black metal, and punk into what they call dungeon doom — a battle-scarred sound decorated with dark fantasy themes, dungeon synth interludes, and martial industrial textures. Released via Eleventh Key Records, their 2025 album Lore is their most fully realized entry into this singular aesthetic.

Columbus, Ohio's Cultists work within the death/doom tradition, building heavy, suffocating compositions that balance the slow crawl of classic doom with the brutality of death metal. The Ohio band operates independently, adding to a Columbus extreme metal scene that has produced some of the most punishing underground acts in the Midwest.

Herndon, Virginia's Cultum Draculesti are a duo devoted to vampyric black/doom metal that prioritizes slow, doomish tempos and an atmosphere of Gothic darkness over raw aggression. Formed in 2020 from the ashes of Spinster City, their self-titled 2021 debut established a sound of atmospheric rawness steeped in mythology, death, and darkened beauty.

Sacramento's Cura Cochino — Spanish for 'dirty priest' — are a husband-and-wife doom act whose morbid, Black Sabbath-rooted sound is transported into Baja California when vocalist Priscila sings in Spanish and unleashes grito Mexicano howls over grinding, funeral-weight riffs. Their doom en español is something singular in the American metal landscape.

Jackson, Tennessee's Curmudgeon describe their music as 'hermit metal,' a self-aware tag for their idiosyncratic mix of doom, stoner heaviness, and grindcore brevity that resists easy categorization. Active since 2006, the Tennessee outliers built a small but devoted following by doing exactly as they pleased in the middle of nowhere.

Connecticut doom and stoner metal duo from East Haven conjuring massive, fuzz-laden riffs and meditative heaviness. Curse the Son operates in the tradition of sleep-deprived, riff-worship doom with hypnotic repetition.

Detroit death metal band trading in straightforward brutality and no-frills aggression. Cursed draws on the Motor City's rich extreme metal tradition with punishing riffs and guttural vocals.