Out of Trenton, New Jersey since 2015, DopeRider rolls out a heavy, fuzz-drenched stoner doom that owes as much to Black Sabbath as to the sludgier side of the Sleep catalog. The industrial decay of Trenton seems to seep into their sound, which hits with the grim persistence of a city that's been through the wringer and keeps crawling forward. Their riffs are slow, massive things — the kind that seem to push actual air when they drop.

From the small South Carolina town of Lyman, Doriyah has carved out an imposing blackened death-doom sound since forming in 2021, the isolation of the Upstate region evident in the claustrophobic density of their music. The band pulls from every dark tradition in their genre crossroads — the ferocity of black metal, the devastating weight of doom, the blunt-force trauma of death metal — and synthesizes them into something that feels genuinely oppressive. In a state with a smaller but intensely dedicated metal underground, Doriyah represent the kind of uncompromising artistry that thrives in obscurity.

Dorthia Cottrell is a Richmond, Virginia singer-songwriter best known as the lead vocalist of doom metal band Windhand. Her solo work, begun with a self-titled debut in 2015 on Forcefield Records, channels Appalachian folk, gothic atmosphere, and sparse acoustic arrangements. Her second solo album Death Folk Country (2023) on Relapse Records was shortlisted for the Newlin Music Prize and further established her as a distinctive voice at the intersection of folk and extreme metal.

Los Angeles-based Dowager has been building doom and sludge monoliths since 2014, a fitting project for a city where everything from the traffic to the smog seems to move at a funeral pace. Their sound carries the sprawling, oppressive weight of L.A.'s vastness — slow tempos, massive guitar tones, and a sludge-influenced abrasion that keeps the prettiness of doom metal from becoming comfortable. There's a distinctly urban ugliness to their sound, music made in and for a city that grinds people down.

Bangor, Maine's Dragontomb have been cultivating their corner of the doom metal underground since 2015, with the dark forests and harsh winters of northern New England providing an apt backdrop for slow, sepulchral compositions built on crushing low-end and suffocating tempos. Their sound is more death-doom in spirit than traditional doom, favoring bleak atmosphere over the melodic mourning of the European school.

Founded in Putney, Vermont in 2023, Draiodoir (the Irish word for druid or sorcerer) bring a pagan sensibility to their blend of stoner and doom metal, rooting their slow, fuzz-heavy sound in something earthy and ritualistic rather than purely nihilistic. Vermont's deep rural character and Celtic heritage seem to genuinely inform the project, giving the music a quality that feels less like genre exercise and more like incantation.

Pittsburgh has always been a city with doom in its bones, and Dream Death — formed there in 2021 — channels that weight into a punishing collision of thrash velocity and slow-burning doom. The band's sound moves between grinding momentum and crushing deceleration, with riffs that feel like heavy machinery shifting gears. In a scene crowded with one-or-the-other, Dream Death's willingness to inhabit both extremes simultaneously sets them apart.

Raleigh's Drench blend the slow, suffocating weight of doom metal with the gritty fuzz of grunge, arriving somewhere between heavy rock and traditional doom that feels rooted in both the '90s underground and the Southern soil underfoot. Founded in 2016, they bring a muddy, down-tempo heaviness that owes as much to Sub Pop as it does to Saint Vitus.

Drift Into Black is a gothic/doom metal project founded in Sayreville, New Jersey in 2017, driven largely by multi-instrumentalist Craig Rossi. A prolific one-man operation, Rossi writes, records, and produces most of the material himself, drawing on doom, progressive metal, and ambient influences. The band has released five full-length albums, including the concept album Earthtorn (2022) and Voices Beneath the Rubble (2024) on Black Lion Records.