New York's Khanate are one of extreme music's most uncompromising acts — their drone/doom sound is not so much music as an endurance test, sculpting suffocating noise and anguished vocals into harrowing monuments since 2001.

Chicago's Lijde move through cavernous drone and doom with an ambient patience, stretching grief into slow-burning, meditative walls of sound since 2017.

Lexington's Lurking drag black metal into sludge and drone territory, piling glacial riffs on top of one another until the weight becomes its own kind of violence. Since 2016 they've made suffocation feel ceremonial.

A Pennsylvania drone/doom act formed in 2017, Monolithic strip the genre down to its most elemental form — sustained tones, glacial tempos, and near-meditative repetition that collapses under its own weight.

A New England drone/funeral doom project active since 2005, Monument of Urns specialize in extreme slowness and oppressive atmosphere — long-form compositions where texture and tonal weight matter more than conventional song structure.

Huntington, West Virginia's Mother of God operate at the extreme slow end of drone/doom metal, a project that emerged from a region with genuine economic bleakness and channels that weight into suffocating, near-static compositions.

Nashville's Mourner occupy the heaviest intersection of sludge, drone, and doom, dragging listeners through suffocating low-end frequencies and near-static tempos that feel built from the weight of the Tennessee hills.

Denver's Orm dwell in the slow, crushing overlap of sludge, drone, and doom metal, crafting music that moves like magma — deliberate, heavy, and indifferent to urgency. The Mile High altitude seems to have had no effect on their desire to go as low and slow as possible.

From the weathered port city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Other Beings conjure suffocating drone-doom and sludge that feels dredged up from the Atlantic floor — slow, monolithic, and relentlessly heavy. Formed in 2012, they operate at the intersection of patience and punishment.

Georgia's Rugburn occupies a punishing industrial-sludge space where drone, doom, and mechanized noise grind against each other under massive low-end pressure — a sound less interested in conventional song structure than in the slow accumulation of sonic damage. Formed in 2021, they are among the more abrasive presences in the state's underground.

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New Orleans doom and drone metal project formed in 2020, evolving from pure ambient drone into heavy, atmosphere-laden doom that carries the weight and humidity of the city itself.

Seattle's Skell has been grinding out thick, suffocating walls of sludge, drone, and doom since 2017, embodying the Pacific Northwest's long tradition of heaviness with slow-crawling tempos and abrasive textures built to crush.

Chicago's Skull Decay work in the slow, cavernous territory where drone and doom intersect, using elongated song structures and severe low-end rumble to create an atmosphere of prolonged, unnerving decay since 2015.

Milwaukee's Slob Donovan have spent over a decade dragging drone, sludge, and doom metal into the slowest possible territory since their 2009 formation, producing music defined by cavernous low frequencies and suffocating tempo. They sit comfortably in the Wisconsin underground's tolerance for the willfully ugly and punishing.