Benton, Kentucky's Deadlife deliver groove metal from deep in the rural South, channeling the grinding heaviness of a genre built on pocket and punishment since 2017. Small town, thick riffs.

Philadelphia's Deadlyne cover a wide span of heavy music — from crossover thrash to groove to hard rock — reflecting a restless band formed in 2023 that refuses to settle into one lane. The city's blue-collar grit runs through all of it.

Denver's DeadVessel navigate the intersection of stoner, groove, and progressive metal with the high-altitude confidence of a band comfortable pushing ideas in multiple directions at once. Formed in 2015, they blend head-nodding heaviness with genuine structural ambition.

Brooklyn's Deadzone collide doom, groove metal, and hardcore into something that sounds both crushed by urban weight and ready to erupt — fitting for a New York City band formed in 2016 with no patience for clean resolutions. Heavy, unpolished, and confrontational.

Denver's Death Bed Confession have been hauling groove-heavy riffs through the Colorado metal underground since 2011, blending hard rock swagger with thick, head-nodding heaviness. Their sound sits somewhere between the bulldozing midtempo crunch of groove metal and the bluesy muscle of classic heavy metal.

Fierce Groove Metal / Metalcore from Austin.

California's Death Protocol formed in 2025 at the crossroads of groove and thrash metal, laying down heaviness with an almost militaristic precision and locked-in rhythm. A new force arriving with clear intent and a fully loaded arsenal.

Waynesboro, Pennsylvania's Death Rising blend groove metal's heaviness with stoner metal's hazy, slow-burning swagger — a combination that hits like a tire iron wrapped in smoke. Rolling slow and heavy through the Pennsylvania hills since 2021.

Waupaca, Wisconsin's Deathagent bring groove metal's knuckle-dragging rhythmic lockstep to a small-city scene that rarely gets credit for the heaviness it produces. They've been drilling that mid-tempo pocket into the ground since 2016.