Active since 2008, Evil Warrior is an American heavy metal act whose Bandcamp handle 'evilwarriors' signals a band fully committed to the genre's most unadorned power. Two decades in, they remain a fixture of the American underground's dedication to traditional heavy metal values.

Appleton, Wisconsin's Evoked blend the sludgy groove and hip-hop-inflected rhythms of nu-metal with heavy metal's structural muscle and hard rock's melodic instincts, forming in 2014. Their sound bridges the mid-2000s crossover appeal that made heavy music accessible to mainstream rock audiences, reimagined for a modern midwest setting.

Excruciator formed in Beaverton, Oregon in 2009 as an explicit reaction against metalcore trends in the Portland scene, drawing instead from the 1980s speed and heavy metal traditions of bands like Judas Priest and Motörhead. Their debut full-length Devouring (2011) was released on Heavy Artillery/Earache Records and recorded with a lineup that included guitarist/vocalist Chris Birkle, and the follow-up Fighting for Evil (2017) was produced by Toxic Holocaust's Joel Grind at Falcon Recording Studios in Portland. The band briefly went on hiatus between 2013 and 2015 before regrouping for additional releases.

Fierce Death / Heavy Metal out of Texas.

Dallas thrash outfit Exploder have been at it since 2015, delivering the genre's classic hallmarks — speed, aggression, and riff-first songwriting — with a Texas directness that suits the form well. The DFW underground has always had a taste for uncompromising metal, and Exploder fit that tradition to a T.

Circle Pines, Minnesota's Extermination Day occupy a corner of the metal universe where heavy doom riffing meets the working-class directness of punk, crafting music since 2020 that hits slowly but hits hard. The suburban Minneapolis origin grounds their sound in a practical, no-nonsense approach to heaviness.