New Orleans sludge metal band Totem draw on the city's legendary tradition of low-end heaviness, building slow-churning riff structures and oppressive grooves in the spirit of the Southern swamp metal the region has long exported.

St. Augustine, Florida's Tower deal in the slow and crushing intersection of doom and sludge metal, leaning into feedback-drenched heaviness and plodding tempos that reward patient listening with a suffocating sense of weight.

California's Towering, active since 2016, occupy the slow, suffocating space where drone, doom, and sludge converge, building massive walls of distortion and deliberate, glacial pacing into music that functions more as a physical experience than a conventional listen.

St. Louis's Towering Filth, active since 2011, fuse the ugliness of sludge metal with black metal's hostility and hardcore's stripped-down fury, arriving at a sound that is deliberately abrasive, confrontational, and indifferent to genre boundaries.

Portland, Oregon's Towers deal in the lumbering, sun-scorched territory where sludge metal meets stoner rock, built on heavy amplifier worship, slow groove, and the kind of earth-moving low end that defines the Pacific Northwest's heavier underground.

Out of the small coastal enclave of Baywood-Los Osos, California, Toxic Wizard collapse genre walls with reckless abandon, fusing sludge heaviness, grindcore violence, power metal theatrics, and experimental noise into a deliberately unclassifiable whole since 2016.

Portland's Tragedy are one of the more distinctive voices in heavy music, weaving crust punk's anarchic urgency together with doom and sludge metal's oppressive weight to create something that feels both furious and crushing.

Columbus, Ohio's Traitors Return to Earth have been sinking deep into stoner-sludge-doom's tar pit heaviness since 2011, layering fuzz and feedback over glacial tempos and a persistent sense of weighted despair.

Frederick, Maryland's Trap Ratt are a very young sludge/post-metal act formed in 2024, dragging heavy atmospheric texture through slow, distorted riffing and building the kind of oppressive post-metal architecture that rewards patient listening.