Miami's Torche are one of the defining bands of the 2000s heavy underground, masterfully fusing sludge metal's density with melodic pop hooks and stoner fuzz to create music that is simultaneously crushing and oddly euphoric. Since 2005, they have built a body of work that has earned them devoted followings well outside the metal world.

Phoenix, Arizona's Torment of Gloom, formed in 2020, combines doom, sludge, and post-metal into slow-burning, heavy-atmosphered soundscapes. The oppressive desert heat of their city seems to seep into their thick, suffocating sonic palette.

Bloomington, Indiana's Torturess weave together doom, sludge, and traditional heavy metal into a dense, riff-forward sound that recalls the crushing weight of Electric Wizard alongside the groove-driven swagger of '70s-influenced hard rock.

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.