Columbus, Ohio doom/sludge duo Churches Burn construct massive, slow-crawling dirges that lean heavily on feedback and minimalist songwriting. Their sound is oppressively heavy and desolate, built for endurance rather than aggression.

Portland, Maine band Chäpels combine the aggression of crust punk with the dragging weight of sludge metal, creating rough-edged, anarchic noise that hits hard and moves fast. Their sound is raw and confrontational, indebted to both Discharge and Eyehategod.

Raleigh, North Carolina sludge metal act Cigarettesmokingman drag their songs through thick, tar-slow tempos and corrosive guitar tones that owe as much to southern atmosphere as to extreme metal. Their music feels as worn and relentless as the name suggests.

New Orleans doom/stoner/sludge band Cikada channel the murky, humid atmosphere of their city into sprawling, fuzz-drenched compositions that sit at the intersection of southern sludge and psychedelic doom. Their sound draws naturally from the well of Eyehategod and Crowbar.

Minneapolis doom/sludge band Circadian Ritual trade in slow, punishing dirges built on massive riffs and grinding repetition. Their music carries the cold, gray weight of a Minnesota winter stretched into sound.

Bloomington, Indiana sludge metal project Civilized Worm distill the genre's essential combination of down-tuned heaviness and hypnotic repetition into slow-moving sonic punishment. Their music is deliberately ugly and quietly compelling.

New Jersey's Clamfight deal in swampy, heavy-as-sin sludge and stoner metal, built on massive downtuned riffs and slow-burning grooves. Their records carry the weight of a collapsing building and move at roughly the same pace.

Colorado Springs trio Clarion Void inhabit a murky space between black metal, death metal, and sludge, where oppressive atmosphere and dissonant heaviness collide. Their music is dense and suffocating, shaped by the high-altitude bleakness of their Rocky Mountain surroundings.

Cincinnati's Clouded merge grindcore's speed with sludge metal's suffocating weight, drawing from a web of overlapping Ohio underground projects. Their early releases, including a 2016 split with Ethicist, showcase a band comfortable in filth.

Long Beach, California's Cloven deal in funeral doom and sludge metal, building songs around glacially slow tempos and crushing heaviness. Active since 2015, they've released material through Midnite Collective, including their acclaimed full-length Blackened Wings.

Muncie, Indiana's Cocaine Culture are a genre-defying chaos engine drawing from black, death, doom, sludge, and alternative metal in equal and unsettling measure. The result is a dense, disorienting sound that refuses easy categorization.

Thibodaux, Louisiana sludge metal band Cocaine Sermon channel the swampy, oppressive heaviness that southern sludge does best. Their music is thick with bayou rot and the kind of slow-burning dread that the Gulf South breeds naturally.

Lincoln, Maine sludge and stoner metal band Coelacanth draw from the isolation of rural New England to craft heavy, slow-rolling music with a distinctly bleak character. Their approach is rooted in thick riffs and an unhurried, grinding pace.

Portland, Oregon's Coffin Apartment combine death metal's blunt-force attack with sludge metal's suffocating weight, creating a claustrophobic sound that suits their name well. They're part of Portland's dense and genre-spanning extreme metal underground.

Fargo, North Dakota doom and sludge metal band Coffin Burner channel the flat, frigid desolation of the Northern Plains into slow, oppressive heaviness. They're one of the defining acts of North Dakota's small but determined metal underground.