Troy, New York's Dead Rabbits carry the Southern sludge and stoner metal tradition deep into the Northeast, delivering heavy, swamp-soaked grooves far from their genre's geographic home. Lumbering riffs and fuzz-thick tones anchor everything they do.

Fayetteville, Arkansas's Deadeyejack have been peddling Southern-fried sludge metal since 2004, marinating heavy riffs in Ozark grime and swampy, hard-living swagger. They share a city with Deadbird and a talent for making the American South sound genuinely menacing.

Atlanta's Degradations have covered significant sonic ground since forming in 2017 — beginning with the swampy, heavyset sound of Southern sludge metal before pushing toward the tighter aggression of metalcore. That evolution reflects Atlanta's eclectic underground, where the weight of Southern soil meets the city's appetite for heavier, more urgent sonic textures.

Out of Dallas since 2018, Depth-Charge deal in the kind of groove metal that hits like a sledgehammer wrapped in Southern heat. Their Southern metal leanings give their thick, mid-paced riffs a distinctly Texan swagger, landing somewhere between bulldozing groove and swampy heaviness.