Northern New Jersey's Heart for Bait came together in 2022 with a stoner metal identity built on warped, riff-heavy foundations and a deep commitment to fuzzy heaviness. They represent the rawer, more uncompromising edge of the Garden State's underground heavy rock scene.

South Carolina's Heathen Bastard have been brewing a potent mix of stoner, sludge, and doom out of Florence since 2013 — grimy, low-slung music with Southern humidity baked into every riff. They occupy the nastier, swampier end of the American heavy underground.

Albuquerque's Heave combine the desert-baked slowness of stoner metal with the gravitational weight of doom, producing music that feels shaped by New Mexico's vast, arid landscape. Since 2013, they've been one of the Southwest's most reliable purveyors of low-tuned, heavy-lidded heaviness.

Camden, New Jersey's Heavy Coughin specialize in the slower, foggier end of stoner and doom metal — riffs thick as smog rolling in off the Delaware River, dragged to a crawl and left to marinate. They've been perfecting this low-tempo heaviness since 2016.

Burlington, Vermont's Hellascope deals in the slow, thick intoxication of stoner-doom, letting riffs unfurl with deliberate weight under a haze of fuzz and feedback. Since 2017 they have operated at the intersection of heaviness and hypnosis.

Fuzzed-out Stoner Rock / Metal from San Antonio.

Chicago's Helmer blend doom and stoner metal into slow, hazy monoliths since their 2021 formation, drawing as much from the city's post-industrial heaviness as from the fuzz-soaked tradition of the genre. Thick, meditative, and built for long nights.

Boone, North Carolina's Hempire hit the Appalachian highlands with a fusion of sludge and stoner metal since 2022, rolling heavy riffs through cloud banks of fuzz and feedback. Mountain air never sounded this thick.

Salt Lake City's Hibernaut pile sludge, stoner, and doom into a slow-moving mass that seems calibrated to induce a specific kind of narcotic heaviness. Formed in 2023, they occupy the hazy zone where riff weight and psychedelic drift become the same thing.