Portland's Hellshock have spent over two decades hammering out a vicious blend of crust punk, death metal, and thrash — a trifecta of filth that hits like a pipe wrench wrapped in barbed wire. Since 2001, they've remained one of the Pacific Northwest's most reliably punishing acts.

Augusta, Maine's Hellstorm have cultivated a death metal attack since 2010 that draws on the bleakness of New England winters — relentless, punishing, and completely indifferent to comfort. They are one of the more isolated and underrated voices in the northeastern underground.

Phoenix's Hellven have been dealing in desert-baked thrash metal since 2015, the kind of straight-ahead speed and aggression that makes sense when you're living somewhere that tries to kill you with heat alone. Their riffs carry both the urgency and the dryness of the Sonoran landscape.

Supergroup formed by Pantera's Vinnie Paul and Mudvayne's Chad Gray. Six studio albums of groove metal. On hiatus since Vinnie Paul's death.

San Francisco's Herpes lean into D-beat and goregrind with the kind of self-aware punk nihilism that the Bay Area's underground has always nurtured since their 2010 formation. The name tells you everything about their attitude toward conventional good taste.

Minneapolis thrash unit Hex Vortices arrived in 2019 with a classic approach to the genre's mechanics — locked-in riffing, forward-leaning rhythm, and vocals that spit rather than sing. Fast and unambiguous, they owe more to Bay Area forebears than to modern metal's smoothed-out edges.

From Saugerties, New York, Hexe Krieg weaponize the convergence of thrash, death, and speed metal into something relentlessly kinetic. Since 2012 the band has pursued a style that is as mechanically aggressive as it is single-minded in purpose.

Los Angeles' Hexen bring melodic sophistication and progressive ambition to the thrash template, threading complex arrangements through otherwise hard-hitting material. Their approach reflects the technical tradition of the LA metal scene while reaching toward something more compositionally adventurous.

San Francisco Bay Area act Hexx formed in 1983 under the name Paradox before settling on their current name and releasing the debut No Escape on Mike Varney's Shrapnel Records in 1984, establishing themselves in the nascent US power metal scene. Their sound evolved through the speed and thrash influences of the Bay Area through the late 1980s, culminating in the Century Media-released Morbid Reality (1992), their most technically demanding record. After a long dormancy following that album, founding members reformed the band in 2013 and released Wrath of the Reaper through High Roller Records in 2017.