Columbia grindcore project from the South Carolina underground.

Los Angeles black/doom project debuting in 2025 with The Implications of Ascendancy. The EP blends black metal tremolo with doom metal's crushing pace, suggesting a band equally versed in both genres' darkest traditions.

Providence, Rhode Island black metal outfit with five releases since 2019. A prolific purveyor of frigid extremity from New England, their catalog — from The Descent Abysmal to Follow the Echo of Curses — traces an arc of increasing ambition within raw black metal's constraints.

Pittsburgh sludge metal project whose 2023 self-titled debut wallows in the kind of slow, agonizing heaviness the Steel City specializes in. The name is truth in advertising — this is music designed to crush.

North Carolina sludge metal project.

Heavy/doom metal with gothic rock and neofolk elements from Austin.

Seattle doom metal conjurers active since 2011, dealing in occult-tinged heaviness across three releases including a live album. Their catalog channels the Pacific Northwest's perpetual gloom into ritualistic, riff-worshipping doom.

New Mexico/Colorado (early); Denver heavy metal / nwothm project from the Colorado underground.

Glenwood Springs, Colorado death metal project whose 2015 debut The Chosen Slain channels mountain isolation into brutal extremity. Operating from a ski town in the Rockies, they bring death metal to one of the genre's most improbable locations.