Ahzidal is a black metal band from St. Louis, Missouri. Named after a Dragon Priest from The Elder Scrolls, the band has released three recordings between 2017 and 2026, including the full-length "Gaiar Alata" — another Elder Scrolls reference — blending gaming culture with black metal.

Ahí Náahaí is an atmospheric black metal project from Cameron, Arizona on the Navajo Nation. The project's name and EP title "Niséyá (I Went And Have Returned)" are in the Navajo language, making this one of the only Indigenous-language black metal projects in the United States. Their 2025 full-length "Astral Lights In A Cosmic Burial" deepens the project's unique cultural perspective.

Ailing is a funeral doom metal band from Chicago. Their 2013 full-length "Transient Passengers" delivers eight tracks of glacially slow, crushing funeral doom — the kind of music measured in geological time rather than minutes.

Ails is a black metal band from Oakland, California featuring former members of Ludicra, one of the Bay Area's most celebrated black metal acts. Their 2018 EP "The Unraveling" carries forward the atmospheric, emotionally complex black metal that defined their prior band.

Chicago thrash metal project. The name promises aerial bombardment through Windy City speed metal.

Airacobra is a band from Champaign, Illinois that has evolved from metalcore and heavy metal into blackened heavy metal territory. Their 2022 full-length "Midwestern Steel" lives up to its title — a blue-collar blackened metal album rooted firmly in the Midwest.

Intense Metalcore out of Texas.

Airs is a project from San Francisco that began as black metal/shoegaze before evolving into post-rock, shoegaze, and experimental territory. With five releases between 2013 and 2015 — including the full-length "Adore" — the project represents the genre-fluid experimentation that defines the Bay Area music scene.

Airstrike is a heavy metal band from Lincoln, Nebraska. With nine releases spanning 2012 to 2025, the band has been a remarkably consistent presence in one of the most underrepresented states in American metal.