Birthday Girl formed out of Brooklyn in 2022 and plays rock music that sits between indie looseness, post-punk unease, and playful punk energy. The band's recordings favor wiry guitars, nervous hooks, and a sense of performance that can swing from dreamy to confrontational without losing its strange charm. Songs such as "Move me," "Insecure Dreams," "Upset," and "Did you know I write you poems?" show a group interested in melody but unwilling to smooth out the awkward edges that give the music personality. The band's identity also carries a theatrical streak: eerie emotional themes, off-kilter humor, and a live presence built around movement, tension, and release. Rather than presenting rock as polished confession, Birthday Girl turns anxiety, desire, and absurdity into songs that feel both handmade and volatile. Their Brooklyn roots place them in a lineage of small-room guitar bands where personality, friction, and immediate chemistry matter as much as genre precision.

San Antonio metallic hardcore influenced by NYHC. Released on Deathwish Inc.

Black Anvil are a black metal and thrash metal band from New York City, formed in 2007 by former members of hardcore punk act Kill Your Idols, including guitarist/vocalist Paul Delaney, guitarist Gary Bennett, and drummer Raeph Glicken. Their debut Time Insults the Mind (2008) was followed by Triumvirate (2010) and Hail Death (2014) on Relapse Records, each album moving further from their hardcore origins toward a dense, riff-driven approach shaped by old-school black metal and classic heavy metal. The band's name references both Black Sabbath and a Judas Priest song.

Savage Black Metal / Punk out of Texas.

Towering Black / Doom Metal / Rock from Houston.

Black Cobra are a sludge and doom metal duo from Los Angeles, California, formed in 2001 by guitarist/vocalist Jason Landrian and drummer Rafael Martinez, who generate a surprisingly massive sonic footprint for a two-piece. Their early releases Bestial (2006) and Feather & Stone (2007) established a heavy, groove-oriented sound drawing equally from doom, sludge, and noise rock, and the band maintained a prolific output throughout the 2000s and 2010s with releases on Southern Lord and Season of Mist.

Black Crown Initiate formed in Reading, Pennsylvania in 2012, blending technical death metal with progressive and atmospheric elements. The band self-released their debut EP Song of the Crippled Bull in 2013, which earned them a deal with eOne Music and later Century Media Records. Full-lengths The Wreckage of Stars (2014), Selves We Cannot Forgive (2016), and Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape (2020) established them as one of the more adventurous acts in modern progressive death metal, drawing early touring exposure alongside Goatwhore and Behemoth.

Blasphemous Black Metal / Dark Ambient from Indianapolis, Indiana (early); Spring, Texas (later).

Black Speed from the Cemeteries of Texas. Influences: Motorhead, Venom, Bathory, early Slayer, Celtic Frost. On Goat Throne Records.