Dragon Feeder emerged from Chicago in 2013 playing the kind of stoner metal that sits as comfortably alongside heavy psych rock as it does doom — slow, fuzz-drenched, and more interested in a hypnotic groove than in obliterating the listener. The city's dense, hardscrabble energy seeps into their riffs, which carry more grit than the sunbaked stoner acts of the American Southwest.

Levittown, New York's Dragons Bane have been trading in heavy, riff-centric stoner metal since 2013, built on the kind of thick, slow-rolling grooves that owe as much to Black Sabbath as to anything from the California desert scene. Long Island's working-class sensibility gives their sound a grounded, unflashy quality — they're more concerned with making rooms move than with cult-of-the-riff posturing.

Bangor, Maine's Dragontomb have been cultivating their corner of the doom metal underground since 2015, with the dark forests and harsh winters of northern New England providing an apt backdrop for slow, sepulchral compositions built on crushing low-end and suffocating tempos. Their sound is more death-doom in spirit than traditional doom, favoring bleak atmosphere over the melodic mourning of the European school.

Santa Cruz, California's Drain burst onto the hardcore scene with a ferocious blend of crossover thrash, skate punk energy, and hardcore punk attitude. Their debut 'California Cursed' became an instant classic of the modern hardcore revival, driven by Sammy Ciaramitaro's snarling vocals and riffs that recall DRI, Suicidal Tendencies, and Municipal Waste. The band's skater aesthetic and party-thrash approach have made them one of the most exciting live acts in contemporary hardcore.

Intricate Progressive Metal from Austin.

Founded in Putney, Vermont in 2023, Draiodoir (the Irish word for druid or sorcerer) bring a pagan sensibility to their blend of stoner and doom metal, rooting their slow, fuzz-heavy sound in something earthy and ritualistic rather than purely nihilistic. Vermont's deep rural character and Celtic heritage seem to genuinely inform the project, giving the music a quality that feels less like genre exercise and more like incantation.

Drakenhof — named for the vampire castle of Warhammer Fantasy lore — arrived in 2022 as an anonymous American black metal project, shrouded in the deliberate obscurity that suits both the name and the genre. Their approach is rooted in the raw, underground tradition, with the mythological and gothic trappings of the name hinting at a sound more interested in dark fantasy and occult menace than in contemporary atmospheric trends.

Rising from the Gulf Coast city of Gulfport, Mississippi, Draug has been carving out their corner of the American death metal underground since 2013. Their music channels the murky, oppressive atmosphere of the Deep South into a relentlessly brutal sound that feels both suffocating and primal. Named after the undead of Norse legend, they bring a mythic dread to a region more often associated with swamp-soaked doom.

Drawn and Quartered have been one of Ohio's most steadfast purveyors of old-school death metal since their formation in Sidney in 1999, building a legacy on punishing riffs and an uncompromising devotion to the genre's most sepulchral traditions. Their sound reaches back to the early-nineties death metal underground — cavernous, malevolent, and utterly without mercy. Decades into their existence they remain a band that refuses to modernize, treating death metal as a living covenant rather than a nostalgic exercise.