Irvington, New York's Death Island traveled from punk roots to a mature blackened death metal sound over the course of their career, growing increasingly complex and atmospheric along the way. Formed in 2022, the Hudson Valley act brings melodic sensibility to extreme metal's harshest textures.

Charlotte, North Carolina's Death Legion have been marching through the Southeast's black/death metal underground since 2019, combining both genres' most brutal tendencies into a relentless frontal assault. Their sound doesn't split the difference so much as weaponize both simultaneously.

Pleasanton's Death Machine fuse industrial grit with progressive ambition, constructing mechanized soundscapes that grind and evolve in equal measure. Since 2016, they've been building a cold, calculated sonic architecture.

Portland's Death Machine drag heavy metal into the gutter with crust punk's filth and fury, a grimy collision born from the Pacific Northwest's underground in 2016. Raw, loud, and decidedly unpolished.

Raw and unrelenting, Seattle's Death Mantra channel depressive black metal into bleak, suffocating rituals that feel built for the Pacific Northwest's grey skies. Their sound is a cold fog that refuses to lift.

Out of Gallup, New Mexico, Death Mantra bring the desert's isolation to thrash metal — angular, aggressive, and driven by a scrappy Southwest intensity. Formed in 2020, they channel arid fury into pure riff worship.

New York's Death Mask have been thrashing at speed metal's outer limits since 2011, trading in velocity and iron-fisted aggression drawn straight from the NWOBHM playbook. Fast, mean, and ruthlessly concise.

Baltimore's Death Mask trade in heavy, suffocating doom — slow, funereal riffs that feel as weighty as the city's own industrial bones. A brooding presence in the mid-Atlantic underground since 2011.

Springfield, Missouri's Death May Die carry the torch of classic power metal with soaring vocals and anthemic songwriting that refuse any trace of irony. Since 2017, they've been delivering bombastic, earnest heavy metal for the heartland.