Based in Chandler, Arizona, this Deimos formed in 2000 working the intersection of thrash and traditional heavy metal — an approach that values riff craft and energy over extremity for its own sake. The Phoenix area has long supported a scrappy heavy metal underground, and this outfit plugs directly into that tradition of hook-driven, aggressive songwriting.

Billings, Montana's Deinóssaûros emerged in 2022 playing raw black metal in one of the most geographically isolated cities in the American West — a landscape of vast plains and harsh winters that feeds naturally into the genre's primitive, stripped-down aesthetic. Their raw black metal is abrasive and lo-fi by conviction, channeling the desolation of the high plains into pure sonic hostility.

Oneonta, New York's Deiphage formed in 2023 in the black/death metal tradition — a pairing that fuses the iciness and atmosphere of black metal with death metal's penchant for brutality and technical violence. The band's name suggests something that devours gods, and their sound operates accordingly: relentless, uncompromising, and built for total annihilation.

Sacramento's Deiphage emerged in 2023 channeling the rawest currents of black/death metal — a collision of blasphemous tremolo assaults and sepulchral death metal brutality. Their approach favors filth and atmosphere over technicality, finding its footing in the tradition of war metal's most uncompromising practitioners.

Formed in 2016 in Pleasanton, California, Deities fuse the jackhammer riffing of Bay Area thrash with the churning low-end of death metal. The band carries on the aggression of the region's thrash legacy while pushing into harder, more death-inflected territory.

Out of Elgin, Illinois, Deities of Darkness have been honing a raw, unadorned black metal attack since 2010. Operating from the frost of the Midwest rather than Scandinavian forests, the band trades in cold, stripped-down riffs and shrieked venom rooted firmly in second-wave orthodoxy.

Peru, Illinois band Deity Disfigured launched in 2021 blending the melodic sweep of Gothenburg-style death metal with the percussive weight of deathcore. Their sound navigates the tension between melodic hooks and breakdowns, adding a level of darkness that keeps it planted firmly on the extreme end.

New Jersey's DejaGravy have been cooking up a thick stew of sludge and doom since 2013. Built on lumbering riffs and a suffocating low-end, the band wallows in the murk between electric funeral doom and the feedback-saturated grime of Southern-influenced sludge.

Kansas City's Dejecter arrived in 2023 dragging death metal's rotting carcass through the swamp. Their death/sludge hybrid smothers crushing riffs in murk and slow-burning dread, channeling the Kansas City underground's appetite for music that punishes as much as it suffocates.