Tucson's Fall from Grace plays heavy metal with a hard rock sensibility, formed in 2018 in a desert city that has produced a surprisingly resilient metal underground despite — or perhaps because of — its remove from the coasts.

Metairie, Louisiana's Fall from Grace leans into stoner and doom metal with the low-end density and swampy atmosphere that the Gulf South does better than most, a band formed in 2018 in the shadow of New Orleans.

Detroit's Fall from Grace occupies familiar heavy metal and hard rock territory with the kind of gritty conviction you'd expect from a city that has always had a direct, unadorned relationship with loud, heavy music since 2018.

Philadelphia's Fall of Achilles formed in 2021 drawing from a wide net — groove, thrash, traditional heavy metal, and metalcore — reflecting Philly's history as a city where hardcore and metal have always bled into each other.

Dayton, Ohio's Fall of Babylon has been playing melodic death metal since 2023, adding melody and compositional ambition to the genre's core heaviness in a Rust Belt city that has quietly nurtured extreme metal for years.

Pittsburgh's Fall of Babylon takes death metal's brutality and runs it through a groove metal sensibility — heavy, locked-in, and hard-hitting in a way that suits a city whose steel-town bones have always resonated with heavy music since 2023.

Downers Grove, Illinois's Fall of Eden has been pursuing melodic death metal since 2014, bringing Swedish-influenced melody and riffcraft to the Chicago suburbs with the kind of sustained commitment the genre rewards.

A doom/death outfit from Tempe, Arizona, Fall of Empyrean emerged in 2020 with a sound built on suffocating low-end weight and cavernous atmosphere. They drag the listener through extended passages of grief-laden riffs where doom's glacial crawl meets death metal's crushing finality.

South Carolina's Fall of Gnosis fuses the corrosive heft of sludge metal with death metal's violent precision, arriving on the scene in 2023 with an immediately caustic identity. The pairing lends their music an abrasive, tar-thick quality that rewards patient listeners willing to sit in the muck.