Portland, Oregon's Giantrider deal in the traditional craft of doom metal — slow tempos, massive guitar tone, and a suffocating atmosphere built for patience. Their name says it all: they ride riffs so large they swallow you whole.

A Chicago project born in 2023, Giard bridges the grime of black metal with the directness of classic heavy metal, finding menace in the space between the two. It's a new act with an old-world sense of darkness.

Gideon have steadily changed from a melodic, faith-rooted metalcore act into a heavier, meaner band built on groove, confrontation, and hard-earned self-definition. Early releases such as Costs, Milestone, and Calloused carried the urgency of touring metalcore and melodic hardcore, with Daniel McWhorter's shouted vocals framed by fast rhythms, gang-ready refrains, and breakdowns written for impact. Cold marked a darker turn, and Out of Control pushed the band toward a rougher blend of hardcore swagger, nu-metal bounce, and Southern rock attitude. More Power. More Pain. made that shift feel fully intentional, focusing on thick chugs, hostile vocal phrasing, blunt lyrics, and beatdown-ready pacing. The band still uses metalcore structure, but the presentation is less polished than many of their peers: riffs feel dustier, hooks are barked more than sung, and the songs often sound like they were built from resentment, exhaustion, and stubborn momentum. Gideon's evolution is important to the music itself. Instead of treating heaviness as a costume, they have let each era strip the band closer to a raw, groove-driven identity.

Chicago's Gidim channel the Sumerian concept of restless, wandering spirits into a sound where black metal collides with punk energy and speed. Raw, confrontational, and rooted in the city's underground since 2014.

Named after a three-headed kaiju, Merced's Gidorah bring a corresponding multi-pronged assault of death metal brutality, groove-driven rhythm, and metalcore intensity. Their music hits like a creature that attacks from every direction at once.

Portland's Gidrah traffic in the filthiest and most suffocating end of sludge and doom, building walls of corrosive tone that move with the deliberate menace of something enormous and ancient. Their sound is the Pacific Northwest rain rendered in distortion.

Portland, Maine's Gift of Tongues fuse the atmospheric density of post-sludge with the raw violence of death metal, constructing music that feels both hauntingly spacious and crushingly heavy. Their approach since 2013 rewards those willing to sit inside the weight.

Boston's Giftkrieg arrived in 2025 swinging with a no-frills thrash metal attack rooted in speed, aggression, and riff economy. Fresh out of the gate, they're already channeling the genre's most unrelenting traditions.

Chicago's Gigan are among the most disorienting forces in progressive and technical death metal, dismantling conventional song structure in favor of alien, cosmos-eating compositions that feel genuinely unknowable. Since 2008, they've existed in a category largely of their own invention.