Chapel Hill, North Carolina project Horseback is the primary creative vehicle of multi-instrumentalist Jenks Miller, who has released more than a dozen recordings since 2007 fusing drone metal, black metal, American roots music, and psychedelic noise into a consistently singular body of work. The Invisible Mountain (2009) and Half Blood (2012) are among the more widely recognized releases in a catalog that has appeared on Relapse, Hydra Head, and Three Lobed Records. Miller's willingness to draw equally from Neil Young's Crazy Horse and the work of Sunn O))) makes Horseback a difficult project to categorize but an easy one to recognize.

Barrington, Illinois's Hostile have been delivering groove-laced heavy metal since 2010, fusing the punch of groove metal with the directness of traditional heavy metal. Suburban Midwest aggression with a low center of gravity.

Out of Colorado Springs since 2014, Hostile Encounter bring a high-altitude intensity to old-school thrash metal, with riffs that hit like altitude sickness — fast, disorienting, and unforgiving.

Hosts of Lord formed in 2020 and operate within the grimmer traditions of black metal, conjuring cold, ceremonial darkness with a militancy implied by the name itself. An act steeped in orthodox hostility.

Gainesville, Florida's Hot Graves are a swamp-rotten convergence of death metal, black metal, thrash, and crust punk, active since 2011 and sounding like something that crawled up from Florida soil. Ferocious, irreverent, and distinctly Southern in its ugliness.

Hot Mulligan are a Lansing, Michigan band whose music sits at the loud intersection of emo, pop punk, Midwest emo, and post-hardcore. Formed in 2014, the group grew from basement-show roots into one of the defining modern acts in emotionally charged guitar music, with releases such as Pilot, you'll be fine, Why Would I Watch, and later work sharpening their combination of tangled riffs, strained vocals, and self-aware humor. Their songs often feel messy in feeling but precise in construction: guitars twist around each other, drums push with nervous momentum, and Nathan Sanville's voice gives the music a cracked urgency that fits lyrics about grief, insecurity, family, memory, and growing up badly. Hot Mulligan fit punk scope through pop punk and post-hardcore, even when their vocabulary overlaps heavily with emo. They favor velocity, cathartic choruses, and live-room release over soft introspection. What separates them from many revival-era peers is how naturally they balance jokes, pain, and technical guitar movement. The band can sound frantic, funny, wounded, and direct within the same song, which has made their music resonate far beyond a single scene category.

Seattle's Hoth take their name from the frozen Star Wars planet, and the melodic death-black metal they've crafted since 2012 earns the reference — vast, icy, and cinematic in scope. Their music reaches for the cosmos while keeping the riffs sharp.

Hickory, North Carolina doom metal outfit Hour of 13 formed in 2003 primarily as the creative project of multi-instrumentalist Chad Davis, with vocalist Phil Swanson contributing to the bulk of their recorded output. Their 2007 self-titled debut on Shadow Kingdom Records was followed by The Ritualist (2010) and 333, both of which reinforced the band's status as a respected act within traditional doom and occult heavy metal circles. Their sound draws from the same late-1970s and early-1980s roots as Pentagram and Black Sabbath without relying on pastiche.

Des Moines, Iowa's Hours of Decay have been fusing the rhythmic punch of groove metal with deathcore's heaviness since 2015. Midwest persistence channeled into something dense and relentless.