Chicago's Hunters have been roaming the stoner-sludge terrain since 2011, combining hazy psychedelic drift with the kind of low-end punishment the Windy City's heavy underground specializes in. Thick, slow, and suffocating in the best sense.

From Chinle, Arizona — deep in Navajo Nation — Hunters Moon bring melodic death metal rooted in striking geographic and cultural context since 2021. Their music carries the sweep of canyon country: expansive, powerful, and shot through with natural darkness.

Los Angeles heavy metal band Huntress formed around 2007 when vocalist Jill Janus, a trained opera singer with a four-octave range, connected with a local underground metal outfit and built the group into a touring act signed to Napalm Records in 2011. The band released three albums — Spell Eater (2012), Starbound Beast (2013), and Static (2015) — before dissolving, their sound rooted in classic heavy metal with thrash and doom influences. Janus's death in August 2018 marked the definitive end of the project, though the band's records remain a significant document of the early 2010s traditional metal revival.

Chicago thrash-metalcore band Hurtlocker formed in 1998 and released a series of demos before issuing Fear in a Handful of Dust (2005) and Embrace the Fall (2007) on Napalm Records. Their sound bridged the aggressive thrash metal of the Bay Area with the metalcore aggression prominent in the mid-2000s American heavy scene. The band has since dissolved, leaving behind a compact catalog that reflected the crossover moment between those two worlds.

Bedroom black metal and death drone project. Merges early 90s black metal with Broken Flag-style industrial and Lustmord-esque dark ambient.

Kansas City, Missouri stoner and sludge metal trio Hyborian formed in 2015, drawing their name and lyrical framework from Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age mythology. Their debut Hyborian Vol. I appeared on Season of Mist in 2017, followed by Vol. II in 2020, both records reflecting the influence of High on Fire, Mastodon, and Baroness in their dense, riff-driven approach. The band tours extensively in the American Midwest and Southeast, building their reputation through relentless live activity.

Salt Lake City's Hyde Park blend stoner, sludge, and doom into something ponderous and psychedelic since 2021, the high-altitude desert setting lending their sound an arid, expansive quality. Fuzz-drenched and unhurried.

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Named after an invasive aquatic weed, Deer Park's Hydrilla chokes out the competition with thick groove riffs and a Southern swagger rooted deep in the Houston industrial corridor. Their sound hits like the humidity — heavy, inescapable, and absolutely relentless.