Portland's most deranged genre collision since 2001, JonnyX and the Groadies fuse symphonic grandeur with black metal spite and grindcore brutality into something genuinely unclassifiable. Orchestral arrangements crash headlong into blastbeat chaos, and somehow it works.

A Connecticut-based solo progressive death metal project launched in 2017, Jordan Rodriguez weaves labyrinthine song structures and technical guitar work through a relentlessly heavy death metal framework. Equal parts cerebral and crushing.

Josey Scott is best known as the original vocalist of Saliva, whose raw, southern-fried vocals drove the band's biggest hits including 'Click Click Boom' and the Grammy-nominated Spider-Man soundtrack collaboration 'Hero' with Chad Kroeger. After departing Saliva in 2011 following 15 years with the band, Scott embarked on a solo career that reconnects with his hard rock roots while exploring new creative territory. His current solo project performs both Saliva classics and new material that showcases his powerful, versatile voice.

Out of Middleton, Massachusetts, Josh Johnson deals in the classic intersection of heavy metal riffing and thrash aggression, with enough rock-and-roll grit to keep things from going fully clinical. A one-man operation building on two decades of underground tradition.

Journey formed in San Francisco in 1973 around Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie after their work in Santana, first moving through jazz-leaning progressive rock before becoming one of the defining arena rock bands of the late 1970s and 1980s. The group's early albums built a reputation for instrumental power and melodic ambition, but the arrival of Steve Perry shifted the band toward a more vocal-driven sound. Albums such as Infinity, Evolution, Departure, Escape, and Frontiers turned Journey into a stadium-level act, pairing Schon's guitar work with Perry's high, dramatic voice and Jonathan Cain's polished keyboard writing. Songs including "Lights," "Wheel in the Sky," "Any Way You Want It," "Separate Ways," "Open Arms," and "Don't Stop Believin'" became central to the band's identity. After periods of inactivity and lineup changes, Journey returned with new singers and continued touring heavily, keeping its catalog active for new generations while remaining rooted in big hooks, soaring choruses, and cleanly produced hard rock.

Raleigh grindcore act Joy have been churning out fast, abrasive noise since 2009 — no frills, no subtlety, just relentless blastbeat punishment delivered with hardcore efficiency. The name is the joke; the music is not.

Joyce Manor are a Torrance, California punk band whose short, emotionally loaded songs helped reshape 2010s pop punk and emo without relying on polish or nostalgia. Formed in 2008, the group emerged from Southern California punk with a self-titled album that packed anxiety, romance, humor, and frustration into songs that often ended before they reached two minutes. Later records such as Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired, Never Hungover Again, Cody, Million Dollars to Kill Me, 40 oz. to Fresno, and subsequent work showed a band willing to adjust tempo, production, and structure while keeping a direct emotional core. Joyce Manor fit punk scope through punk rock, pop punk, and emo, with a style that values immediacy over ornament. Barry Johnson's lyrics can feel conversational, cutting, or painfully specific, and the band surrounds them with compact guitar hooks and rhythms that rarely waste motion. Their influence is visible in how many newer bands learned from their brevity, melodic sharpness, and refusal to overexplain feeling. Joyce Manor's songs hit because they sound casual at first and then reveal careful construction, turning ordinary confusion into music that feels urgent, funny, and wounded.

San Diego progressive rock and metal project JT Bruce carves out introspective, technically precise compositions since 2015 — the kind of solo work where arrangements take precedence over brute force. Melodic sophistication anchored in a heavy framework.

Athens, Georgia duo Jucifer are notorious for hauling one of the largest live speaker walls in underground metal and deploying it to devastating effect, channeling sludge, doom, drone, and punk into a wall-of-sound assault that defies easy categorization. Active since 2006, they remain one of the most extreme live acts in American heavy music.