Only Living Witness was a Boston, Massachusetts metal band formed in 1989 from the ashes of thrash act Formicide, developing a sound that grafted modern hardcore heaviness onto alternative and stoner metal frameworks. Their two studio albums — Prone Mortal Form (1993) and Innocents (1996) — appeared at the margins of mainstream recognition before the band dissolved in 1995, with Innocents released posthumously. Their influence on the Massachusetts metalcore scene of the early 2000s, which produced Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, and Unearth, has been widely cited by later bands.

San Francisco's Ontogeny approach technical and progressive death metal as an exercise in deliberate architecture, their riffs interlocking like molecular structures across dense, intellectually restless records. Nearly two decades in, they remain one of the Bay Area's most challenging underground voices.

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Fierce Groove Metal / Metalcore from Dallas.

Phoenix grindcore and death metal outfit Oozing attack with the kind of blistering, sun-baked aggression you'd expect from the Arizona desert — short, violent, and utterly without mercy. Their blasts hit like heat shimmering off asphalt at noon in July.

Hawaii's Open Fire bring heavy metal and hard rock energy to the Pacific islands, an unlikely but fitting home for the kind of sun-soaked, fist-raising anthems they've been crafting since 2007. Isolation has only sharpened their focus.

Newark, Delaware's Open Wide, the Sky build progressive metal with an expansive, searching quality — compositions that stretch toward something just out of reach, layered with dynamic shifts and melodic tension that rewards close listening.

Heavy Progressive Death Metal / Deathcore from Houston.

Lynchburg, Virginia's Opium Church came together in 2025 under the banner of Appalachian doom hippies — and true to that self-description, they blend stoner and doom metal with the hazy, ritualistic warmth of the Blue Ridge foothills. Heavy, slow, and thoroughly at peace with taking up space.