Process of Decay have been grinding out brutal death metal in Las Vegas since 2012, channeling the desert heat into punishing low-end riffs and relentlessly percussive brutality. They operate deep in the underground tradition of the form — no concessions, no atmosphere, just the methodical destruction that gives brutal death metal its grim staying power.

Intricate Progressive Metal / Rock from The Woodlands.

Procession are a death/doom band from Cleveland, Ohio whose sound draws equally from the suffocating weight of doom and the rotting fury of death metal — a fitting combination for a city with one of America's most storied underground metal legacies. Active since 2010, they move at a funeral pace without sacrificing the visceral menace that separates genuine death/doom from mere slow metal.

Product of Hate are a thrash and groove metal band from Kenosha, Wisconsin, founded in 2007 under the name I for an I before adopting their current name. Signed to Napalm Records, the band released their debut Buried in Violence in 2016 to strong chart performance and recognition from Metal Hammer, delivering a tight, riff-forward sound rooted in classic American thrash aggression.

Profanatica are one of the defining acts of American black/death metal, a project forged in the early 1990s New York underground by Paul Ledney with a mission of total anti-Christian extremity that predates much of the Norwegian scene's notoriety. Reconvening in 2006 after a long hiatus, they have continued issuing some of the most deliberately primitive and blasphemous recordings in the genre — raw, irreverent, and utterly uncompromising.

Profane Elegy are a black metal project from Pennsylvania formed in 2023, entering the underground with a name that promises both desecration and mourning in equal measure. Emerging in a state with a quietly fertile black metal scene, they represent a new generation taking up the cold, austere aesthetics of the genre and shaping them into something with a contemporary sense of dread.

Profane Ruination emerged from Knoxville, Tennessee in 2022 with a death metal attack rooted in brutality and purposeful aggression. Their approach channels the grim, suffocating weight of the genre's foundational acts while bringing a rawness that reflects the band's relative youth and hunger. Still early in their catalog, they represent a promising voice in the underground death metal scene of the American South.

Chicago's Professor Emeritus blend heavy doom with epic traditional metal, conjuring a sound that is both crushing and soaring in equal measure. Formed in 2017, they draw on the grand, ceremonial qualities of epic doom — long compositions, weighty riffs, and commanding vocals that owe as much to classic heavy metal as to the funeral march tempos of the genre's bleaker practitioners. They stand out in the Midwest underground for their ambitious song structures and theatrical sensibility.

Profits of Doom out of Sebastopol, California grind groove and thrash metal together into a sound that's equal parts neck-snapping rhythm and full-throttle intensity. Founded in 2018, the band leans hard into the mid-paced, syncopated heaviness that defines modern groove metal while injecting enough thrash velocity to keep things volatile. Their northern California origins lend them a certain independent, no-frills spirit that comes through in their muscular, no-nonsense material.