Maryland's Revolted Excrescence arrived in 2021 trafficking in the most putrid end of old-school death metal — goregrind-adjacent in its devotion to grotesque aesthetics and primitive, cavern-dwelling sound design. The name alone signals what kind of death metal this is: not clinical or technical, but deliberately excessive and confrontational in the finest traditions of the genre's most extreme practitioners. Maryland's underground has always had room for bands willing to push into truly depraved territory, and Revolted Excrescence occupy that space without apology.

REZN are a Chicago heavy psych and doom metal band whose music stretches massive low-end riffs into dreamlike, saxophone-tinted atmosphere. Formed in 2016, the group developed around Rob McWilliams, Phil Cangelosi, Patrick Dunn, and Spencer Ouellette, building a sound that feels both crushing and vaporous. Their albums, including Let It Burn, Calm Black Water, Chaotic Divine, Solace, and Burden, move through stoner rock weight, doom repetition, psychedelic drift, and progressive textures without losing the physical pull of the riff. REZN fit metal scope directly through doom metal and metal-adjacent heavy psych. What makes them stand out is the way they let heaviness breathe. Guitars churn and bloom, bass lines move like undertow, drums keep the songs grounded, and synth or saxophone colors can make the music feel cosmic rather than simply bleak. The vocals often arrive as another layer of haze, adding melody without breaking the trance. REZN's appeal lies in immersion. They write songs that feel less like quick attacks than weather systems, slowly gathering pressure until the distortion, rhythm, and atmosphere become inseparable. Their best moments make doom feel wide, luminous, and strangely weightless despite the mass.

Ferocious hardcore punk from El Paso.

Richard James is a solo heavy metal and neoclassical shred project that has been active since 2015, devoted to the intersection of classical composition and heavy guitar playing in the tradition of Yngwie Malmsteen and Tony MacAlpine. The project favors virtuosity as its organizing principle — technical proficiency deployed in service of melodic ideas that reach back to baroque and romantic influences as much as heavy metal tradition. Without a fixed location, Richard James operates in the global community of guitar-centric metal that has always transcended geography.

Groove-driven stoner metal from Austin.

Newark, New Jersey's RicoBlade has been building a sound since 2020 that bridges the gap between progressive metal's compositional ambition and the neoclassical shred tradition, adding ambient textures to give the music an unusual emotional depth beyond pure technical display. Newark, a city with a gritty underdog character, lends a certain grounded intensity to RicoBlade's otherwise cerebral approach — this is intricate music with genuine feeling behind the fretwork. The ambient elements in particular give their progressive/shred work a cinematic scope rarely found in this subgenre.

Denver, Colorado's Ricochet have been flying the flag for traditional heavy metal since 1996, making them one of the Rocky Mountain region's most durable acts in the genre. Their sound looks backward to the classic NWOBHM and American heavy metal templates — anthemic, guitar-driven, melodically confident — at a time when the Denver scene was largely consumed by grunge's aftermath. Nearly three decades of activity is a testament to their commitment to a form of metal that never stopped being relevant to those who truly believe in it.

Tulsa, Oklahoma's Ridden have been carving out a black metal identity in an unlikely corner of the country since 2017, proving that the Great Plains can generate darkness as effectively as Scandinavia ever did. Their sound is unadorned and stripped of any post-black metal softness — raw, misanthropic, and committed to the genre's most orthodox values. Oklahoma's isolation gives Ridden a particular bleakness that feels genuine rather than performed, the work of a band forged far from any established metal scene.

Cincinnati's Riesenwolf — German for 'giant wolf' — have been forging a black/heavy metal hybrid since 2022 that draws on the epic qualities of traditional heavy metal while blackening the edges with tremolo-picked menace and harsher vocal work. The Cincinnati underground doesn't always get its due nationally, but Riesenwolf represent a strain of Midwestern metal that combines the grandeur of classic metal songwriting with genuinely extreme sonic aggression. Two years in, they sound like a band already fully formed in their vision.