Hailing from Boone, North Carolina, Razorbeast have been pursuing groove metal's chug-and-stomp traditions since 2020, built around the syncopated heaviness and down-tuned swagger the genre does best. They bring a mountain-town rawness to a sound that could easily fill a much larger stage.

New Hampshire's Razorgate emerged in 2021 operating at the fringe where black metal collides with noise, constructing abrasive and disorienting sonic worlds from the rural New England dark. The project's noise-tinged approach lends it a hermetic, underground quality that distinguishes it from cleaner BM acts.

From Luray, Virginia — a small Shenandoah Valley town far removed from any metal hub — Razorwire Decapitation have pursued meat-cleaver death metal since 2016. The band's name telegraphs their approach: direct, graphic, and uninterested in subtlety.

Realize are an industrial metal trio from Tucson, Arizona, formed in 2017 by members with backgrounds in powerviolence and grind, channeling the abrasive legacy of Godflesh and Nailbomb into tightly wound machine-metal constructed around themes of isolation, simulated reality, and technological anxiety. Signed to Relapse Records, the band released Machine Violence in 2020 and followed it with Two Human Minutes, establishing themselves as a leading voice in the current wave of industrial metal.

Houston art-punk pioneers. One of the earliest and most creative Texas punk bands.

Fort Worth's Realm Drifter crawled out of the Texas heat in 2022 dealing in stoner-doom that stretches riffs into long, resin-thick passages and anchors them with the weight of the Lone Star sun. It's psychedelic, slow, and heavy in the way that only bands steeped in the Texas desert-rock tradition manage.

Brutal Death Metal out of Texas.

Ripping Thrash / Groove Metal out of Texas.

Minneapolis three-piece Reaping Asmodeia deal in ambitious, technically demanding death metal rooted in concept albums exploring transcendentalism and the afterlife. Signed to Prosthetic Records, their albums 'Darkened Infinity' and 'Shattered Leviathan' weave intricate guitar work and relentless blast beats into narrative frameworks inspired by dream logic and existential philosophy. Formed from the ashes of With Dead Hands Rising, the band has toured alongside Slaughter To Prevail and Rivers of Nihil, establishing themselves in the upper tier of modern technical death metal.