Hopewell Junction, New York's Vision Serpent fuses death metal's downtuned aggression with groove metal's lockstep rhythmic swagger, arriving at a sound that is heavy in the most physical sense. Formed in 2023, they lean into the tension between brutality and headbang-inducing mid-tempo momentum, making their music as much about movement as darkness.

Blistering Metalcore / Thrash Metal from Fort Worth.

Vista Chino formed in 2010 under the original name Kyuss Lives!, bringing together three former Kyuss members — vocalist John Garcia, drummer Brant Bjork, and bassist Nick Oliveri — alongside Belgian guitarist Bruno Fevery. After a legal challenge from former Kyuss guitarist Josh Homme prohibited the use of the Kyuss name for recordings, the group rebranded as Vista Chino and released their sole album Peace in 2013 before disbanding the following year. The project drew on the desert rock vocabulary the members had helped pioneer in the early 1990s.

Ruthless Slam / Brutal Death Metal out of Texas.

Vital Remains formed in Providence, Rhode Island in 1988, building a reputation as one of the most relentless and darkly devoted acts in American death metal through a career spanning more than three decades. Their 2003 album Dechristianize, featuring guest vocals from Glen Benton of Deicide, is widely regarded as their defining statement, distinguished by intricate guitar work and marathon track lengths. Founded by guitarist Paul Flynn, the band has maintained a continuous presence across a discography that includes Let Us Pray (1992), Into Cold Darkness (1995), and Forever Underground (1997).

Vital Signs has been delivering workmanlike heavy metal since 2017, occupying the traditional end of the spectrum where hooks, groove, and raw energy take precedence over extremity. Location unlisted, they operate as a pure expression of the genre's core values — unpretentious, heavy, and built to last.

Olympia, Washington's Vitality Ritual situates itself deep in the experimental margins of black and doom metal, founded in 2024 with a sound that takes the cold austerity of black metal and stretches it into ambient, ritual-minded territory. In a city long associated with underground artistic experimentation, they fit naturally — patient, atmospheric, and deliberately disquieting.

Colorado's Vitki draws on the most crushing end of the black-doom continuum, filtering funeral doom's glacial tempos and suffocating atmospheres through a black metal lens since 2023. Named after the Norse runic tradition, the project carries a solitary, ritualistic quality — music designed less for concerts than for the kind of introspective darkness the mountains outside their unnamed Colorado home seem built to inspire.

Corona, California's Vitreous Earth has been plying stoner-doom's slow-burning Southern California wavelength since 2018, crafting music that favors haze, weight, and prolonged riff meditation over any urgency whatsoever. Their sound is rooted in the Inland Empire's sun-scorched geography — heavy and unhurried, like pavement expanding in July heat.