Ruthless Slam / Brutal Death Metal from San Antonio.

Voraginem was a death/thrash metal band from Santiago, Chile, active from 2016 until their split-up. The band released one EP, "Ad Astra" (2016), a four-track recording composed entirely by the band between March and October of that year, with lyrics drawing on mythology and ancient gods.

Pueblo, Colorado's Vornske arrived in 2021 with a black metal sound shaped by the high plains and the isolation that comes with working in a city far from major metal hubs. There's a rawness to their approach that feels genuine rather than affected — black metal that carries the actual weight of geographic remove rather than just its aesthetic.

Vorpal Sword emerged from Louisville, Kentucky in 2017 as a vicious hybrid of black metal, punk, and noise. The band channels the raw confrontational energy of the Louisville underground, dragging black metal's grimness through abrasive punk grit and corroded noise textures. Their sound is less concerned with atmosphere than with controlled aggression and sonic damage.

Formed in 2020 in Guilderland, New York, Vortex play heavy metal grounded in the hard-driving traditions of thrash with a no-frills, riff-first approach. The band leans into the kinetic energy of classic thrash while keeping the songwriting anchored in heavy metal's melodic instincts. Short on pretension and long on velocity, they represent the continuing vitality of the upstate New York metal underground.

Out of Oakland, California since 2016, Vortex of Narvik operates in the suffocating register of depressive black metal layered with ambient drift. The name evokes the desolate Arctic port city that became a symbol of brutal attrition, and the music follows suit — long, spiraling compositions that trade in anguish and cold isolation. Ambient passages erode into raw black metal without warning, keeping the listener perpetually off-balance.

Vortexed arrived from Clarksville, Tennessee in 2024 with a debut rooted in brutal death metal's most uncompromising traditions. As one of the younger entries in the brutal death scene, they came out swinging with dense low-end punishment and clinical rhythmic violence. The band wastes no time on subtlety — every track is a concentrated exercise in technical brutality.

Pittsburgh's Vortican formed in 2023 at the intersection of progressive metal, groove metal, and death metal — a combination that sets them apart in a city with a long industrial metal lineage. Their sound shifts between churning groove-driven riffs and more complex progressive structures, with death metal's weight underpinning the whole thing. Hard rock sensibility gives their songs a melodic accessibility that keeps even the heaviest sections from becoming purely punishing.

Colossal Stoner / Doom Metal / Rock out of Texas.