Virginia's Witchmark formed in 2025 and blend groove metal's rhythmic punch with death metal's brutality, carving out territory that rewards headbanging as much as intensity. The groove/death combination — think a rawer Pantera crossed with modern death metal sensibilities — is a natural fit for a Virginia scene that has historically gravitated toward hard-hitting, riff-first metal. They are one of the newest acts in the American heavy metal underground.

Cleveland's Witchrune arrived in 2024, adding another black metal voice to a city already known for producing some of America's most corrosive underground metal. Their approach stays in the pure black metal lane — cold, atmospheric, and unadorned by genre dilution. Cleveland's tradition of heavy, uncompromising music runs deep, and Witchrune appear to be drawing directly from that well.

Washington state's Witchtrial formed in 2017 playing speed and heavy metal with a clear nod to punk's energy and punk's contempt for pretension, straddling the line where Motörhead meets the NWOBHM. Their Bandcamp handle's "DC" tag suggests some cross-country connective tissue, adding intrigue to their geographic placement. They are lean, fast, and direct — a throwback built with genuine conviction.

Bay Shore, New York's Witchtripper have been plying their trade in stoner doom since 2016, bringing Long Island into a genre conversation usually dominated by the American South and West. Their sound is rooted in heavy psychedelic grooves and slow-burn riff cycles that reward cranking the volume in a dark room. They are a consistent presence in the New York-area underground heavy music world.

Northern Virginia's With Burning Contempt formed in 2013 and have been working the convergence of thrash, death, and black metal ever since — a trifecta that allows them to be punishing from multiple angles at once. The Northern Virginia/DC corridor has a long and underrated history in American extreme metal, and this band carries that tradition forward with aggression and purpose. Their name signals the attitude: no nostalgia, just hostility.

Port Huron, Michigan's With or Without formed in 2020 and bring a progressive dimension to their metalcore foundation, stretching song structures and harmonic ideas further than the genre's more orthodox practitioners. The progressive metalcore space has become increasingly crowded, but a band emerging from small-city Michigan brings a different hunger to the table. Their Bandcamp presence suggests a band serious about craft and musical growth.

With Passion formed in Sacramento, California in 2002, drawing from European melodic death metal — particularly At the Gates and Dissection — and the technical metalcore emerging from the US and Canada in the early 2000s. The band released two albums on Earache Records, In the Midst of Bloodied Soil (2005) and What We See When We Shut Our Eyes (2007), before disbanding that same year. Though short-lived, they were noted for their technical precision and the blackened edge they brought to the melodic metalcore sound.

Nashville, Tennessee's Withdrawn formed in 2021 in the bleak overlap between doom, sludge, and death metal — a combination that turns the misery dial up considerably. Nashville is better known for country and Americana, which makes the emergence of a genuinely crushing doom/death act there all the more striking. Their sound is heavy in the way that feels earned rather than performed.

Withered formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 2003, founded by Mike Thompson and Chris Freeman out of the wreckage of their crust/grind band Social Infestation, with a mandate to merge black metal, death metal, and doom without allegiance to any single subgenre. Their five full-lengths — Memento Mori (2005), Folie Circulaire (2008), Dualitas (2010), Grief Relic (2015), and Verloren (2021) — trace a career of sustained masochistic intensity, released through Lifeforce, Prosthetic, and Season of Mist. The involvement of Primitive Man's Ethan McCarthy beginning in 2013 further deepened the band's devotion to extremity.