Boston's Wizard Cult formed in 2015 and have planted themselves firmly in the city's doom and stoner underground, conjuring slow-burning heaviness that pairs crushing guitar weight with an almost meditative, hypnotic quality. Their sound carries the ritualistic feel their name implies — repetition and density used as tools for inducing a trance-like state rather than simply bludgeoning the listener. They're a worthy addition to Boston's rich tradition of heavy, riff-obsessed acts.

New Orleans's Wizard Dick bring the city's deep sludge metal lineage to bear in a band whose name is provocative by design — and whose music backs it up with genuine sonic weight. Formed in 2020, they inhabit the swampy, feedback-soaked end of the sludge spectrum that New Orleans has perfected since the days of Crowbar and Eyehategod. Their hometown's oppressive heat and heavy cultural history seep into every slow, grinding riff.

Houston stoner/psych doom. Trippy, heavy, and cosmically groove-laden.

Richmond, Virginia's Wizard Hand have been conjuring stoner doom heaviness since 2018, emerging from a city that has quietly built one of the South's most adventurous heavy music underground scenes. Their sound leans into the hypnotic interplay between earth-shaking low end and fuzz-soaked melody that defines the best of the stoner doom tradition. Richmond's fertile heavy scene clearly shaped their approach to slow, immersive riff craft.

Brand new as of 2024, Kendallville, Indiana's Wizards of the Damned are already staking out uncompromising territory with a sound that splices sludge metal, death metal, and hardcore into something confrontational and ugly in the best possible way. Coming from a small Midwestern town, they carry that outsider energy into their music — no industry calculus, just raw extremity. Their debut presence signals an act determined to make an impression immediately.

Kalispell, Montana's Wizzerd formed in 2015 in one of the most geographically remote metal scenes in the country, and that isolation informs their sprawling, cosmic take on stoner and doom metal. Their music reaches for the same vast open spaces that define Big Sky Country, building long, heavy compositions that feel as expansive as the landscape surrounding them. Among the handful of heavy bands calling Montana home, Wizzerd stand out for their genuine ambition and prolific output.

New Orleans's WNKL are one of the newest entries in the city's storied death metal underground, forming in 2024 with a sound that taps into the raw, brutal tradition that makes New Orleans a reliable incubator for extreme metal. Their name — cryptic and deliberately minimal — mirrors the blunt, no-frills aggression that characterizes old-school death metal at its most direct. Still at the very beginning of their trajectory, they're worth watching as they find their place in a city with impossibly high standards for heaviness.

Dallas stoner doom with huge psychedelic riffs. Some of the heaviest grooves in Texas.

Punishing Melodic Deathcore from San Antonio.