Feral black/thrash/punk that blurred genre lines with sadistic intensity. Active 2011-2019 before splitting up.

Tucson's Wield formed in 2021 at the brutal intersection of death metal and hardcore — two genres that, at their most aggressive, aren't that far apart, and Wield makes sure you feel exactly how close together they can get. The desert city provides an appropriate backdrop for music this confrontational and relentless.

St. Louis's Wieldsayer have been practicing a cold, methodical strain of black metal since 2018 — the kind of music that carries the genre's Norwegian roots while planting them firmly in the Midwest's bleak winters. There's a no-frills intensity to their approach that fits the working-class grit of their city.

Philadelphia's Wild Beyond formed in 2023 at the caustic junction of black metal and thrash — burning fast and mean in the tradition of blackthrash's most venomous practitioners. Philly has long fostered a taste for extreme music, and Wild Beyond carry that energy forward with a sound built on speed, spite, and riffs that cut.

Founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 2008 by vocalist and guitarist Evan Berry, Wilderun have progressively evolved from folk-inflected heavy metal into one of the most ambitious acts in American progressive and symphonic metal. Their debut Olden Tales and Deathly Trails (2012) drew on American folk tradition, while Sleep at the Edge of the Earth (2015), Veil of Imagination (2019), and Epigone (2022) marked a sustained compositional leap toward dense orchestration and progressive architecture. Epigone in particular received widespread critical recognition for the scale and craft of its arrangements.

Wildlights formed in Wilmington, North Carolina in 2015 as a collaboration between Jason Shi of Southern stoner rock band ASG and Johnny Collins of Thunderlip. Their self-titled debut (2015), produced by Matt Hyde, drew equally from desert rock and blues-rooted Southern hard rock, blending melodic chorus-driven songwriting with dense, purposeful grooves. The project occupies a space between the SoCal stoner tradition and the heavier, blues-inflected sound native to the Carolinas.

Environmentalist blackened crust. Doom, d-beat, and black metal fused with lyrics about nature's resilience and civilization's collapse. Released on Prosthetic Records.

Founded in 1997 to unite the Texas hardcore scene. Returned in 2023 after a long hiatus.

Seattle's Willard arrived in 2022 hauling doom and sludge metal traditions through the Pacific Northwest rain — a city that has produced some of the heaviest, most atmospheric music in the genre for decades, and Willard slot naturally into that lineage. Their sound is the kind of slow, crushing weight that feels like the grey Seattle sky pressing down on everything below it.