Los Angeles heavy metal band formed in 2025, straddling the line between hard rock energy and traditional heavy metal weight in a city with a deep legacy of both. A brand-new act arriving on the LA scene with the hard-rocking, riff-driven sensibility of the genre's classic era.

San Antonio black metal act formed in 2023, channeling raw, misanthropic energy from one of Texas's largest cities into a sound built on cold tremolo riffing and ceremonial malice. A newer entry into the Texas extreme underground, operating out of a city with a surprisingly fierce black metal contingent.

Devastating Death Metal out of Texas.

Providence, Rhode Island death metal and grindcore outfit active since 2016, delivering short, savage bursts of extreme noise from a New England city with a fertile underground scene. Their sound leans into grindcore's economy of destruction — fast, ugly, and mercilessly brief.

Los Angeles avant-garde black metal duo formed in 2017, notable for replacing conventional guitar with grand piano as the primary instrument alongside drums and shrieked vocals. The result is a genuinely strange, dissonant take on black metal that sounds like nothing else in the California underground.

Alexandria, Virginia thrash metal band active since 2012, hailing from the Washington D.C. metro area where the region's hardcore and metal scenes have long cross-pollinated. Their name invokes the workmanlike brutality of classic thrash, and their decade-plus tenure suggests a band committed to keeping the style alive in the mid-Atlantic underground.

St. Louis groove and thrash metal outfit formed in 2016, combining the mid-tempo pocket and chugging heaviness of groove metal with the kinetic velocity of thrash. Rooted in the Midwestern metal underground, they channel the working-class grit that has long defined Missouri's heavy music scene.

Merrillville, Indiana death metal act formed in 2018, bringing a straight-ahead, no-frills approach to the genre from the industrial northwest corner of the state. Their Bandcamp handle — wretchedfate — suggests a lyrical preoccupation with doom and inevitability that fits squarely within the death metal tradition.

Charlotte, North Carolina melodic technical deathcore and death metal band formed in 2018, known for intricate guitar work and the kind of precision-engineered brutality that defines the technical end of the deathcore spectrum. One of the Southeast's more accomplished acts in the technically demanding hybrid of deathcore and death metal.