Brant Bjork is a Palm Desert, California musician best known as a founding drummer and songwriter of Kyuss, the desert rock band he helped form in the late 1980s alongside Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri, and John Garcia. After departures from Kyuss and Fu Manchu, Bjork launched a prolific solo career beginning with Jalamanta (1999), exploring funk-inflected stoner rock, acoustic desert blues, and heavy psych across more than a dozen solo albums on labels including Low Desert Punk and Heavy Psych Sounds. He remains one of the most recognized ambassadors of the Southern California Palm Desert scene that gave birth to the stoner rock movement.

Whiskey-soaked Southern Metal out of Texas.

Breaking Benjamin has been a dominant force in mainstream hard rock since Ben Burnley formed the band in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1999. Their albums 'Phobia' and 'Dear Agony' produced a string of rock radio hits built on Burnley's distinctive vocal tone, massive guitar hooks, and lyrics that explore inner turmoil with anthemic resolve. Despite extensive lineup changes over the years, Burnley's singular vision has kept the band's sound remarkably consistent and commercially potent.

Brendan Kelly is a Chicago punk songwriter best known for his gravelly voice, black humor, and long-running work in The Lawrence Arms, The Falcon, and Brendan Kelly and the Wandering Birds. His solo material grew out of the same punk foundation but does not simply strip songs down into standard acoustic versions. The 2010 split Wasted Potential, recorded with Joe McMahon, showed Kelly applying his rough-edged melodic sense to leaner arrangements while keeping the cynicism, literary bite, and barroom melancholy that run through his band work. Under the Wandering Birds name, he expanded further, using full-band arrangements, odd textures, and a more crooked singer-songwriter approach on records such as I'd Rather Die Than Live Forever and Keep Walkin' Pal. Kelly's writing often turns self-destruction, absurdity, Catholic guilt, friendship, and city life into songs that are funny until they suddenly become bleak. Even when the music drifts toward folk, Americana, or strange art-rock corners, his phrasing and worldview keep it tied to Chicago punk's literate, sardonic tradition.

Bret Michaels is a hard rock singer, songwriter, and performer best known as the frontman of Poison, but his solo work has built its own lane around arena rock hooks, acoustic storytelling, and road-tested showmanship. Raised in Pennsylvania before becoming one of glam metal's most recognizable voices, Michaels carried Poison's party-rock charisma into solo albums, soundtrack work, television visibility, and tours that often mix solo material with the songs that made him famous. Records such as Songs of Life, Freedom of Sound, Custom Built, and Jammin' with Friends show the range of his post-Poison identity, moving between hard rock, country rock, ballads, and bluesy bar-band energy. He fits hard-rock scope through his long connection to glam metal and guitar-driven rock, even when parts of the solo catalog lean toward country crossover or adult rock. Michaels' strongest quality has always been direct communication: choruses are built to land quickly, lyrics favor resilience and appetite, and the stage persona treats every crowd like a Saturday night. His music remains rooted in accessible, high-contact rock performance.

Brian Posehn is a San Francisco-born stand-up comedian and actor with a long history of integrating heavy metal into his comedy, beginning with his debut comedy album Live In: Nerd Rage (Relapse Records, 2006), which included the original metal track 'Metal by Numbers.' His 2020 album Grandpa Metal, co-written with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian and Fall Out Boy's Joe Trohman, features guest appearances from Corey Taylor, Scott Ian, Weird Al Yankovic, Michael Starr, and Brendon Small, functioning as a genuine metal record built around comedic metal archetypes rather than parody.

Punishing Technical / Progressive Death Metal out of Texas.

Austin psychedelic doom — Muddy Waters sitting in with Mastodon.

Brimstone Coven is a doom metal and occult rock band from Wheeling, West Virginia, formed in 2011 by guitarist Corey Roth, who assembled the group around vocalist 'Big John' Williams and a core of local scene veterans. The band's self-released early material led to a deal with Metal Blade Records in 2014, with their Metal Blade debut appearing that same year and Black Magic following in 2016, both records rooted in the Black Sabbath and Pentagram tradition with additional influence from Led Zeppelin and early Pink Floyd. They later moved to Ripple Music for The Woes of a Mortal Earth (2020).