Michigan's Hideous CHUD take the foundational elements of brutal death and grindcore and run them through an experimental blender, producing results that are as unpredictable as they are punishing. The Roseville outfit seem genuinely uninterested in doing what's expected of them.

A brand-new presence in the avant-garde death metal sphere, Hierarchies arrived in 2025 with technical ambition and a willingness to bend genre logic in pursuit of something genuinely strange. Their approach to death metal is as much compositional problem-solving as it is sonic brutality.

Akron's Hieros draw on the melodic black metal tradition to create music that is sweeping without being saccharine, atmospheric without surrendering aggression. Since 2020 the project has built a sound that sits somewhere between the triumphant and the grim.

Texas desert rock creating massive riffs influenced by Alice in Chains and Queens of the Stone Age.

Relentless Black Metal from Denton.

Philadelphia's High Leaf rolled into the stoner metal world in 2023 with thick riffs and a commitment to the form's hazy, unhurried pleasures. They're squarely in the tradition of Philly heavy rock — unpretentious, loud, and more concerned with feel than complexity.

Terre Haute's High Off Anxiety channel exactly what their name implies into a volatile fusion of thrash and grindcore that treats nervous energy as structural material. A new outfit, they bring the cathartic directness that the most effective short-form extreme metal demands.

Oakland's High on Fire are one of the defining forces in American doom and sludge, built on Matt Pike's mythological vision and the kind of riff density that makes everything around it feel thin. Since reforming their presence in the early 2010s, they have remained one of the heaviest and most uncompromising bands on earth.

Philadelphia's High Reeper navigate the border between doom metal and hard rock with the ease of a band that doesn't feel the need to fully commit to either camp. Since 2017, they've written songs built for maximum riff payoff, borrowing from classic rock's instinct for the hook without softening their heaviness.