Hot Mulligan are a Lansing, Michigan band whose music sits at the loud intersection of emo, pop punk, Midwest emo, and post-hardcore. Formed in 2014, the group grew from basement-show roots into one of the defining modern acts in emotionally charged guitar music, with releases such as Pilot, you'll be fine, Why Would I Watch, and later work sharpening their combination of tangled riffs, strained vocals, and self-aware humor. Their songs often feel messy in feeling but precise in construction: guitars twist around each other, drums push with nervous momentum, and Nathan Sanville's voice gives the music a cracked urgency that fits lyrics about grief, insecurity, family, memory, and growing up badly. Hot Mulligan fit punk scope through pop punk and post-hardcore, even when their vocabulary overlaps heavily with emo. They favor velocity, cathartic choruses, and live-room release over soft introspection. What separates them from many revival-era peers is how naturally they balance jokes, pain, and technical guitar movement. The band can sound frantic, funny, wounded, and direct within the same song, which has made their music resonate far beyond a single scene category.

Seattle's Hoth take their name from the frozen Star Wars planet, and the melodic death-black metal they've crafted since 2012 earns the reference — vast, icy, and cinematic in scope. Their music reaches for the cosmos while keeping the riffs sharp.

Hickory, North Carolina doom metal outfit Hour of 13 formed in 2003 primarily as the creative project of multi-instrumentalist Chad Davis, with vocalist Phil Swanson contributing to the bulk of their recorded output. Their 2007 self-titled debut on Shadow Kingdom Records was followed by The Ritualist (2010) and 333, both of which reinforced the band's status as a respected act within traditional doom and occult heavy metal circles. Their sound draws from the same late-1970s and early-1980s roots as Pentagram and Black Sabbath without relying on pastiche.

Des Moines, Iowa's Hours of Decay have been fusing the rhythmic punch of groove metal with deathcore's heaviness since 2015. Midwest persistence channeled into something dense and relentless.

Madison, Wisconsin's House of Lud have been stacking stoner and doom metal in equal measure since 2018, producing riffs that settle in like weather — slow-moving, overcast, and unavoidable. Their tone carries genuine weight.

House of Protection is the Los Angeles duo of Stephen Harrison and Aric Improta, both known for intense, rhythmically physical work before launching this project in 2024. The music takes post-hardcore and hardcore punk as a base, then drives it through electronics, trap percussion, trip-hop atmosphere, industrial textures, and shouted dual-vocal hooks. Their debut material introduced a compact but explosive sound: Harrison's guitar lines and vocals move between abrasion and melody while Improta's drumming supplies a restless, athletic pulse that often feels as central as the riffs. GALORE established the group as more than a side project, and Outrun You All expanded the approach with darker, more nocturnal production and broader alternative rock colors. The band's short history matters because the context is unusually clear: two musicians with heavy-scene credibility using a new project to shed expectations, make rhythm the lead instrument, and keep the communal pressure of hardcore while letting synths, samples, and club-weight low end shape the attack. The result feels engineered for rooms where rhythm and impact collide.

Providence, Rhode Island sludge metal band Howl formed in 2006 and signed to Relapse Records in 2009, releasing their debut EP that same year to positive reviews from Decibel Magazine. Their first full-length Full of Hell appeared in 2010, followed by Bloodlines (2013), produced by Zeus and reflecting years of touring alongside Saint Vitus, Kylesa, and Pentagram. The band occupies a well-worn but convincingly executed space between sludge, stoner doom, and Southern-tinged heavy rock.

Cincinnati, Ohio's Howling have been pushing cold, stripped-down black metal since 2015, capturing something feral and windswept in the urban rust belt context. The city's industrial undertone seeps into every track.

Named for the Norse corpse-swallowing eagle at the edge of the world, Concord, New Hampshire's Hræsvelgr have been playing black metal steeped in heathen mythology since 2016. Their sound is as austere and uncompromising as the name suggests.