Named for a toxic lichen, Santa Cruz's Letharia weave atmospheric black metal and slow-burning doom into something as coastal and creeping as Pacific fog rolling over the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Los Angeles' letlive. burned bright as one of the most incendiary post-hardcore bands of the 2010s, driven by Jason Aalon Butler's unhinged stage presence and the band's genre-defying fusion of hardcore, punk, and soul. Albums like 'Fake History' and 'The Blackest Beautiful' earned them a rabid cult following before Butler went on to form Fever 333.

Southern California post-hardcore outfit Letter Kills emerged from the Temecula desert in 2002 with a riff-heavy blend of hard-charged alternative rock, 80s hair-metal swagger, and punk energy. Their 2004 Island Def Jam debut 'The Bridge' landed them on MTV2 and the Nintendo Fusion Tour alongside My Chemical Romance before the band's untimely split in 2006. A 2023 reunion single co-produced by Joey Bradford of The Used signaled a long-awaited return for the SoCal rockers.

Cape Cod's most noxious export, Leukorrhea have been unleashing Cape Cod-spawned brutal death metal since 2016 — technically repulsive and proudly uncompromising in the Massachusetts underground.

Portland's Leviathan operate in the austere zone where black metal meets ambient cold — raw, solitary, and suffocating, their music channels the Pacific Northwest's deep isolation since 2011.

Atlanta's Levitation soar through progressive power metal with a Southern confidence, pairing intricate arrangements and dynamic shifts with the kind of clean vocal muscle that fills Georgia arenas.

Shrouded in geographic mystery, Levitator craft raw black metal that floats above easy categorization — their anonymity only sharpens the music's cold, faceless intensity.

Liberteer is the solo grindcore project of Santa Cruz, California musician Matthew Widener, better known for his work in Exhumed and Cretin, formed around 2011. Their sole album Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees (2012, Relapse Records) is a dense political statement rooted in anarchist philosophy, notable for grafting brass instruments, banjo, and mandolin onto a blasting death-grind foundation. The project remains a curio of the early 2010s extreme metal underground for its ideological commitment and unusual instrumentation.

Amherst's Lich King are thrash metal's most reliably fun-loving death merchants — since 2009 they've written riff-first, pit-ready thrash with a sense of humor sharp enough to cut through the mosh pit.