Rochester, New York's Killed with Cash have been shredding crossover thrash since 2014, carrying on the genre's blue-collar irreverence with riffs that hit as hard as the humor. Part Leeway, part Municipal Waste, fully upstate New York.

Staten Island's Killen play traditional heavy metal with the no-nonsense working-class energy of the outer boroughs, formed in 2016 and drawing on the timeless vocabulary of riff-driven power and melodic hooks.

The Los Angeles incarnation of Killen brings progressive ambition to heavy metal's classic framework, shaping songs that stretch beyond the four-four convention without losing the genre's essential punch.

Killepsia is a progressive and heavy metal band from Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, formed in 2015 by guitarists Vicente Queiroz Silva Telles and Giuseppe Oppelt Delazeri, bassist and vocalist Ian Garbinato de Fagundes, and drummer Rafael Severo Meira. The band released their self-titled debut EP in June 2017, a four-track record that addresses themes of uncertainty, societal expectation, and the passage of time, marking them as a notable presence in Porto Alegre's heavy metal scene.

One of North Carolina's longer-running heavy metal acts, Mooresville's Killer Khan have been at it since 1999, playing with a road-worn authority that newer bands can only approximate. Old-school heavy metal, plain and unapologetic.

The name is absurdist; the music is not — Cincinnati's Killer Refrigerator play death-thrash that hits hard and doesn't waste time, formed in 2014 with the focus of a band that knows exactly what it wants to deliver.

Cleveland's Killer Whale Theory arrived in 2009 at the heavy end of deathcore, building songs with the structural weight and low-end density that the genre demands. A decade-plus into existence, they remain a fixture in Ohio's extreme underground.

Hard-hitting Gothic Metal with Punk influences from Dallas.

New York's Killerwatts charge through thrash and heavy metal with an electrified aggression that suits the name, formed in 2012 and built around the genre's fundamental pleasures: velocity, volume, and riffs that don't let up.