From the small town of McConnelsville, Ohio, this trio of black, death, and thrash metal influences has been fusing extremity since 1993, generating a caustic blend of blast-driven aggression and riff-heavy menace.

Moon Witch is a Dayton, Ohio band formed in 2021 that tears through black metal, death metal, and grindcore in roughly equal measure, trading in speed and ugliness with clear enthusiasm. Their Bandcamp handle — moonwitchusbm — signals a commitment to underground black metal aesthetics even as the grind influence pulls them toward pure noise.

Moonlight Butchery is a Toledo, Ohio atmospheric black metal project formed in 2014, sharing a name with a San Antonio band but working in a notably different mode. The atmospheric approach trades aggression for texture and mood, favoring vast, rain-soaked soundscapes over direct confrontation.

From the small Ohio town of St. Clairsville, Mourning by Morning have been crafting cold, raw black metal since 2018 — an isolated, atmospheric project that carries the bleakness of the rural Midwest into their compositions.

Cleveland's Mystic Underworld formed in 2020 and blend black metal with ambient elements, pairing harsh, atmospheric black metal passages with spacious, drone-informed interludes that give their sound a meditative, underworld-descending quality.

Toledo, Ohio's Męka fuse black metal's rawness with crust punk's d-beat fury and political charge, a combination that has made them one of the more distinctive acts in the region since 2017. The Polish name — meaning torment or suffering — fits a sound designed to be both abrasive and relentless.

Cincinnati's Nobody have been cultivating post-black metal introspection since 2018, threading atmospheric density and emotional weight through the black metal framework in ways that feel genuinely searching. Operating under a Bandcamp presence shared with the striking "videsuicide" handle, they push into the more melancholic and expansive post-black territory, where blast and tremolo give way to texture and mood.

Cincinnati's Nogothula entered the blackened death metal space in 2022 with a sound built on the most corrosive qualities of both parent genres — the cold tremolo hostility of black metal fused with death metal's crushing low-end and blasting intensity. Ohio's underground metal scene has historically punched above its weight, and Nogothula continues that tradition by pushing the extremes of a hybrid genre rather than softening them. The project's name carries a mythic, incantatory quality that matches their dense and ritualistic approach.

Named after the water-spirit of Norse folklore, Columbus, Ohio's Nøkk play black metal with a mythology-rooted identity and the cold, uncompromising energy that marks the newer wave of American projects in the genre. Formed in 2023, the band channels both the tradition and the restless forward motion of the current underground.