Perrysburg, Ohio's Winter Heart have been developing atmospheric black metal since 2013, embracing the genre's most expansive, ambient-leaning qualities to craft music that is less about shock and more about immersion. The flat, grey landscapes of northwest Ohio make for a fitting backdrop for this kind of cold, contemplative black metal.

Cleveland's Witchrune arrived in 2024, adding another black metal voice to a city already known for producing some of America's most corrosive underground metal. Their approach stays in the pure black metal lane — cold, atmospheric, and unadorned by genre dilution. Cleveland's tradition of heavy, uncompromising music runs deep, and Witchrune appear to be drawing directly from that well.

Dayton, Ohio black metal project formed in 2024, emerging from a Rust Belt city with a history of extreme music and channeling the primitive, cultish energy that defines the rawer end of American black metal. One of the newest acts in the file, still early in carving out their identity in the Midwest underground.

Cleveland's Wyld Timez weaponize the rawness of first-wave black metal and fuse it to the locomotive momentum of speed metal and classic heavy metal, resulting in a high-energy blast of blackened aggression formed in 2021. Their approach pulls from the leather-and-spikes underground with a restless, reckless energy.