Canton, Ohio's Deepest Cuts draw from a wide palette of extremity, anchored in black metal darkness and built by a band that refuses to be pinned to a single sonic corner.

Named after a shrieking specter from Slavic folklore, Cleveland's Drekavac have been conjuring raw, unpolished black metal since 2013. Their recordings lean into the lo-fi aesthetic that defines the raw black metal underground — cold production, relentless aggression, and an uncompromising hostility toward accessibility.

Dayton, Ohio's Drowner approach heavy music from multiple angles at once — their sound stacks blackened atmosphere on top of droning sludge on top of doom's slow collapse, arriving at something genuinely disorienting in the best possible way. Active since 2022, they belong to a tradition of Midwestern bands that find emotional extremity in sonic density.

Columbus, Ohio's Echushkya emerged in 2019 with a focus on atmospheric black metal that leans inward — cold, immersive, and dedicated to the subgenre's more contemplative possibilities.

Cincinnati's Eisen Geist fuses black metal's malevolence with the propulsive, reckless energy of thrash, a combination the band has been honing since 2019. The result is nasty, fast, and shot through with a distinctly Germanic grimness.

Cleveland's Elk Blood carry the Rust Belt's bleakness directly into their black metal, where the cold industrial sprawl of northern Ohio seeps into every tremolo run and blast beat.

Dayton's Engraved Darkness draws on the bleakest traditions of black and death metal, weaving cold dissonance and sepulchral atmosphere into a sound that feels excavated from the Ohio underground.

Columbus, Ohio's Erthbrnr began in the chaos of hardcore and crust punk before migrating toward a darker, heavier convergence of black metal, death metal, and sludge. Over more than a decade the band has undergone a genuine stylistic evolution, using each phase as both rejection and extension of the one before.

Columbus, Ohio's Eternal Bloodshed tear through blackened death and thrash with the all-or-nothing intensity that has come to define the city's underground in recent years. Founded in 2020, they waste nothing on atmosphere when riff violence will do.