Parma, Ohio's Sanhedrin have been pursuing death metal with no-frills directness since 2015, building in the industrial shadow of Cleveland's storied heavy music history. Their approach favors blunt force over ornamentation — death metal as practiced by a band that has no interest in softening the genre's essential violence.

Cincinnati, Ohio's Scab Hag formed in 2021 and carved out a niche in straightforward, no-frills death metal in the classic mold — grimy riffs, guttural vocals, and a sound that doesn't reach for complexity so much as it reaches for your throat. Their name suggests both ugliness and irreverence, two qualities that map cleanly onto the music.

Dayton, Ohio's Scrotal Erosion arrived in 2024 trafficking in goregrind and death metal with the kind of grotesque specificity that the gore-adjacent subgenre demands — absurdist extremity, medical-horror song concepts, and a sound that prioritizes repulsiveness as an aesthetic virtue. Dayton has a quietly rich tradition of underground metal and hardcore, and Scrotal Erosion continues that tradition in its most extreme, least marketable form. New to the scene but clearly committed to the bit.

Akron's Self Loathing formed in 2018 and operate at the volatile intersection of death metal and hardcore punk, bringing the blunt-force aggression of the latter to the low-end brutality of the former. The band's crossover approach is rooted in the Rust Belt tradition of music that doesn't ask permission — short, crushing, and direct. They're part of a small but committed Ohio underground scene that treats genre boundaries as obstacles to be demolished.

Ohio-based Sepulcher formed in 2024 operating at the violent intersection of death metal and grindcore. Their music combines the technicality and brutality of death metal song structures with the explosive, short-burst intensity of grindcore, resulting in something chaotic and unrelenting. As a brand-new act they have already staked out an extreme and punishing corner of the Midwestern underground.

Cleveland, Ohio death metal unit formed in 2013, drawing from the Midwest's blue-collar underground to deliver punishing, no-frills death metal steeped in the tradition of the genre's American roots.

Cleveland death metal stalwarts formed in 2014, rooted in the old-school death metal tradition with a sound that favors putrid, mid-paced heaviness alongside the city's well-established extreme metal pedigree.

Columbus, Ohio's Shores of Elysium have been working the boundary between melodic death metal and deathcore since 2012, combining memorable melodic hooks with the heaviness and aggression that define Ohio's prolific extreme metal output.

Cleveland death/thrash outfit Shores of Fire formed in 2018 with a direct, aggressive style that merges the riff density of death metal with thrash's propulsive momentum — firmly in the tradition of Ohio's hard-edged, no-nonsense extreme metal.