Worthington, Ohio's Eleventh Hour play straight death metal under a name shared with several other acts — formed in 2011, they bring a Midwestern directness to the genre without any of the melodic compromise.

Ohio's Elusive Travel have been moving at doom/death's agonizingly deliberate pace since 2001, letting despair accumulate bar by bar — one of the longer-running acts in a subgenre that rewards patience with weight.

Cleveland's Embalmer carry on with the straightforward death metal tradition that has always suited Ohio's no-frills underground. Since 2016, they've delivered unadorned, morgue-scented brutality without pretense.

Columbus, Ohio's Encenathrakh dismantle death metal from the inside out, fusing avant-garde dissonance with technical brutal ferocity into something genuinely unsettling. Since 2013, they've occupied a singular, confrontational space at the extreme edge of the genre.

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.

Cedarville, Ohio's Enslaved has been grinding out thrash-inflected death metal since 1992, representing the persistence of Midwest extreme metal through decades of shifts in the underground landscape.

Akron's Enthrall has carried the torch for Ohio death metal since 1993, delivering the blunt-force punishment that rust belt underground scenes tend to produce — workmanlike, heavy, and uninterested in trends. Decades in without losing momentum.

Streetsboro, Ohio's Entity of Extinction weaponizes technical death metal and grindcore together, pushing both toward their logical extremes — the precision of the former sharpened by the speed and fury of the latter. Active since 2014 and unrelenting throughout.

Toledo's Entrenched fuse death metal's relentless weight with hardcore's confrontational energy, carving out a pit-ready sound since their 2024 formation.