Columbus' Massive Gun arrived in 2023 with a death metal and deathcore sound that's as direct as their name suggests — blunt, heavy, and built around maximum impact. Ohio's metal scene has a long tradition of producing bands with no interest in subtlety.

Cleveland's Pawn plays deathcore with the industrial grit their rust-belt city demands — crushing breakdowns and death metal riffage delivered with unrelenting hostility.

Formed in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2022, Rose Funeral delivers a punishing blend of death metal and deathcore that hits with unrelenting brutality. Their sound is rooted in gut-level heaviness, pairing down-tuned ferocity with the structural aggression that defines contemporary deathcore.

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.

Cincinnati death metal/deathcore outfit formed in 2020, combining the brutality of old-school death metal with the rhythmic breakdown-driven aggression of deathcore. Their sound leans into a heavier, more punishing direction within the Cincinnati underground scene.

Suffer is a Dayton, Ohio deathcore band formed in 1993, combining death metal brutality with the breakdowns and aggression of deathcore in the fertile Ohio heavy music underground.

Cincinnati's The Vile Doctrine blend deathcore's breakdown-heavy architecture with the putrid mid-tempo grind of old-school death metal, crafting a sound that sits at the uglier, more aggressive end of the Ohio underground since their 2020 formation.