Cleveland's Pillärс (stylized with an umlaut and a grimace) combines crust punk's political bite with doom and sludge's crushing tempo, forging music as heavy as the city's industrial legacy demands.

Procession are a death/doom band from Cleveland, Ohio whose sound draws equally from the suffocating weight of doom and the rotting fury of death metal — a fitting combination for a city with one of America's most storied underground metal legacies. Active since 2010, they move at a funeral pace without sacrificing the visceral menace that separates genuine death/doom from mere slow metal.

Toledo, Ohio's Pythian stake their claim in the slow and suffocating territory where sludge, doom, and post-metal converge, crafting ponderous, emotionally weighted compositions that reflect the decay and resilience of their Great Lakes rust-belt surroundings since 2019.

From the small town of Byesville, Ohio, Reclusa have built one of the more genuinely hybrid sounds in the American underground since 2017 — death/doom heaviness threaded through with black metal cold, industrial noise, and dark ambient texture. The isolation of their rural Ohio setting comes through in music that feels removed from any scene, answering only to its own grim logic.

Toledo, Ohio's Simon Magus take their name from the ancient sorcerer-figure of Gnostic tradition and apply it to slow-burning doom metal built for dark contemplation. Formed in 2015, the band channels the genre's capacity for oppressive weight and psychological dread.

Formed in St. Clairsville, Ohio in 2020, Skiba drags the heaviness of doom metal through thrash's aggressive forward momentum — an unlikely combination that suits the gritty, working-class sensibility of the Ohio Valley.

Akron, Ohio's Sloth Wampa lean into the fuzzed-out, slow-burning intersection of stoner and doom metal since their 2020 formation, delivering the kind of heavy, sun-baked riffs that make the body move at glacial speed. Their name signals a self-aware approach to the absurd side of the genre's lore while keeping the music genuinely heavy.

Cleveland, Ohio psychedelic doom and post-metal band formed in 2023, constructing expansive, atmosphere-heavy arrangements that move between meditative drone and crushing heaviness.

Akron, Ohio band formed in 2012 playing doom-laden sludge metal rooted in the tradition of the Rust Belt's heavy underground, characterized by slow crushing riffs and bleak atmospherics.