Worthington black metal project from the Ohio underground.

Cincinnati, Ohio crust-punk and death metal band Coelacanth have been grinding out ferocious, politically charged metal since the early 1990s, earning a cult following in the American underground. Their sound fuses the rawness of crust with the brutality of early death metal.

Columbus, Ohio's The Conquering have been forging their own brand of Viking and folk-inflected black metal since 2006, drawing on themes of Norse mythology and pagan lore without losing the ferocity that grounds the music. The Midwest setting gives their atmosphere a particular starkness — wide, cold, and elemental — that suits the genre's epic scope.

Cincinnati's Winterhymn have been crafting folk metal since 2011, blending the genre's traditional instrumentation and pagan-inspired themes with solid heavy metal foundations. Ohio isn't the first place you'd imagine for folk metal, but Winterhymn have carved out a loyal following by taking the genre's epic, communal spirit seriously over more than a decade of activity.