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

Columbus, Ohio's Erthbrnr began in the chaos of hardcore and crust punk before migrating toward a darker, heavier convergence of black metal, death metal, and sludge. Over more than a decade the band has undergone a genuine stylistic evolution, using each phase as both rejection and extension of the one before.

Bradner, Ohio's Ghost Eyes fuse black metal hostility with the confrontational energy of hardcore, arriving at a sound that is as ugly and airless as a condemned building. Active since 2019, the band makes no concessions to comfort or melody.

Dayton, Ohio's Landfilth landed in 2025 with a death metal and hardcore hybrid that sounds as grim as their industrial Rust Belt home. Their name says it plainly: this is ugly music delivered with purpose.

Cleveland's Punching Moses have been at it since 2012, playing a hard-nosed crossover that draws equally from Bay Area thrash and Midwest hardcore — aggressive, blunt, and grounded in the blue-collar ethos of the city they come from. Expect circle-pit riffs and no philosophical hedging.

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.

Southern Tongues is an Ohio death metal and hardcore band formed in 2019, bringing the visceral collision of extreme metal and hardcore aggression that defined bands working the boundary between the two genres in the American underground.

Canton, Ohio act founded in 2017 that fuses death metal, thrash, and hardcore into a raw, crossover-influenced style drawing from the Midwest's tradition of no-frills extreme aggression.

Stoneman is a crossover thrash and hardcore band from Cincinnati, Ohio, formed in 2023, merging the frenetic energy of hardcore with the aggressive riff attack of thrash metal.