Swallowed by Apathy is a progressive/melodic death metal band from Newark, Ohio, formed in 2011, merging technically ambitious arrangements with melodic hooks drawn from the Scandinavian death metal tradition.

Canton, Ohio's The Behest of Serpents deal in melodic death metal with a coiling, venom-laced attack that suits their name — sharp melodic leads threaded through a backbone of heavy, purposeful riffing. Formed in 2021, they're part of a new wave of Midwestern acts proving that the region's industrial heritage continues to produce some of the country's most serious death metal.

Columbus, Ohio's Throne of Decay blend melodic death metal's sweeping, mournful leads with black metal's freezing atmosphere and abrasive intensity, carving a niche in the Midwest's growing extreme metal underground since their formation in 2022.

Based in Coldwater, Ohio, Toluca Lake push melodic death metal into stranger territory, weaving experimental textures into their song structures to produce something more unsettling than the genre's traditional melodic fare.

Columbus, Ohio band weaving Gothic gloom into melodic death metal, pairing the melancholic atmosphere of the Gothic tradition with driving riffs and death metal aggression. Active since 2022, they occupy the darkly romantic space between mid-era Paradise Lost and Scandinavian melodeath.