Cincinnati's Moth Priest bring a ritualistic weight to stoner/doom metal, formed in 2021 with a sound that favors glacial tempos and hazy, amplifier-worship aesthetics — part of a quietly active heavy underground in southern Ohio.

Cleveland's Nucleon came together in 2022 at the intersection of heavy metal and stoner metal, letting psychedelic drift pull against the gravity of traditional metal heaviness. The band draws on the Rust Belt's long history of loud, working-class rock while pushing into fuzzed-out, hypnotic territory. Still a young act, they've positioned themselves as part of a new wave of Ohio heavy music.

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.

From Saint Marys, Ohio, PolyCrisis weave groove metal's mid-tempo pound together with stoner rock's fuzz and swagger, arriving at something heavy enough for the pit but wide-eyed enough for the couch. Formed in 2023, they're a small-town answer to a question nobody was asking — and the answer turns out to be pretty satisfying.

Columbus, Ohio's Sin Nombre — the name meaning "no name" in Spanish — have been marinating in the thick intersection of sludge and stoner metal since 2013. Their Midwestern locale adds a certain grey industrial weight to a sound already defined by heaviness, heat, and deliberate, grinding momentum.

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.

Rust Belt Sludge Punk from the hills of Southern Ohio.

Ohio-based sludge and stoner metal act formed in 2021, fusing the molasses-slow heaviness of sludge with the fuzz-driven groove of stoner rock for a sound rooted in the American heavy underground.

Sunsetter is a stoner/doom metal band from Sidney, Ohio, formed in 2022, channeling slow, heavy, fuzz-drenched riffs into deeply groove-oriented doom metal with a psychedelic undertow.