Lebanon, Ohio death metal band from the Cincinnati suburbs, delivering technical extremity informed by Southwest Ohio's productive underground metal community.

Kent, Ohio doom band from the college town that birthed Devo, delivering a very different kind of heavy — slow, meditative, and crushingly weighty.

Painesville, Ohio thrash metal act whose 2017 EP Wrath of Militaristic Barbarism delivers exactly the kind of war-obsessed thrash fury the title demands from the Lake Erie shore.

Cleveland, Ohio thrash metal project with five releases since 2019. The Void Curse EP and subsequent singles blend occult themes with nuclear imagery, forging a distinctive identity in the Rock City's competitive thrash scene.

Columbus, Ohio's Attack Attack! became the lightning rod of the electronicore movement in the late 2000s, polarizing listeners with their fusion of Auto-Tuned cleans, synth breakdowns, and metalcore heaviness on their debut 'Someday Came Suddenly.' Their crabcore stance became an internet meme, but the band's influence on the intersection of electronic music and metalcore is undeniable.

Cincinnati power metal project whose 2015 single — featuring a collaboration with Dr. Space — blends cosmic exploration with mythological reference. Echoes Of Mount Ida reaches from ancient Troy to the stars.

Mansfield, Ohio death metal project. The oxymoronic name — autumn implies change, eternal implies permanence — captures the tension at the heart of their heavy music.

Lima, Ohio black metal band channeling the rural Midwest's bleak, windswept emptiness into atmospheric darkness from small-town Northwest Ohio.

Cincinnati heavy metal project with five releases since 2014. Their catalog — spanning the French-titled Musiques immobiles and the blunt Indifferent — reveals a band comfortable with both Continental sophistication and American directness.