Cleveland's Puppet have been playing groove metal since 2014, leaning into the genre's emphasis on rhythmic lockstep and mid-tempo menace rather than speed, constructing riffs built to land like a hammer rather than a scalpel. A sturdy, head-down entry from Ohio's heavy music scene.

Cleveland's Putrefy deal in a corroded hybrid of black and death metal, leaning into atmosphere as much as brutality with a raw, caustic sound that reflects the rust-belt underground. Active since 2014, they occupy a grimy middle ground where blastbeats collide with dissonant, suffocating riffcraft.

Dayton, Ohio's Putrid Stu is a goregrind and brutal death metal project that leans hard into the absurdist, splatter-film side of the genre — a one-person or small-band affair that has been churning out crude, blasting extremity since 2018. The Dayton underground has produced some fierce acts, and Putrid Stu fits squarely in that tradition of low-budget, high-intensity noise.

Toledo, Ohio's Pythian stake their claim in the slow and suffocating territory where sludge, doom, and post-metal converge, crafting ponderous, emotionally weighted compositions that reflect the decay and resilience of their Great Lakes rust-belt surroundings since 2019.