Dayton, Ohio's Ejaculating Rektal Squid Pussy commits fully to the brutality of goregrind and brutal death metal, a project formed in 2022 with no pretense toward subtlety. Cavernous gurgles, blast beats, and maximum grotesquerie.

Cincinnati's Electric Citizen bring a vintage sensibility to heavy and stoner metal, anchored by soulful vocals and riffs that feel pulled from a forgotten corner of the 1970s rock underground — formed in 2014 but sounding timeless.

Named with appropriate menace, Lakewood, Ohio's Electric Lucifer play stoner-soaked doom metal with a Sabbath-worshipping dedication — heavy, languid, and thoroughly infernal since 2013.

Cleveland's Elk Blood carry the Rust Belt's bleakness directly into their black metal, where the cold industrial sprawl of northern Ohio seeps into every tremolo run and blast beat.

Ohio's Elusive Travel have been moving at doom/death's agonizingly deliberate pace since 2001, letting despair accumulate bar by bar — one of the longer-running acts in a subgenre that rewards patience with weight.

Cleveland's Embalmer carry on with the straightforward death metal tradition that has always suited Ohio's no-frills underground. Since 2016, they've delivered unadorned, morgue-scented brutality without pretense.

A fresh arrival from Dayton's underground, Emerald Cauldron brew classic heavy metal and power metal together with an old-school sense of drama, conjuring something that feels pulled from a different era of the Midwest scene.

Akron's Emerald Rage hit hard at the intersection of speed, power, and traditional heavy metal, delivering the kind of fist-pumping anthems and fleet-footed riffing that recalls the best of the Ohio metal underground.

Columbus, Ohio's Encenathrakh dismantle death metal from the inside out, fusing avant-garde dissonance with technical brutal ferocity into something genuinely unsettling. Since 2013, they've occupied a singular, confrontational space at the extreme edge of the genre.