Columbus, Ohio's Fade to Oblivion have been writing melodic death metal since 2013, threading European melodeath influences through a Midwestern sensibility that grounds the grandiosity in something heavier.

Cincinnati's Faithxtractor has been one of Ohio's most reliable death metal acts since forming in 2008, delivering the genre in a raw, direct form that owes more to the filth of the underground than to any polished modern production.

Dayton, Ohio's Fall of Babylon has been playing melodic death metal since 2023, adding melody and compositional ambition to the genre's core heaviness in a Rust Belt city that has quietly nurtured extreme metal for years.

Cleveland's False Hope rides the crossover edge between thrash and hardcore punk, playing music that's fast, loud, and built for the pit. Active since 2016, they embody the blue-collar aggression of the city they come from.

Cleveland's Fascist Insect have been waging sonic war since 2008, fusing the raw political fury of grindcore with the slow-burn punishment of doom and the street-level aggression of crossover. The combination sounds exactly as volatile as it should.

Filter is the industrial rock project of Richard Patrick, former touring guitarist for Nine Inch Nails, launched from Cleveland, Ohio in 1993. The debut 'Short Bus' spawned the massive hit 'Hey Man Nice Shot,' one of the most iconic songs of the '90s industrial rock movement. Patrick's ability to blend electronic textures, heavy guitar distortion, and emotionally raw vocals across albums like 'Title of Record' kept Filter relevant through multiple waves of alternative rock.

Frayle formed in Cleveland, Ohio in 2017 as a duo anchored by guitarist Sean Bilovecky and vocalist Gwyn Strang, pairing heavily down-tuned doom metal riffs with ethereal, near-whispered singing to create what the band calls "lullabies of chaos." Their debut album 1692 (2020) drew broad attention in the doom underground, citing influences ranging from Sleep and Black Sabbath to Portishead and Björk, and Revolver Magazine named them a band to watch in 2023. Skin & Sorrow (2022) and Heretics & Lullabies (released via Napalm Records) further developed the band's melancholic, atmospheric doom approach.

Dayton, Ohio's Gaia Weeps arrived in 2024 with a sludge metal sound as bleak and grinding as the Rust Belt landscape that shaped them — slow, corrosive, and unrepentant.

An Ohio goregrind act operating in the shadows since 2018, Gaki specialize in the kind of extreme, lo-fi grotesquerie that's as much about shock and confrontation as it is about speed.