From the small Ohio town of St. Clairsville, Mourning by Morning have been crafting cold, raw black metal since 2018 — an isolated, atmospheric project that carries the bleakness of the rural Midwest into their compositions.

Dayton, Ohio's Mouth of the Architect are one of the Midwest's most respected post-metal acts, building dense, emotionally charged compositions that move between crushing heaviness and vast atmospheric space with a conviction that has defined their sound since 2006.

Columbus, Ohio's Mr. Hyde distinguish themselves from their Florida namesake through a progressive and melodic heavy metal approach, incorporating dynamic song structures and layered arrangements that reflect the ambitious side of the Midwest metal underground since 2004.

Cleveland, Ohio's MSOD blur the lines between power, thrash, and traditional heavy metal, pulling from each genre's strengths to craft a hard-hitting, versatile attack that reflects the city's deeply rooted metallic blue-collar heritage since 2020.

Cleveland, Ohio's Muciferous are a 2024 goregrind and death metal project that leans hard into biological horror, piling up suffocating riffs and blastbeats in the tradition of the most viscerally repulsive extreme metal the underground has to offer.

Cleveland death metal band Mulciber emerged in 2022 with a straight-ahead brutality that fits the Rust Belt city's no-nonsense approach to extreme metal, emphasizing punishing riffs over ornamentation.

Dayton, Ohio's Murderman traffic in brutal death metal and goregrind, piling on guttural extremity with the kind of single-minded dedication that defines the most uncompromising end of Ohio's underground. Formed in 2020, they operate in a city with deep roots in both punk and metal.

Cleveland's Mushroomhead emerged in the early 1990s as masked industrial metal pioneers who developed their elaborate costumed identity independently of, and concurrently with, Slipknot, leading to one of metal's most heated rivalries. Their dense, layered sound combines industrial metal, nu-metal, and electronic elements with dual vocalists and a theatrical stage presence rooted in Cleveland's underground art scene. Albums like 'XIII' and 'Superbuick' showcase a band whose experimental ambition has always exceeded the genre boundaries others tried to place on them.

Cleveland, Ohio's Mutated Sex Organ came together in 2022 to play goregrind-inflected death metal and grindcore with the irreverence and gore-obsessed imagery that define the genre's most uncompromising wing. They fit naturally into Cleveland's long history of extreme and underground metal weirdness.