Prizanor is a heavy metal project out of Galion, Ohio that emerged in 2024, carrying the torch for traditional metal in a small Midwestern city far from the usual scenes. Still early in their formation, they represent the enduring grassroots impulse that drives metal forward from unexpected places — crafted without pretense and built on the foundation of the genre's classic values.

Procession are a death/doom band from Cleveland, Ohio whose sound draws equally from the suffocating weight of doom and the rotting fury of death metal — a fitting combination for a city with one of America's most storied underground metal legacies. Active since 2010, they move at a funeral pace without sacrificing the visceral menace that separates genuine death/doom from mere slow metal.

Columbus, Ohio's Project Alcazar wed neoclassical composition to progressive metal's structural ambition, resulting in music that is as technically demanding as it is melodically rich. Founded in 2020, the band draws on the ornate vocabulary of classical music — sweeping themes, harmonic sophistication, virtuosic interplay — and channels it through the power and precision of heavy guitar-driven arrangements. They contribute a distinctly refined, compositional sensibility to the Columbus metal scene.

Marietta, Ohio's Proper Burial have been delivering straightforward, no-frills death metal since 2016, the kind of small-town American underground band whose regional isolation arguably sharpens rather than dulls their edge. Rooted in old-school death metal aesthetics, they favor punishing mid-paced riffs and a murky atmosphere over technical showmanship.

Formed in Columbus, Ohio in 2002, Propulsion have spent over two decades driving groove metal forward with locked-in rhythm work and relentless low-end momentum. Their sound sits firmly in the tradition of mid-tempo heaviness where pocket-tight riffs do the talking.

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Based out of rural southeastern Ohio, Psychomancy formed in 2020 playing a groove-heavy thrash metal hybrid that pulls from the rhythmic muscle of groove metal while keeping the riffing speed and attitude of classic thrash firmly intact.

Salem, Ohio's Psyclosarin formed in 2019 playing a grinding hybrid of groove and death metal — the combination of rhythmic heaviness and technical death metal aggression gives them a distinct character within Ohio's active and underrated heavy underground.

Vermillion, Ohio's Psycopath have been playing straightforward thrash metal since 2018, delivering the genre's trademark aggression and speed from a small-town Ohio setting that keeps their approach stripped down, road-tested, and unpretentious.