Hard-hitting Groove Metal / Metalcore out of Texas.

Pioneers of Red Dirt Metal — gritty hard rock with southern swagger and Texas bravado.

Devastating Brutal Death Metal from Dallas.

Furious Groove / Thrash Metal / Hardcore out of Texas.

Crushing Groove Metal from El Paso.

All-female punk fury from Austin.

Dallas' The Argonaut have been charting their own course through avant-garde progressive death metal since 2007, building music that sprawls and coils with the relentless ambition their name implies — searching, dissonant, and structurally bold in ways that distinguish them from the more straightforward corners of the Texas metal underground. Their sound treats the death metal template as a starting point rather than a destination.

Houston's The Awful Truth have been delivering melodic heavy metal with a hard rock backbone since 2012, carrying the Texas tradition of straight-ahead riff-driven metal into a city that has always had more room for it than outsiders might expect. Their music doesn't traffic in gimmicks — just the kind of honest, well-constructed heavy metal songwriting that has sustained the genre since its foundations.

Blackened thrash "for a desert funeral." Features Zawicizuz, former guitarist on Absu's acclaimed 2009 self-titled album.