Southern California's Embrace the Noose craft depressive black metal built around despair as texture, using harsh production and agonized vocals to evoke psychological isolation. Formed in 2018, they bring the DSBM tradition's bleakest impulses to the California underground.

San Francisco's Embrium thread post-black metal's expansive, textural qualities through shoegaze's luminous dissonance, arriving at something genuinely atmospheric. Founded in 2021, the band belongs to a current wave of Bay Area artists pushing black metal into introspective and sonically immersive territory.

San Diego's Empty Gods arrived in 2025 with a black metal vision stripped of ceremony, trading polish for raw nihilistic spite.

San Francisco's Empty Suits channel blackened thrash with a punk backbone, dragging Bay Area aggression through the filth of second-wave black metal since 2019.

Melodic blackened death metal forged out of Sioux Falls, Empty Throne blend glacial atmosphere with visceral extremity — sweeping, dark, and arrived fully-formed in 2021.

Lake Forest's Empyrean Throne operate at the intersection of technical black and death metal, deploying precise, labyrinthine riff work that demands close attention from the Southern California underground.

Los Angeles black-death outfit Encased pull Viking metal's mythological weight into their sound alongside more brutal death metal elements, a broad extreme metal canvas that has kept them active since 2014.

Los Angeles act Encirclement draw from both black and death metal to craft music built on claustrophobic pressure and relentless attack, their 666 Bandcamp handle signaling the darkness at the core of the project. Since 2020, they've been one of LA's more uncompromising extreme metal outfits.

One of Los Angeles's longer-running black metal acts, Endless Blizzard has been active since 1997 — a rare instance of West Coast black metal with real longevity. Their approach favors raw, wintry atmospheres far removed from the LA sunshine.