San Diego's Shadowlit have been pushing a thrash-forward death metal attack since 2010, channeling the sun-baked aggression of Southern California's long-running extreme underground. Their music prioritizes speed and riff density, sitting comfortably in the tradition of West Coast death/thrash hybrids.

Los Angeles' Shepherd brings a melodic sharpness to their thrash-infused death metal, weaving the hooky aggression of melodic death into a sound anchored by California's long history of speed and precision.

San Clemente, California's Shit Wizard merges black and death metal with a nihilistic, lo-fi edge, building a reputation in the Southern California underground for unfiltered, filthy extreme metal since 2012.

Oakland's Shitty Fucker have been grinding out their Bay Area blend of death/thrash and grindcore since 2017, drawing on the region's long tradition of aggressive, politically charged underground metal with an unpolished, high-energy assault.

Los Angeles grindcore and death metal act Shock Withdrawal launched in 2022 with a ferocious, high-velocity sound that blends the clinical brutality of death metal with grindcore's chaotic, compressed aggression — another entry in LA's densely packed extreme underground.

Redwood City, California's Short Fuse play melodic death metal with a Bay Area edge — formed in 2017, the band combine Gothenburg-style melodic leads with the technical precision and intensity characteristic of the Northern California extreme underground.

San Francisco's Shotgun Facelift take the experimental and technical end of deathcore into genuinely unpredictable territory, founded in 2020 and building a sound that treats the genre's heaviness as raw material for something far more dissonant and architecturally unusual.

Palm Springs, California's Shrine of Resurrection, formed in 2021, pursue progressive death metal filtered through metalcore's structural sensibility — ambitious compositions that balance technical complexity with the direct aggression of the modern heavy underground.

Los Angeles death metal act with a history stretching back to 2002, operating in a city with a dense extreme metal underground and bringing L.A.'s hard-edged darkness to the genre.