Los Angeles's Gallery, formed in 2022, work in the grey zone between sludge and doom — music that feels deliberately paced, dense with texture, and more interested in weight than speed.

Los Angeles psychedelic sludge merchants Garbeast layer sun-scorched fuzz over cavernous doom tempos, conjuring something hallucinatory and heavy in equal measure. Since forming in 2021 they've leaned hard into the ritualistic, slow-burning end of the LA underground.

Santa Cruz, California's Gargantula has been spinning its web since 2015, weaving together progressive, stoner, doom, and death metal into something strange and sprawling. Their compositions wander freely across tempos and moods, held together by a psychedelic, spidery sensibility.

San Francisco's Genghis Bong play psychedelic doom metal thick with haze and slow-motion riffing, formed in 2023 out of the Bay Area's fertile heavy underground. The name tells you everything you need to know about their priorities.

Los Angeles's Ghost Hour blend death metal aggression with the suffocating weight of doom, crafting music that feels like dusk settling permanently over the city. Active since 2015, their death/doom churns with a cinematic, West Coast density.

From Santa Rosa, California's wine country and wildfire smoke, Ghost Witch have been casting heavy doom spells since 2016 — slow, hex-laden riffs that linger like smoke on still air and draw from the occult undercurrent running through California's heavy scene.

San Diego's Ghoulgotha have been tunneling through the earth's dark layers with death/doom metal since 2015, their cavernous sound drawing on the city's deep underground tradition to produce something ancient, doomed, and fully subterranean.

Sacramento's Giant Squid have spent over two decades crafting some of the most literary and emotionally complex music at the intersection of doom, post-metal, and progressive rock. Their ocean-deep arrangements unfold like dark novels in sound.

Drawing its name from the mythological binding that held the wolf Fenrir, California's Gleipner channels Norse themes into black metal that aims to restrain and overwhelm in equal measure. Founded in 2022, they bring a focused, mythologically charged darkness.