Oakland's High on Fire are one of the defining forces in American doom and sludge, built on Matt Pike's mythological vision and the kind of riff density that makes everything around it feel thin. Since reforming their presence in the early 2010s, they have remained one of the heaviest and most uncompromising bands on earth.

Fresno's Hymns to the Stone move at the pace of sediment, layering stoner fuzz, sludge grime, and doom weight into slow-burning rituals of sound. Since 2014, they've treated heaviness as a meditative practice rather than a competition.