Explore California Metal
Featured Album
Lie To My Face (2022) (2022)
Featured Thrash Metal Album
Metallica (Remastered 2021) (2021)
Featured Artist with an Upcoming Show
Featured Stoner Metal Album
Spitting Fire Live Vol. 2 (2013)
Featured Artist with an Upcoming Show
Browse California Metal Bands
67 bands found
Oakland's Glacier Eater came out swinging in 2015 with melodic thrash built for the Bay Area blacktop — tight, aggressive, and shot through with lead guitar hooks that cut clean through the speed. They share a lineage with the thrash giants who built the scene around them.
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.
Santa Cruz's Gloam has been working the threshold between black and doom metal since 2012, building a sound as oppressive as coastal fog and twice as cold. They move slowly, deliberately, and with the kind of weight that stays with you.
San Diego's Gloomed has been crafting traditional doom metal with a patience and heaviness that the genre's best practitioners would recognize since 2017. Their music doesn't rush — it descends, rung by rung, into a darkness from which it doesn't promise to return.
Out of Covina, California, Gn0sis brings a cerebral edge to progressive metal with compositions that prize complexity without losing a sense of forward momentum. Founded in 2019, the band channels technical ambition into expansive, searching songcraft.
Salinas, California's Gnashing of Teeth have spent over a decade honing a brutal death metal attack built for maximum physical impact. Their music is dense, punishing, and utterly indifferent to comfort.
San Jose's Goatcorpse practice raw black metal in the most literal sense — coarse recordings, stripped-down malice, and an utter disdain for production value. Since 2018, they've kept the genre's ugliest instincts fully intact.
California's Goathead blend groove metal's mid-tempo stomp with thrash's riff-driven energy and classic heavy metal hooks, resulting in music built for fists-in-the-air catharsis. Formed in 2020, they have a knack for making heaviness feel effortless.
Emerging from Salinas in 2012, Gods in Graves pull from black, death, and doom metal in equal measure — weaving cold tremolo runs through cavernous low-end and suffocating atmosphere. The result is something genuinely sepulchral.
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California Metal Index indexes hundreds of California heavy metal bands across every subgenre — death metal, black metal, thrash metal, doom metal, metalcore, hardcore punk, grindcore, sludge, stoner metal, and more. Browse heavy metal bands by genre, city, or state.
Yes — browse California death metal bands in our index. Filter by genre to find death metal, technical death metal, and melodic death metal bands. We also index black metal, thrash metal, doom metal, and all heavy metal bands.
Use the genre filter to browse California black metal bands. We index black metal, atmospheric black metal, and related subgenres alongside death metal, thrash metal, doom metal, and all heavy metal bands.
Browse our index for California thrash metal bands. Filter by genre to discover thrash metal, crossover thrash, and speed metal bands. Our index covers all heavy metal bands including death metal, black metal, doom, and metalcore.
Yes — we index metalcore bands, doom metal bands, and every heavy metal subgenre. Browse California metalcore, doom metal, sludge metal, stoner metal, progressive metal, power metal, and more.
Yes — browse California hardcore punk bands alongside heavy metal bands. We cover hardcore punk, crust punk, D-beat, grindcore, metalcore, and all heavy music subgenres.
Filter by city and state to find heavy metal bands near you. Each band page includes streaming links, genre tags, and upcoming metal concerts. Discover death metal, black metal, thrash, doom, and all heavy metal bands in your area.
Visit our shows page for California metal concerts — death metal shows, black metal concerts, thrash metal shows, doom concerts, and all heavy metal events. Updated daily with ticket links from Ticketmaster and SeatGeek.
California Metal Index is an index of California heavy metal bands — death metal, black metal, thrash metal, doom metal, metalcore, hardcore punk, and all heavy music. Browse bands by genre, find metal concerts near you, and discover the California metal scene.