Life of Agony is a Brooklyn, New York band formed in 1989 whose debut River Runs Red (1993, Roadrunner Records) is a widely cited cornerstone of the crossover between hardcore, alternative metal, and groove metal. The album's loose narrative arc around personal despair and suburban alienation anticipated the confessional intensity that would define much of mid-1990s heavy music, and the band built on it with Ugly (1995) and Soul Searching Sun (1997). Frontperson Mina Caputo, who publicly came out as transgender in 2011, rejoined the band for A Place Where There's No More Pain (2017) and The Sound of Scars (2019).

Groove metal out of Yonkers, New York since 2007, Monster X bring downtuned, mid-tempo heaviness to a Hudson Valley city with blue-collar grit built into the sound — infectious rhythm, thick riffs, and a hard-hitting attitude.

A Buffalo, New York heavy metal band formed in 2021, Monument began in the city's storied tradition of hard, guitar-driven music and have since evolved toward a harder rock sensibility while retaining their metal roots.

Mortal Remains are a groove and thrash metal band out of Queens, New York City, fusing the head-down punch of groove metal with thrash aggression rooted in the NYC underground.

Out of Whitney Point in rural upstate New York, Motivational Death merge groove metal's mid-paced swagger with the blunt force of death metal, creating a sound that favors heavy impact over technical display. The band formed in 2021 and embraces a sardonic, wry edge in both name and approach.

New York's No More Sorry launched in 2023 sitting squarely at the intersection of groove metal's mid-paced, hip-swinging heaviness and thrash's kinetic aggression — a combination that produces riffs built for maximum physical impact. The groove/thrash hybrid has deep New York roots, and No More Sorry work that lineage with the kind of down-tuned swagger that values the weight of a riff as much as its velocity.

The Bronx's Omen Faculty bring industrial metal's mechanical menace and groove metal's locked-in rhythmic attack to New York City's hardened underground. Since 2011, they've been fusing electronic texture with metal muscle in a way that feels entirely native to the city's relentless energy.

Long Island's Pyrexia are veterans of the brutal death metal underground dating back to 1993, known for their suffocating low-end density and punishing groove that helped define the New York brutal death sound, with their catalog spanning early extremity to mid-period death-groove experiments.

New York's Shadow of Demise have been at it since 2006, fusing the groove-forward chug of groove metal with outright death metal brutality into a sound that's both punishing and propulsive. Their long tenure gives them a road-worn authority that newer bands are still working toward.