Brooklyn's Thera Roya traffic in heavy, slow-burning sludge and post-metal, building suffocating walls of sound from a base in New York City's underground scene since 2013. Their music favors atmosphere and weight over speed, with extended compositions that grind and drift in equal measure.

Brooklyn's Tidal Bore arrived in 2022 with a sound that smears death metal aggression across a sludge-coated frame, favoring punishing tempos that occasionally collapse into murky, caustic slowdowns. They capture the abrasive confrontationalism of the current NYC underground.

Twin Lords is a grindcore and sludge metal band from Ithaca, New York, formed in 2012, merging the short, brutal blasts of grindcore with the thick, lurching weight of sludge metal into a punishing hybrid sound.

Two Minutes Hate is a sludge and stoner metal band from Rochester, New York, formed in 2022, channeling the dense, distortion-heavy sound of sludge metal alongside the grooving psychedelic undertones of stoner rock.

Unearthly Trance formed in Long Island, New York in 2000 as a trio — vocalist and guitarist Ryan Lipynsky, bassist Jay Newman, and drummer Darren Verni — producing sludge and doom metal with a blackened, psychedelic undercurrent. The band released material on Southern Lord, Rise Above, and Relapse Records across a career that included albums such as The Trident (2006) and Stalking the Ghost (2017). They shared stages with Electric Wizard, Sunn O))), and Morbid Angel, situating them at the intersection of doom and extreme metal communities.

A 2025 formation out of Syracuse, New York, Void Emperor combine doom metal's suffocating tempo with sludge's corroded weight and the hazy warmth of stoner metal — the kind of combination that turns listening into a slow, deliberate surrender. Syracuse has a long underground metal heritage, and Void Emperor slot into it naturally, channeling something ancient and heavy that feels rooted in place. Brand new but immediately committed to the low and slow.

Voyager formed in 2004 and have spent over two decades building a dense, slow-moving sound rooted in doom and atmospheric sludge metal with post-rock reach. Their compositions are patient and expansive, allowing weight and atmosphere to accumulate gradually rather than arriving through brute force alone. The blend of sludge heaviness and post-rock's textural sensitivity gives their work an emotional scale that the straightforwardly heavy cannot always achieve.

Brooklyn's Wretched Tsar have been dragging sludge and stoner metal through New York's underground since 2016, combining the slow, crushing weight of sludge with the hazy, amplifier-worship side of stoner metal. The result is heavy in both mass and atmosphere, made for dark rooms and loud speakers.