Written By Lucien Drake
The underground never “revived.” It never flatlined. What died was the mainstream attention span. The algorithm may worship speed, but the underground still runs on passion.
These are the underground metal websites that keep the flame alive. Not because it’s profitable, but because it’s necessary. These are writers and archivists who care about the music more than the metrics.
They’re the ones who dig through the noise for riffs that actually matter. Metal journalism isn’t dead. It just moved off the main stage and back into the clubs where it belongs.
1. Metal Underground
One of the longest-running news hubs online. No gossip, no corporate polish—just consistency and a massive archive that keeps the underground metal websites pulse beating.
2. Bleeding4Metal
German precision meets metal passion. They’ve been dissecting riffs for decades, offering bilingual coverage and a European depth most U.S. zines miss.
3. Extreme Underground Metal
Raw, loud, and proud of it. No algorithms here—just devotion to extremity and the unfiltered chaos that defines it.
4. Metal Storm
The global underground metal websites town square. Reviews, forums, polls, and a loyal user base that never sleeps. It’s where heavy music still feels communal.
5. Metal-Rules
Old-school authority with no signs of slowing. Interviews, think pieces, and reviews that treat every subgenre with the respect it earned.
6. Death Metal Underground
Philosophical and feral at the same time. Brutally opinionated writing that refuses to compromise or cater to trends.
7. Heavy Blog Is Heavy
For the forward-thinkers and prog explorers. A space where deep musicianship and genuine fandom coexist—analytical, but never sterile.
8. No Clean Singing
Proof that authenticity still wins. Extreme metal coverage that’s passionate, articulate, and fiercely independent.
9. Angry Metal Guy
Angry Metal Guy is still the high bar for long-form criticism and praise. Thoughtful, grumpy, and brutally honest, the writers who tell you the truth, not what’s trending.
10. The Sleeping Shaman
A doom/stoner cornerstone. Decades in, it still feels handcrafted, with a friendly editor and writing that smells of vinyl and warm tube amps.
11. Echoes and Dust
Post-metal, shoegaze, and atmospheric hybrids—this U.K. outlet nails nuance and mood like few others can.
12. Last Rites
Born from the ashes of MetalReview.com, Last Rites keeps the sacred art of thoughtful critique alive—no gimmicks, just heart and history.
13. The Obelisk
Doom, psych, and heavy rock culture under one roof. JJ Koczan’s editorial compass is guided by passion, not metrics.
14. Brutal Resonance
Where metal and industrial collide. The coverage bridges two dark worlds with a sharp ear for artistry and sound design.
15. Indy Metal Vault
Now archived but never forgotten. Its writers shaped a generation of the underground metal websites coverage and still echo through the scene.
16. Toilet ov Hell
Part chaos, part comedy, all community. One of the last underground metal websites that feels like a punk zine thats irreverent, knowledgeable, and completely unfiltered.
17. Nine Circles
Volunteer writers, no paywalls, no pretense. Each review feels like a conversation among friends who just happen to know their shit.
18. Metal Archives
The library of Alexandria for extreme metal. Clinical data, deep history, and a nerd-army of archivists who never let the signal rot.
Example of how deep they go? Here’s a Megadeth ghost-tape reference we cited once before.
19. Deathgrind Club
Pure carnage with just enough curation to separate chaos from craft. These sickos know the difference between noise and annihilation.
20. The Metalverse
A digital universe that doesn’t need Marvel, just riffs, records, and writers who don’t flinch.
21. NOOB HEAVY
The new-blood enthusiasm of early 2010s blogging, but smarter. They champion bands before PR agencies even learn the name.
22. Press of Darkness
Evangelists of blackened everything. The kind of site that smells like cold fog and ash-soaked parchment.
23. Metal Observer
Meticulous Europeans with encyclopedic range. You could major in the underground metal websites literature off their archive alone.
24. Ultimate Metal Forum
The long-running town hall of metal fandom. Unvarnished opinion without the influencer cosplay.
25. Metal Reviews
These writers don’t chase clicks, they chase truth. Consistent, analytical, blunt where it counts.
26. DeathDoom
Heavy candles, slow knives. They treat death/doom with the kind of reverence usually reserved for classical composers.
27. Underground Black Metal
The frostbitten keepers of the raw and the unmarketable. If you know, you know. If you don’t, then then step inside and learn what purity sounds like when no one is trying to impress the algorithm.
28. The PRP
Breaking news before labels wake up. The TMZ of metal if TMZ actually had taste. And the punchline? It’s all run by one obsessed bastard with a better radar than half the industry combined.
29. Lambgoat
The hardcore gossip mill. Sometimes petty but always juicy. Often hilarious and occasionally profound but always relevant.
30. CVLT Nation
Ritual aesthetic, fashion of rot, and doom-ridden culture pieces that feel like reading inside a candlelit crypt. A rite of passage.
31. Ghost Cult Magazine
Professional coverage without the corporate muzzle. The middle ground between old-guard journalism and new blood hunger.
32. MetalTalk
The U.K.’s tour-diary pulse. Still feels like overhearing a conversation at the pub after the encore surrounded by friends.
33. The Moshville Times
Grassroots grit. The kind of outlet that still believes in championing the overlooked and means it.
34. Sonic Perspectives
High-brow production nerds with poet brains. They make prog feel like literature instead of math homework.
35. Chaos Vault
The jagged edge where Eastern European nihilism meets Nordic frost. Reviews that read like field reports from the void, hostile, honest, and proudly uncommercial.
36. Heavy Magazine
Aussie-lean, global ears. They cover heavy music like it’s a living culture, not a trend bandwagon.
37. Next Mosh
New York pulse with old-school energy. Show flyers, tour chatter, and scene sweat. No posers, only gloss.
39. Imperiumi
Finland’s longest-running metal portal. Entire generations have discovered new bands here long before the rest of the world even learned to pronounce the vowels. Site translates to English.
40. Roadie Crew
Brazil’s flagship metal magazine. They’ve covered everyone from Angra to Cannibal Corpse. Print roots and digital reach. The closest thing Latin America has to Metal Hammer that never lost the underground thread.
41. Power Of Metal
Euro veterans who treat metal like history and ceremony because someone has to keep the archives honest.
42. Kaaoszine
The Finnish scene’s daily pulse, interviews, premieres, and scene chatter from a country that treats metal like a national sport.
43. Summa Inferno
Mexico’s pulse-point for modern extreme metal. Interviews that actually dig, premieres that matter, and coverage that feels more like a movement than monetization.
44. Whiplash.net
Brazil’s metal information superhighway. News breaks here before most English-language sites even get coffee. It’s not curated for English speakers, it’s curated for fans who actually care.
45. Rockaxis
Chile’s sociocultural nerve center for heavy music. They cover metal like journalism, not fandom. Scene history, deep interviews, careful criticism, this is where South America’s perspective pushes back against the West instead of begging to be included.
46. Rock & Blog
Argentina’s hybrid culture magazine, rock, metal, scene-life, the whole cultural bloodstream. They get the human side of fandom better than half the U.S. majors.
47. Loud Magazine
Portugal’s best-kept secret for serious metal journalism. They don’t scream, they carve slow, deliberate angles with obsessive regional attention.
48. Rock Hard
Old-guard German authority. Where NWOBHM and Teutonic thrash never became “retro.” They cover current bands like historians because legacy and future aren’t separated in Europe the way America does.
49. Metal.de
Clean, structured, and brutally efficient with German engineering spirit applied to metal journalism. Don’t mistake the tidy Ul for softness because they go deep.
50. Metalliluola
Finnish heavy metal fortress. This is where Scandinavian weirdness stops being novelty and becomes culture. They understand melancholy as fluently as melody.
51. Rock Era Magazine
Cairo’s long-game rock & metal portal. Established 2004, grinding out interviews, reviews, and scene dispatches across the MENA zone when most Western sites still thought metal stopped at Istanbul. Not safe. Not tamed. Totally necessary.
52. Metal Invader
Athenian lifers keeping the Hellenic flame lit. Power metal, black metal, folk metal. Mythic riffs documented by people who don’t have to “research” Greek history… they grew up tripping over ruins.
53. Metal Wani
India’s metal embassy to the rest of the world. Global contributor network, fearless coverage of modern/extreme bands, and zero apology for having taste that doesn’t match the West’s trend cycles.
54. Overdrive.ie
Dublin pub energy meets rock journalism and they don’t pretend metal is some academic museum piece. This is a site written by people who actually go to gigs with ringing ears, not spreadsheets.
55. The Razors Edge
Scottish roots, U.K. footprint, attitude carved from rusted shipping hulls and rain. Festival trenches. Club sweat. And no Instagram-friendly “vibes” nonsense. Just riffs and the people who survived them.
56. Metal Bell Magazine
Covering the Lebanese and Middle Eastern metal/rock underground with teeth and urgency. The kind of site where bands grind for years before the world notices and they’re still posting.
57. Metal4Africa
South Africa’s longest-running metal nerve center. Cape Town to Joburg, scene diaries to full interviews. Proof that you don’t need London, LA or New York to validate heavy music. Raw, urgent, and documenting a culture the West barely
58. Metalitalia
Italy’s main artery for heavy music. The place where historical fanaticism meets espresso-fueled editorial grind. Think mafia precision, but applied to riffs, tours, and the craft of actually listening.
59. Burrn!
Burrn! is the spine of Japan. It’s the magazine that literally shaped metal taste in the country for decades and weirdly, forced Western bands to rethink Japan as a priority market. The elder statesman of the East. Bands still brag if they ever get covered.
60. Metal Lair
Independent, passionate, and unbought. Still writing like it matters, because it does. We document the passion behind the distortion, not just the drops, but the culture around them. Seven Deadly Songs, Deep Cuts, World Metal Weekly, Metalhead Horoscopes… not gimmicks but ongoing proof that metal is still evolving in public view. Proof that rock and metal aren’t “nostalgia acts,” they’re still alive and answering back.
The underground metal websites didn’t survive by being polite. They survived because they refused to disappear when the spotlight moved on.
Metal Lair isn’t here to archive the past. We’re here to keep building the next chapter in real time with anyone who still believes this culture deserves better than algorithms and nostalgia.