Kenny Hickey Revisits October Rust as Type O Negative's Gothic Legacy Turns 30 (Plus a Look at Metal's Wider Signing Season)
Thirty years is a long time to sit with a record, but if any album deserved the victory lap, it's October Rust. This week, guitarist Kenny Hickey sat down for an extended conversation dissecting the record track by track, and for anyone who grew up on Brooklyn's own Type O Negative, hearing Hickey unpack the making of that album is basically required listening. It's the kind of anniversary that reminds you why New York's doom and gothic metal lineage still gets name-checked by bands three genres removed from anything Type O ever recorded.
October Rust dropped in 1996, right in the thick of the alt-rock hangover, and somehow made funeral organs and Sabbath-sized riffs sound like the most romantic thing on rock radio. Hickey's retrospective digs into the studio chemistry, the gallows humor, and the sheer stubbornness it took to build something that dark and that catchy at the same time. For a band this identified with New York — specifically Brooklyn's grimy, half-joking, half-dead-serious sense of humor — the timing of this deep dive feels appropriate. Any conversation about the best metal albums of all time that skips October Rust is missing a genuinely singular record, one that still gets cited by doom and gothic metal bands well outside the five boroughs.
Industrial Rage, Ministry-Style
Al Jourgensen isn't slowing down on his way out the door. MINISTRY dropped "We Hate," the latest single off the band's supposedly final album, Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery), and it's exactly as blunt as the title suggests — another round of Jourgensen aiming his industrial-metal battering ram squarely at Donald Trump's near-daily stream of self-aggrandizing social media content. Whether or not this really ends up being MINISTRY's swan song, it's a reminder that industrial metal's political teeth haven't dulled with age. New York has never been the epicenter of industrial the way Chicago was, but the genre's DNA runs through plenty of the state's heavier, more mechanized acts, and Jourgensen's continued willingness to make records that function as op-eds with distortion pedals is worth noting for anyone tracking where angry, socially engaged metal goes in 2026.
Equal Vision Keeps New York's Independent Label Muscle Flexing
Speaking of New York's fingerprints on records that aren't necessarily "New York bands" — Equal Vision Records, the legendary independent label with deep upstate New York roots, just announced that THE NUMBER TWELVE LOOKS LIKE YOU will release their first full-length in seven years, Howls From The Holographic Heart, on October 16. The New Jersey-bred progressive metalcore outfit recorded with producer Jeremy Cormier, and the announcement is a good reminder that the region's influence on heavy music doesn't stop at state lines. Equal Vision has spent decades quietly shaping the hardcore and metalcore underground from its home base, and a comeback record from a band this technically unhinged is exactly the kind of release that keeps the label's reputation intact heading into another busy year of metal bands touring 2026.
Hardcore's Endless Signing Season
Elsewhere in the hardcore-adjacent world, Haywire signed to Roadrunner and announced a new LP, following a chaotic Sound & Fury set where they reportedly threw cash into the crowd. The record was produced by Citizen's Mat Kerekes and mixed by Taylor Young, whose own band God's Hate pulled its own surprise move at the same festival — an unannounced set followed by a surprise EP drop. It's a busy moment for hardcore's business side, with labels scooping up bands mid-momentum rather than waiting for a proper album cycle to prove itself.
That kind of hardcore hustle has deep roots in New York, a state that basically wrote part of the rulebook for how aggressive, DIY-minded music gets built from the ground up. You can draw a straight line from the metallic crossover instincts of the Cro-Mags through decades of bands who treated the pit as the real marketing department. New York's own Hate, working the speed metal and thrash side of that same aggressive lineage, is part of a broader in-state tradition of bands that don't need festival-scale surprises to make noise — just riffs fast enough to keep a room moving. If you want to see who's carrying that torch on stages around the state right now, the upcoming shows listings are a good place to start scouting.
Cover Songs as Genre Statements
This was also a week for cover songs functioning as genre flexes. Slam-death crew Korpse tackled Lamb Of God's "Now You've Got Something To Die For" and turned it into exactly the kind of brutal, breakdown-heavy statement you'd expect from a band built around slamming grooves rather than groove-metal precision. Meanwhile, Signs Of The Swarm assembled a genuinely stacked guest list — members of Lorna Shore, August Burns Red, 156/Silence, plus Bam Margera — for their cover of Rob Zombie's "Dragula." It's a fun example of how deathcore's current wave keeps building cross-band camaraderie into everything, even a horror-rock cover video.
Covers have always been a low-stakes way for bands to publicly declare their influences, and it's worth remembering that a lot of what gets called deathcore or slam right now still owes something to New York's death metal foundation — the kind of technical brutality that bands like death metal act Suffocation helped codify decades before slam had its own subgenre tag. When you're talking about the best heavy metal songs that get reinterpreted generation after generation, that lineage matters.
Legacy Acts, Old and Odd
On the legacy front, Worm's new in-studio session for KEXP is streaming now, giving out-of-towners a look at a scene that keeps producing strange, atmospheric death-doom outside the usual coastal hubs. Puddle Of Mudd released a video for "Win Win Win" off Kiss The Machine, a reminder that early-2000s post-grunge is still grinding out new material in 2025 whether the internet wants it to or not. Dark Funeral dropped a live cut and a new live album, A Beast To Praise, via Century Media, while Till Lindemann previewed a concert film shot in Kraków. KISS, for their part, shared a video recap of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in Anaheim, tying back to the band's legendary 1976 stadium show — a nice bit of nostalgia for anyone who still argues KISS belongs in the conversation about the great 80s metal bands, even if their peak arguably predates the decade.
Dave Lombardo and Tyler Bates also linked up with Gunship for a new track, "RΞVØLUTIØN.EXE," adding another oddball collaboration to Lombardo's already sprawling post-Slayer resume. And in less fun news, Netflix responded to the Demon Hunter lawsuit over alleged trademark confusion, stating simply that the streamer "looks forward to vigorously defending this matter." Expect that one to drag on for a while.
Turnstile's Genre-Blending Reach — and What It Means for New York
TURNSTILE's Never Enough: Versions release, dropping August 28, is turning heads for its guest list alone — Dying Fetus, Elton John, and Hayley Williams all showing up on the same tracklist. It's a bold, genre-agnostic move that says a lot about where hardcore-adjacent metal is headed as a commercial force. New York's own scene has always thrived on that kind of cross-pollination, whether it's hardcore kids discovering doom, or gothic metal fans crossing paths with grindcore diehards at the same DIY show. If you're building a new band in this climate and wondering where you fit, that's exactly the spirit worth chasing — genre lines matter less than commitment to the songs.
What This Means for New York Heading Into 2026
Between Type O Negative's continued cultural weight, Equal Vision's steady hand on the metalcore underground, and the sheer volume of collaboration happening across subgenres right now, it's a good moment to be paying attention to the New York metal scene specifically. Whether you're chasing new metal bands 2026 has to offer or still spinning three-decade-old doom records, the throughline is the same: this state keeps producing bands and labels that outlast trend cycles. Frank Zummo's Drumeo session tackling The Dillinger Escape Plan's "Milk Lizard" cold, without prior familiarity with the track, is a small but telling example — Dillinger's technical legacy still functions as a benchmark drummers test themselves against, more than a decade after the band called it quits.
If you're in a band working any corner of this — doom, thrash, deathcore, grind, whatever — and you want eyes on what you're building, the best move is simple: get on our radar. Check upcoming shows for who's playing near you this month, and if you're part of the scene and don't see your band listed yet, submit your band and let's fix that.