From Long Island Emo to Rochester Thrash Roots: New York's Dual Legacy Gets Fresh Ink This Week
There's a particular kind of pride that comes from watching your region's fingerprints show up in two completely different corners of heavy music news in the same week. One story involves hairspray, 2005-era eyeliner, and a 20th-anniversary vinyl reissue. The other involves a Rochester recording studio, four unknown kids from the Bay Area, and the album that effectively invented thrash metal as we know it. Both are New York stories. Both matter.
Taking Back Sunday's "Louder Now" Gets the Victory Lap It Deserves
Long Island's own Taking Back Sunday announced a 20th-anniversary reissue of Louder Now, complete with a bonus 7-inch, and they're marking the occasion with a dedicated show at Red Rocks this October. For a band that emerged out of the same Long Island basement-show ecosystem that gave the 2000s emo and post-hardcore boom some of its most enduring acts, this is more than a nostalgia play — it's a reminder that New York's contribution to that era wasn't incidental, it was foundational.
Louder Now was the record that took TBS from scene darlings to arena-adjacent rock radio staples, and two decades later it still holds up as a document of exactly how melodic, hooky, and genuinely heavy that mid-2000s New York sound could get. It's worth remembering the company TBS kept and still keeps in that lineage: Queens' Bayside carved out a similarly loyal following with the same unpolished urgency, while Coheed and Cambria took the post-hardcore DNA and warped it into something stranger and more progressive out of the Hudson Valley/Nyack area. More recently, Westchester's Against the Current have shown that the alt-rock-meets-pop-punk pipeline out of this state hasn't gone anywhere — it's just evolved. If you're mapping the DNA of New York's emo and post-hardcore scene, Taking Back Sunday is still chapter one.
Rochester's Forgotten Role in Thrash Metal History
Here's a fact that deserves to be shouted from the rooftops more often: in May 1983, a scrappy, broke, and largely unknown band called Metallica drove across the country to MusicAmerica Studios in Rochester, New York, to record Kill 'Em All — the album that, along with a handful of other early-'80s releases, effectively kicked off thrash metal as a genre. James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Cliff Burton, and Kirk Hammett tracked that record in upstate New York, not Los Angeles, not the Bay Area. That's our state's name quietly stitched into one of the most important recordings in metal history.
Assistant engineer Andrew Wroblewski was there for all of it, and he's now shared behind-the-scenes stories and rare photos from those sessions in his new memoir, Bass Solo - Take One. For a genre that often gets written about through the lens of L.A. clubs and Bay Area thrash cliques, it's a genuinely refreshing corrective to have a first-hand account rooted in upstate New York. If you care about 80s metal bands and how the genre's foundational texts actually got made, this is essential reading — and a good excuse to revisit Kill 'Em All track by track and hear exactly what a Rochester studio contributed to the sound of best metal albums of all time conversations that still rage on message boards decades later.
Progressive and Metalcore Touring Machines Are Already Booking 2027
If you needed proof that metal bands touring 2026 and well into 2027 is already a fully booked calendar, look no further than two fresh announcements. U.K. progressive metal mainstays Haken have confirmed a North American tour for March/April 2027, bringing along Thank You Scientist and Leprous frontman Einar Solberg as support — a bill stacked enough to make any prog-inclined New Yorker start budgeting now. Meanwhile, genre-blending heavyweights The Plot In You have announced their own spring 2027 headlining run, a hefty 27-date trek kicking off in St. Louis and wrapping in Nashville.
Neither tour has New York dates confirmed yet as of this writing, but both genres have deep roots in this state's current underground. Long Island's own Spire have been quietly building a reputation blending death metal, metalcore, and progressive metal textures — exactly the kind of genre-crossing approach that makes bills like Haken/Thank You Scientist or The Plot In You's heavier sets feel relevant to local audiences. When national tours like these eventually route through the state, keep an eye on our upcoming shows listings — New York crowds have proven time and again they'll turn out in force for technically ambitious, emotionally heavy records.
Arch Enemy's Torch Pass and What It Means for Extreme Metal's Women
Elsewhere, Angela Gossow — the voice that defined Arch Enemy for over a decade before stepping into management — sat down with new vocalist Lauren Hart for an episode of Knotfest's "She's With the Band" podcast to talk through how Hart stepped into one of melodic death metal's most iconic microphone roles. It's a conversation worth listening to in full, not just for Arch Enemy fans but for anyone tracking how extreme metal continues to reckon with, and increasingly celebrate, the women pushing the genre's ceiling higher. New York's own scene has no shortage of acts fronted by women doing similarly uncompromising work across black metal, doom, and crossover thrash, and conversations like Gossow and Hart's feel like validation for every one of them grinding it out in VFW halls and DIY venues across the state.
The Lighter Side: Dad Jokes, Power Ballads, and Billy Corgan's Loyalty Test
Not everything in metal news this week needs a think-piece. MetalSucks' recurring "Disgrunted Dad Reviews" bit tackled Anthrax's Cursum Perficio with Dave Mustcomplain delivering what might be the series' funniest entry yet — proof that thrash's old guard still generates content decades after the fact, dad-joke format included. Meanwhile, Mudvayne and Hellyeah's Chad Gray dropped a surprise cover of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," a left-field choice that's exactly the kind of chaos-genre whiplash that keeps metal Twitter entertained. And Billy Corgan, in a New York Times interview, doubled down on his friendship with Marilyn Manson, arguing he won't let outside pressure dictate who he associates with — a stance that's sure to keep generating headlines regardless of where you land on it.
On the reissue and tribute front, Kingdom of Sorrow — the project featuring Crowbar's Kirk Windstein and Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta — is getting new vinyl pressings of both albums, a welcome development for sludge and hardcore crossover fans. And Richmond's Municipal Waste-adjacent project BAT shared their 2015 cover of Venom's "Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)" in tribute to the late Cronos — a gesture that resonated hard with New York's own crossover thrash contingent, where bands like Shango and Chaos Horde carry forward exactly the kind of riff-first, no-frills aggression Venom helped pioneer.
A Reminder That Drama Isn't Exclusive to the Majors
Finally, the Malevolent Creation situation — with recently fired members citing a toxic work environment and founder Phil Fasciana publicly challenging guitarist Chris Cannella to a $1,000 bet over whether he can actually play the band's material live — is a messy, very public reminder that even veteran death metal institutions aren't immune to internal blowups. It's the kind of story that generates plenty of forum arguments, but it's also a useful contrast point for New York's own death and thrash scenes, where bands like Nuclear Assault and Suffocation have managed to maintain their legacies, lineup shifts and all, without quite this much public mudslinging.
Keep New York's Story Going
Between a Long Island emo band celebrating two decades of relevance and a Rochester recording session that quietly launched thrash metal into the mainstream, this week is a good reminder that New York's fingerprints are all over heavy music history — not just its present. If your band is out there writing the next chapter, whether it's atmospheric black metal in the vein of Cur or anything in between, don't wait for the history books to catch up. Submit your band and make sure it's part of the record.
