New York Thrash Never Sleeps: Anthrax Gets the Satire Treatment While Cro-Mags Close In on a New Album

There's a particular kind of validation that comes when a band gets parodied. You don't lampoon what people don't care about, and this week New York thrash royalty Anthrax found themselves on the receiving end of MetalSucks' long-running "Disgruntled Dad Reviews" bit, with Dave Mustcomplain tackling a fictional LP titled "Cursum Perficio." It's a joke column, sure, but the fact that Anthrax remains a reliable target for metal's sharpest humor writers nearly 45 years into their run says something real about how deeply this band is woven into the genre's DNA — and how deeply New York is woven into metal's DNA because of them.

Anthrax doesn't need an introduction to anyone reading a New York metal publication, but it's worth pausing on just how much of the thrash metal blueprint came out of this state. Scott Ian, Charlie Benante, and company helped codify the Big Four sound from Queens practice spaces and Lower East Side clubs, and that lineage didn't stop with them. Yonkers' own Demolition Hammer took the aggression several notches further into technical death-thrash territory in the early '90s, while grindcore institution Brutal Truth pushed the extremity even further outward from their own New York roots. If you're compiling any serious list of the best metal bands to come out of the Empire State — or honestly, any list of the best metal albums of all time — you're not getting through it without this state's thrash and grind pedigree showing up multiple times.

Cro-Mags Inch Closer to New Album, and New York Hardcore's Influence Keeps Compounding

While Anthrax is busy becoming meme fodder in the best possible way, another pillar of New York's heavy music history is quietly closing in on new material. Harley Flanagan told WSOU 89.5 FM — the Seton Hall station that's been a tri-state metal and hardcore lifeline for decades — that Cro-Mags are "almost done" with their follow-up to 2020's "In The Beginning." Flanagan says the band has nine songs tracked and six more written, putting a real album within sight following "Wired For Danger," the band's first new song in six years.

It's hard to overstate what Cro-Mags mean to the lineage connecting New York hardcore to crossover thrash to the heavier strains of metal that dominate festival bills today. The Age of Quarrel-era band didn't just soundtrack the CBGB matinee scene — they helped invent the sonic template that half of modern metallic hardcore is still borrowing from. A new full-length, even one still being finished in the studio, is one of the more significant pieces of metal bands touring 2026 and beyond news for anyone who cares about this region's history. If Flanagan's timeline holds, expect this to be one of the most anticipated New York-adjacent metal releases of the coming year.

Evan Seinfeld's Trap Metal Pivot and the Question of What "Metal" Even Means in 2026

Speaking of New York hardcore-metal crossover architects, Biohazard's Evan Seinfeld used a recent appearance on the Heartdea13r Podcast to confirm he's prepping the first single from a new solo project called Shed My Skin. His own description — "there are elements in it that I would call trap metal" — is going to raise eyebrows among Biohazard purists who associate Seinfeld with Brooklyn's sludgy, groove-laden contribution to the New York metal-hardcore canon of the '90s.

But genre-blending is hardly new territory for a guy who helped pioneer rap-metal crossover before most of today's hybrid acts were born. Whether Shed My Skin lands with longtime Biohazard fans or finds an entirely new audience, it's a reminder that New York's metal scene has never been precious about boundaries. From hardcore kids plugging into thrash riffs to thrash bands flirting with groove and nu-metal textures in the late '90s, this state's metal history is a history of hybrids.

Halloween Costumes, Sphere Deep Cuts, and the Industry's Bigger Picture

Zooming out to the national conversation that New York bands are inevitably part of: Metallica's ongoing Sphere residency in Las Vegas reportedly saw a Black Album deep cut added to the setlist for their Halloween show, alongside some seasonal theatrics. And speaking of Halloween, The PRP's annual roundup of what heavy metal and hard rock artists wore for the holiday included members of Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Fear Factory, Quicksand, and New York's own The Pretty Reckless. Taylor Momsen and company remain one of the more visible rock exports this state has produced in the last fifteen years, and it's always a little satisfying to see a New York act included in these national culture-roundup pieces alongside the genre's biggest names.

Elsewhere, James Hetfield revealed that Turnstile — the Baltimore band metal fans have spent the last two years arguing about — turned down an offer to tour with Metallica, though Hetfield was quick to note the Metallica camp remains fans regardless. It's a small story, but it feeds into a larger conversation happening across every regional scene right now, New York's included: what counts as metal in 2026, who gets invited to the biggest stages, and how much genre gatekeeping actually matters when the music hits.

Industry Moves: SOIL Signs With Better Noise, 40 Below Summer Drops a New Video

On the business side, hard rock veterans SOIL announced a new partnership with Better Noise Music and dropped their new single "Enemy X" as the first fruit of that deal. It's not a New York story on its face, but it's relevant to anyone tracking how label consolidation and partnership deals are reshaping opportunities for touring bands at every level — including the regional acts filling out bills across Brooklyn, Albany, and Buffalo clubs who are watching how these deals trickle down into tour support and festival slots.

Meanwhile, 40 Below Summer premiered the music video for "Cutting The Cord," a shoot overseen by Alfonso Civile of Heartsick — another example of bands within the heavier end of the alt-metal and post-hardcore spectrum cross-pollinating behind the scenes, directors and musicians trading roles in ways that keep DIY video production alive even as budgets shrink across the industry.

What This Means for New York's Underground Right Now

All of this national noise matters because it shapes the environment that New York's own underground has to navigate. The state's current crop of heavy metal and NWOTHM-leaning acts, raw black metal projects, and post-black metal experimentalists are working in a scene that remains criminally under-covered relative to its output. We've got heavy metal torchbearers quietly building catalogs, black metal acts like Arts pushing the genre's atmosphere and aggression in interesting directions, and heavy metal outfits like RIP carrying forward the riff-driven, no-frills tradition that connects directly back to the Anthrax and Demolition Hammer lineage discussed above. These aren't bands chasing trends — they're part of the same continuum that makes New York's metal history worth writing about in the first place.

If you're hunting for new metal bands 2026 has to offer beyond the major-label signings and Sphere residencies, the real action is happening in VFW halls, DIY basements, and small clubs across this state every single weekend. Between Cro-Mags closing in on new material, Anthrax remaining culturally relevant enough to be worth parodying, and a deep bench of heavy metal, black metal, and experimental acts grinding away in relative obscurity, New York's scene is as active as it's ever been — it just requires a little more digging to find than a Sphere livestream.

Check our upcoming shows listings to catch these bands and plenty more before they inevitably end up getting the MetalSucks treatment themselves, and if you're in a band that belongs in this conversation, submit your band — we're always looking to expand the map of what's happening in New York heavy music, one scene report at a time.