139 Shows, 25 Bands, Only 3 Playing New York: Inside the State's Busiest Touring Acts

As of 2026-11-09, New York Metal Index tracks 139 upcoming shows across the state's 25 most active touring bands. That number alone tells a story about how much the New York scene is working right now. But the more striking finding sits underneath it: of those 25 bands, only three — Glassjaw, Hemlock, and Moon Tooth — have their next booked show actually happening inside New York State. The other 22 are routed through Los Angeles, Dallas, Prague, Dublin, Milan, Zürich, Rome, Leeds, Berlin, Brisbane, and more. New York's most active bands, by this measure, are mostly playing everywhere except New York.

The Full Ranking

The list is led by a wide margin. Koyo tops the index with 21 tracked shows, followed by Steve Vai at 17 and The Last Internationale at 13. Those top three alone account for 51 of the 139 total shows — about 37% of all touring activity in this data set coming from just three acts. Expand that to the top five — adding Taking Back Sunday (12) and a tie between State Champs and The Pretty Reckless (10 each) — and you get 73 shows, or roughly 53% of everything tracked across all 25 bands.

Everywhere But Home

The geographic spread of these next-show dates is the real headline. Among the 25 bands, next shows land in Los Angeles (twice), Dallas, Milan, Zürich, Rome, Berlin, Leeds (twice), Nottingham, Brisbane, Dublin, Prague, Detroit, Baton Rouge, Madison, Philadelphia, Des Moines, East Greenwich, and Florence. Only Glassjaw's Brooklyn date, Hemlock's New York show, and Moon Tooth's Albany stop keep the state on the map for its own highest-volume touring acts. Steve Vai's Newark date is the closest near-miss, just across the Hudson. For a scene this productive — 139 combined shows on the books — the data suggests these bands are building their reputations on the road, not necessarily in front of home crowds. Anyone looking to catch them locally should keep an eye on upcoming shows, since local dates for these acts are the exception rather than the rule right now.

Genre Patterns Behind the Numbers

Alternative rock is the single most common genre tag across the top 25, appearing on nine bands, including The Last Internationale, Taking Back Sunday, The Pretty Reckless, Spaced, Oxymorrons, Against the Current, Coheed and Cambria, Drug Church, and Glassjaw. Browse the full set at alternative rock bands.

Pop punk follows, tagged on four bands — Koyo, Taking Back Sunday, State Champs, and Against the Current — which combine for 46 of the 139 tracked shows, or about a third of all touring activity in this index. See them under pop punk bands.

Hardcore in its various forms — including beatdown hardcore, NYHC, hardcore punk, metallic hardcore, and crossover thrash — shows up on six bands: Pain Of Truth, Spaced, Madball, Guilt Trip, Cro-Mags, and in spirit, Hemlock. Combined, that cluster logs 20 of the 139 shows. Browse them under hardcore bands. Straight metal subgenre tags — black metal, death metal, doom metal, progressive metal, thrash metal, and heavy metal — appear on eight of the 25 bands, but those acts collectively account for just 15 of the 139 shows, less than 11% of total volume despite being nearly a third of the roster. The data suggests that in terms of raw touring frequency right now, New York's rock, emo, and hardcore-adjacent acts are out-pacing its pure metal acts by a wide margin.

Methodology

This analysis is based on New York Metal Index's own database of bands, shows, and venues, current as of 2026-11-09. The ranking reflects the 25 bands associated with New York State carrying the highest count of tracked upcoming shows at the time of pull. Show counts, genres, and next-show dates and cities are drawn directly from indexed tour data and have not been supplemented with outside sources. Genre tags reflect how each band is classified within the index and may include multiple overlapping subgenres per act.