Ate and 3 Crack the 2027 Prepare The Ground Lineup as New York's Underground Earns a National Stage
Every so often a festival lineup drops and you have to read it twice to make sure you're not hallucinating. That was the reaction in group chats across the state this week when the 2027 Prepare The Ground festival rolled out its latest wave of additions — Deadguy, Author & Punisher, Royal Thunder, and a dozen more acts — and buried in that "etc." were two names New York heads have been shouting about for years: grindcore unit Ate and progressive outfit 3.
This is the kind of booking that matters more than the headliners, honestly. Deadguy reuniting is always going to pull a crowd, and Royal Thunder's inclusion speaks to how far that festival's reach extends into heavier Southern rock territory. But when a fest with national ambitions reaches into New York's club and basement circuit and pulls out two bands as stylistically opposite as Ate and 3, it tells you something about where the scouting is happening right now. It's not just the obvious NYC hardcore and death metal exports anymore — bookers are digging into the weirder, more technical corners of the state's underground.
Ate Brings the Blast Beats East to Texas (Sort Of)
Ate operates in that merciless, compressed grindcore space where a set can be over before the crowd finishes moving, and that's exactly the kind of chaos energy a sprawling multi-day festival needs to break up the pacing. New York has never lacked for grind pedigree — Chepang has spent years proving that the genre's harshest, most unpredictable instincts can still come out of this state with a distinct, almost tribal rhythmic identity — and Ate landing a slot like this feels like a continuation of that lineage rather than an outlier. If you've caught Ate in a sweatbox DIY space, you already know festival stages are going to be a different kind of brutal.
3's Progressive Ambition Gets a Bigger Room
Then there's 3, whose inclusion is almost the inverse statement. Progressive metal and progressive rock acts don't always get slotted alongside grindcore and sludge-adjacent bills, but that's increasingly the reality of festival curation in 2026 and 2027 — genre walls are coming down, and audiences that grew up streaming everything from deathcore to djent to classic prog don't blink at a lineup that swings wildly in tone from set to set. For a New York band working in long-form, technically demanding songwriting, a stage like Prepare The Ground is a chance to put that material in front of ears that might never have found it through algorithmic playlists alone.
It's also worth noting how this plugs into a broader gap in coverage around here — New York's experimental and progressive scenes are deep, but they rarely get the spotlight that the hardcore and death metal circuits do. Genghis Tron proved over a decade ago that this state could export boundary-smashing, electronics-laced metal to a global audience, and 3's festival booking feels like another data point in that same tradition of New York refusing to stay in its lane.
Faith No More's Trey Spruance Return Is a Reminder of What Avant-Garde Metal Owes This State
Speaking of genre-benders, the news that Faith No More has welcomed guitarist Trey Spruance back into the fold — stepping in for Jon Hudson — is a nice companion story this week. Spruance's resume with Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3 is practically a syllabus for anyone trying to understand how metal, jazz, surf rock, and Middle Eastern modal scales can coexist in a single band without sounding like a gimmick. That restless, anything-goes spirit has always had a home in New York's underground too — you hear traces of it in the orchestral extremity of So Hideous and in the aforementioned Genghis Tron catalog. When a legacy act like Faith No More brings an avant-garde specialist back into the lineup, it's a small vindication for every local band pushing against genre convention instead of playing it safe.
The Touring Calendar for 2026 and 2027 Is Already Stacked
While we're talking about bands worth tracking, the road schedule for the next year keeps filling in fast. Capstan, Fire From The Gods, and Midwinter have booked a U.S. run kicking off in mid-February, giving metalcore and groove-leaning fans a reason to start checking venue calendars now. Meanwhile Devin Townsend has already locked in a 2027 Australian and New Zealand "Metamorphosis Tour," which won't touch New York directly but is a reminder of just how global the touring machine has become for artists who built their reputations in rooms not much bigger than the ones still booking shows across this state. If you're trying to plan ahead, keep an eye on upcoming shows — between festival season and the usual winter club circuit, 2026 is shaping up to be one of the busier years for metal bands touring in recent memory.
Aftershock Festival also announced its 2027 dates out in Sacramento this week, which, sure, is a West Coast story — but these mega-festivals increasingly function as bellwethers for which bands are about to blow up nationally, and New York fans should expect a chunk of that lineup to swing back through the Northeast on the same album cycle.
New Records Worth Circling
On the new-music front, Meridian Veil — the supergroup pulling members from The Agonist, Cryptopsy, Seven Spires, and Leprous — just announced its debut album "Forgotten Sun" for a January 22 release via Season Of Mist, with the lead single "The Watcher" already out. Given the pedigree involved, this is shaping up to be one of the more technically ambitious extreme metal records of early 2026, and it's exactly the kind of cross-pollinated project that New York's progressive and death metal crowds — the same ones showing up for bands like Eira and Consanguine — tend to gravitate toward.
Silent Planet also dropped a new single, "fangs!!" featuring Thornhill, alongside the announcement of their next full-length "INFINITE SLEEP," due in January. And over in the melodic metal camp, Cyhra — the Jake E-fronted project with ties to Kamelot and The Crown — released a video for "Venom In Me" while introducing new bassist Ben Varon, continuing to build out their fourth studio album rollout.
A Quick Word From the Old Guard
Amid all the new-band chatter, Iron Maiden's Nicko McBrain gave an interview this week explaining why he long considered double-bass drumming "un-drummer-ish" — a philosophy that feels almost quaint next to the blast-beat gymnastics modern grindcore and deathcore drummers treat as a baseline requirement. It's a good reminder of how far drumming technique has evolved since the glory days of 80s metal bands, and it's exactly the kind of old-school, feel-over-flash mentality that still animates New York's NWOTHM revival scene. Bands like A.D. 4, Attila, and Snake Canyon are all working that same vein — tight, groove-driven riffing without needing to prove anything through sheer speed.
Brian Tichy, the drummer who's worked with Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, and The Dead Daisies among others, offered a blunt bit of perspective in his own new interview this week:
"Hired guns aren't rock stars. I'm a hired gun."It's a humble, workmanlike line that a lot of New York session players and backing musicians — the unsung engine of this whole regional circuit — would probably nod along to.
Looking Back, Looking Forward
And since we're on the subject of legacy, it's worth pausing on the fact that Sepultura's "Morbid Visions" just turned 40. Eight songs, barely half an hour, tuned somewhere left of reasonable, and modeled directly on Venom and Celtic Frost — it's not polished, but it's foundational in any serious conversation about the best metal albums of all time, and a useful reminder of how unglamorous the genre's roots actually were before it became an industry.
Between festival bookings, legacy-band shuffles, and a steady stream of new album announcements, this is shaping up to be a loaded stretch for anyone tracking new metal bands in 2026 and the acts carrying them forward. If your band has news that belongs in this conversation, you know where to find us — submit your band and let's get you in front of the people actually paying attention to the New York metal scene.