Cursum Perficio, Arsenal, and the Alt-Metal Undead: This Week's American Metal Circuit
There's a certain kind of week in metal where the biggest stories aren't about who broke up or who's calling it quits, but about bands proving they still have teeth. This week belongs to the veterans flexing muscle memory, the alt-metal survivors clawing back from the Mushroomhead wreckage, and a handful of scrappy newcomers reminding everyone that the underground never actually sleeps.
Anthrax Gets Medieval on an Ex-Samhain Drummer
New York thrash institution Anthrax dropped the official video for "Cursum Perficio," the title track and fourth single from their upcoming album, and it's exactly the kind of gleeful chaos you want from a band four decades deep into this racket. The clip reportedly puts London May — the drummer who once held down the kit for Glenn Danzig's Samhain — through the wringer, and it's being helmed by Don Argott, the documentarian behind Lamb of God's "As the Palaces Burn" film. That's a serious pedigree for a metal video, and it says something about where Anthrax sits in the cultural conversation right now: still relevant enough to pull in filmmakers who've also worked with Taylor Swift.
It's worth remembering Anthrax alongside the broader lineage of American thrash and the 80s metal bands that built this entire regional ecosystem in the first place. You can draw a straight line from that era's riff-forward aggression to bands still carrying the NWOBHM-adjacent torch today, like the Bay Area's own Heathen, whose career has run in parallel with Anthrax's since the mid-'80s. The genre's elder statesmen aren't coasting on nostalgia — they're still releasing videos with Rolling Stone-approved directors and actively torturing former Danzig sidemen for our entertainment. That's a good sign for a scene that some critics keep prematurely burying.
Slipknot Shows Its Hand (Sort Of) on "Arsenal"
Slipknot's first new song in over three years, "Arsenal," landed with a music video directed by M. Shawn "Clown" Crahan, and now the band has followed it up with behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot. What's most interesting isn't the footage itself — it's Clown's explanation for why the band's iconic masked lineup didn't appear on camera at all.
"This one was difficult because we definitely wanted to do the band. It feels so right to do the band. It's too early to make masks and outfits and be sure of that stuff."
That's a fascinating admission from a band built almost entirely on visual mythology. Masks and jumpsuits aren't just merch-table novelties for Slipknot — they're the entire iconography of the band, and Clown treating that iconography as something still being workshopped this deep into a new album cycle tells you the Iowa nonet is taking its time getting the presentation right before committing to a look that will define years of touring and press photos. For a band this institutionalized in American heavy music, that kind of caution is almost refreshing.
Cleveland's Alt-Metal Lineage Refuses to Die
Speaking of masked legacies, former Mushroomhead vocalist Waylon Reavis has announced "Victim 3," the sixth studio album from his post-Mushroomhead project A Killer's Confession, due November 13 via MNRK Heavy. The new single "Roses" arrived with a video, and by all accounts it's dark, defiant, and squarely in the alt-metal lane that made Mushroomhead a Rust Belt institution long before nu-metal nostalgia became fashionable again.
Cleveland's metal scene doesn't get the same coastal attention as Los Angeles or New York, but bands like Reavis's have quietly kept the alt-metal and groove-metal traditions alive in the Midwest for two decades. It's a reminder that the US metal scene isn't just concentrated in a handful of major-market hubs — some of the most durable careers in this genre have been built out of secondary markets that never stopped supporting their own.
New England's Death Metal Bloodline Keeps Spawning
Justifications, a new project featuring members of Massachusetts death metal mainstays The Red Chord, dropped its debut single "Urge to Kill" this week, with a full album promised sometime next year. It's the kind of lineage-driven announcement that death metal heads live for — new music from musicians whose fingerprints are already on records that shaped a regional sound.
New England has quietly produced some of American death metal's most technically gifted players for decades, and that tradition traces back to pioneers like Florida's Atheist, whose jazz-informed approach to technical death metal rewired what the genre could sound like. Justifications carrying that torch forward — even loosely, geographically speaking — fits into a bigger pattern this year of veteran death metal players spinning off into leaner, meaner side projects rather than letting decades of chops go to waste.
It's also worth flagging for anyone tracking the raw and atmospheric corners of American black metal — a genre this site covers extensively but hasn't spotlighted enough lately — that New York's own Cur continues to represent the East Coast's atmospheric black metal underground with the kind of patient, textured songwriting that doesn't chase trend cycles. If you're building out a 2026 listening list and haven't dug into the regional atmospheric black metal underground, that's a solid place to start.
A Health Update That Hits Close to Home
Not every story this week is about riffs and release dates. Hunter Young, known for his work in Moodring and Psycho-Frame, has been candid about a serious decline in his health, dealing with multiple disorders and conditions that have upended daily life. His words are blunt and heartbreaking:
"I just want a shot at life and to regain some of myself."
Stories like this rarely make the front page of the bigger metal outlets, but they matter enormously to the communities that actually sustain this music — the fans who show up to basement shows, the labels who take chances on unproven bands, and the scenes that rally around their own when things go sideways. It's a reminder that behind every band name is a person, and the American heavy music underground has always been better at showing up for its wounded than the mainstream music industry gives it credit for.
Metallica Turns a Residency Into a Blood Drive
On a lighter but still community-minded note, Metallica is using its upcoming Las Vegas residency to launch a #BleedMe blood drive with the American Red Cross. It's a small gesture in the grand scheme of a band this massive, but it's the kind of thing that trickles down — local scenes and smaller bands have long used their own shows for blood drives, benefit compilations, and fundraising nights, and seeing one of metal's biggest exports lend its platform to the same cause only reinforces that culture.
The Long Game: 2027 Is Already on the Calendar
Two smaller items point toward how patient bands are willing to be with their release cycles right now. Rival Sons guitarist Scott Holiday confirmed the band plans to hit the studio in January with an eye toward a late 2027 release, while A Skylit Drive has signed to Vaux Records and dropped a video for "Half Hearted" ahead of a new album, "Ashes," also expected in 2027.
That kind of extended timeline used to be rare outside of doom and prog circles, where bands like Arkansas's own Pallbearer have long taken years between records to get the songwriting exactly right. Now it seems to be becoming standard practice across genres — a sign that even hard-touring rock and post-hardcore acts are prioritizing quality control over rushing product out the door. For fans hungry for new metal bands 2026 has to offer, it also means some of the year's most anticipated announcements are really previews for 2027 and beyond.
What This Means for the Regional Scene
Zoom out from the individual headlines and a pattern emerges: legacy acts are still innovating with their visual presentation and video content, mid-tier alt-metal survivors are proving their audiences never left, and smaller death metal and black metal projects are quietly building the next decade of the underground. If you're trying to catch any of this energy live, keep an eye on upcoming shows in your market — regional calendars fill up fast once fall touring cycles lock in. And if your band belongs in this conversation, submit your band for consideration; the best metal albums of all time didn't get made by bands waiting for permission, and neither will the next great American metal record.