Cronos, Campbell, and the Thrash Underground: How US Metal Processes Loss and Keeps Building

Every so often the metal calendar delivers a gut-punch and a glimmer of momentum in the same week, and this one did both. Two of extreme music's architects left us within days of each other, while down in Louisiana a thrash band that never got its due is finally being courted by a major label. That's the push and pull of this scene — grief for the originators, hunger from the ones still grinding it out. Here's what mattered this week for the US metal scene.