From Age of Quarrel to Slam Videos: How This Week's National Drops Map Onto Texas's Underground
Friday news dumps are usually a grab bag, but this week's pile of singles, tour announcements, and anniversary reissues reads like a syllabus for the sounds already brewing in Texas basements and VFW halls. Between a crossover thrash landmark getting the reissue treatment, a doom metal veteran finally booking studio time, and a slam band making Pee-Wee Herman unexpectedly heavy, there's a lot here that speaks directly to what's happening in our own backyard.
Cro-Mags' Anniversary Reissue and the Crossover Thrash Blueprint
Cro-Mags announced a re-recorded 40th anniversary edition of The Age of Quarrel, dropping November 13 with guest spots from members of Turnstile, Sepultura, and Rise Against. The newly tracked version of "World Peace" is out now, and it's a reminder of just how foundational that record is to everything crossover thrash and hardcore has become since. That lineage runs straight through Texas, a state that helped invent the genre in the first place courtesy of Houston's own crossover thrash pioneers D.R.I., whose fingerprints are still all over the riffing style dominating pits from Dallas to San Antonio.
That thread is very much alive in the current Texas crossover thrash scene. Crossover thrash and hardcore punk outfit ANS continues to fly the flag for fast, furious, no-frills aggression, and they're part of a growing pocket of bands proving that the genre's mid-80s DNA hasn't gone anywhere — it's just gotten meaner. Add in crossover thrash band Blohole and Fort Worth-area crossover thrash unit Condemned Unit, and you've got a genuine regional pipeline feeding off the same energy the Cro-Mags reissue is celebrating. If you're building a mental list of the best metal albums of all time and haven't circled back to Age of Quarrel in a while, this is your excuse — and your excuse to check out who's carrying that torch locally.
YOB's Studio Plans and Texas's Doom Underground
Doom heads have been waiting a long time for new YOB material, and the news that the band finally has studio plans locked in for their long-awaited follow-up is the kind of update that makes an entire subgenre exhale at once. YOB's brand of crushing, meditative doom has influenced a generation of bands leaning into slow tempos and thick low end, and Texas has quietly built one of the more interesting doom pockets in the country.
Doom and stoner metal act Oat is part of that wave, delivering the kind of heavy, hypnotic riffing that fans of YOB's catalog will recognize immediately. They're in good company statewide alongside doom and post-metal project Skloss, doom and sludge metal band Endgazer, and doom metal act Cryptic Enigma. None of these bands need YOB to validate what they're doing, but it's worth noting that when a genre-defining act signals it's back in gear, it tends to shine a brighter spotlight on everyone else grinding away in the same lane — including bands working a heavier, more Southern-rock-infused angle like southern heavy rock outfit Texas Hippie Coalition, whose sludgy groove sits right at the intersection of doom and Texas barroom rock.
Revocation's 20th Anniversary and the Texas Death Metal Conversation
Revocation celebrating two decades of death metal excellence with an exclusive comic, poster, and t-shirt collaboration is a nice reminder that this genre rewards the long game. Twenty years in, they're still a reference point for technical, riff-forward death metal — and that kind of longevity is exactly what the Texas death metal scene is chasing right now, even as it flies under the radar of the national conversation more than it should.
Texas death metal has never lacked for talent, it's just lacked for headlines. Bands like death metal and grindcore act Exmortis, death metal and thrash metal band Hate Collider, death metal band Baptized by Fire, and death metal and melodic death metal outfit Epic of Lucius are all putting in the same kind of work Revocation has been logging for two decades, and black metal, death metal, and metalcore band Cambion is blending genres in a way that keeps the scene from feeling stagnant. If you're tracking new metal bands in 2026 worth watching, Texas death metal deserves a much longer look than it's currently getting outside the state.
Slam, Grind, and the Weird Side of Heavy
Not everything this week was serious business. Slam Band delivered "PEEWEE JERKIN," a slam-heavy music video built around a Pee-Wee Herman fixation that's as absurd as it is heavy, while grindcore act Squid Pisser dropped the video for "Tumors," a track the band says is about people who spread chaos while hiding behind manipulation and false confidence. Both cuts are a good reminder that slam death metal and grind don't need to take themselves too seriously to hit hard — sometimes the joke and the breakdown arrive in the same breath.
Slam death metal is one of those genres that's quietly stacked in Texas without getting much ink, and this week's national headlines are a good excuse to point toward brutal death metal band Eviscerated and brutal death metal and grindcore act Gored, both of whom deliver the kind of low-tuned, breakdown-driven brutality that slam fans crave. It's a genre built for pit chaos, and Texas has the bands to prove it — they just need more stages and more coverage.
Metalcore's New Wave and the Touring Circuit Heating Up for 2026
On the metalcore side, Like Moths to Flames dropped their third new track this year produced by The Plot in You's Landon Tewers, "Where the Quiet Devours Me Whole," continuing a run that's kept them steadily in front of fans without a full album drop yet. It's a smart strategy in a genre where singles cycles often do more work than a traditional album rollout, and it's one that Texas metalcore acts have taken note of.
Meanwhile, Portrayal of Guilt announced a West Coast U.S. tour with World Peace, Smirk, and NØ MAN, with Chat Pile, Loma Prieta, and Iron Lung joining select dates — a lineup that's practically a masterclass in how hardcore-adjacent bands are cross-pollinating genres on the road right now. As bands lock in their routes for metal bands touring 2026, expect more of this kind of genre-blurring bill, where hardcore, noise rock, and metalcore share a stage without anyone blinking. Texas metalcore fans should keep an eye on how that trend trickles down locally — bands like metalcore act Fit For a King and metalcore band Invent Animate have already proven the state can produce acts capable of headlining rooms this size, and crossover thrash and hardcore punk band Judiciary bridges the gap between those worlds nicely.
Anthrax, Split Chain, and the Rest of the Week's Noise
Anthrax dropped the music video for "Everybody's Got a Plan," a title boxing fans will clock immediately, giving longtime fans another reason to revisit a catalog that helped define what 80s metal bands could sound like when thrash met groove. Elsewhere, Split Chain paired up with Commoner and Postdrome for a batch of newly released deluxe tracks complete with a Windows 95 throwback aesthetic — a small but fun reminder that metal's relationship with nostalgia is getting weirder and more specific by the year.
Between anniversary reissues, studio announcements, and a genuinely strange slate of new videos, this week's headlines prove there's no single "sound" of heavy music right now — there's a sprawling, connected ecosystem, and Texas has a seat at every table in it. If your band belongs in that conversation, submit your band and get on our radar, and check upcoming shows to see who's coming through the state next.