When After Dark Presents booked Anvil into The Song & Dance for a Wednesday night club show, they handed Syracuse metal fans exactly what the band has been prioritizing lately: no festival barriers, no arena distance, just the band, the stage, and a room full of people who showed up to feel it. Doors open at 6:00 PM on June 3. Get there early.
About Anvil
Formed in Toronto in 1978, Anvil did not just survive heavy metal’s early years — they helped write the playbook. Speed metal pioneers before the genre had a name, their first three records — Hard 'N' Heavy (1981), Metal on Metal (1982), and Forged in Fire (1983) — laid the groundwork that Metallica and Slayer would build careers on. Those same albums are the focus of the Pounding the Past Tour 2026, and a setlist built around that catalog is exactly the kind of thing you drive across the state for.
A wider audience found them through the 2009 documentary The Story of Anvil, which captured their decades-long grind on film with enough honesty to earn them fans well outside metal’s usual orbit. The current lineup — Steve “Lips” Kudlow on guitar and vocals, Robb Reiner on drums, and Sal Italiano on bass — has kept that momentum going, most recently with their 20th studio album, One and Only, released in June 2024 and recorded in Germany with producers Martin Pfeiffer and Jörg Uken.
Support for this date comes from Midnite Hellion and Sentient VI.
The Venue
The Song & Dance is a bar and music venue at 115 E Jefferson St in downtown Syracuse. Anvil’s team describes the Pounding the Past Tour specifically as “intimate club shows” designed for “a full, unfiltered experience,” and The Song & Dance is exactly the kind of room that phrase was written for. It’s a downtown address, so build in extra time and plan to arrive when doors open at 6:00 PM — the show gets going at 7:00 PM.
Tickets & Pricing
Tickets start at $26.44. The show is 16+ with ID required; those under 16 are welcome with a parent or legal guardian. eTickets are emailed two days before the show. Grab yours below before this one is gone.