Turnstile is a hardcore punk band from Baltimore, Maryland, formed in 2010. The current lineup is Brendan Yates (lead vocals), Pat McCrory (guitar), Meg Mills (guitar), Franz Lyons (bass) and Daniel Fang (drums). After four studio albums — Nonstop Feeling (2015), Time & Space (2018), Glow On (2021) and Never Enough (2025) — the band won two Grammy Awards in February 2026, including Best Rock Album, making them the most commercially successful hardcore act of their generation. Their next release, a reimagined companion record titled NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS, arrives August 28, 2026.
What follows is the full story: how a group of Maryland kids who met through mixtapes and all-ages basement shows ended up on a Grammy stage without leaving their scene behind.
Who is Turnstile?
Turnstile plays hardcore punk that refuses to stay inside hardcore’s fences. The band’s records fold in hip-hop rhythm, dream-pop texture, house music, soul and surf-rock — a sound rooted in Baltimore’s DIY tradition but built to carry across festival fields. Vocalist Brendan Yates has become one of rock’s most physical live performers; Franz Lyons’s backing vocals give the songs their melodic lift; Daniel Fang’s drumming supplies the groove that separates Turnstile from their peers.
The band’s commercial arc is unusual for the genre. Hardcore rarely charts. Turnstile have placed two albums in the Billboard 200’s upper reaches, headlined amphitheaters, been nominated for eight Grammys and won two — while still playing free shows in a Baltimore park and sharing bills with bands from the basements they came up in.
Baltimore’s Hardcore Scene: Where Turnstile Came From
Turnstile’s story starts in the Maryland suburbs strung between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. — a corridor with one of the deepest punk lineages in America. Bad Brains had already proven in the late 1970s that a hardcore band could absorb reggae and jazz without losing its edge; Minor Threat had codified the DIY, all-ages, self-determined ethic that the region’s scene still runs on decades later.
Yates and Fang both found punk sideways rather than through the front door. Yates absorbed his sister’s mixtapes, which mixed rock, punk and rap with no regard for genre borders, and started playing music in middle school with his neighbor Brady Ebert. Fang, from a family with no musical background, discovered the scene through his brother’s CDs and was drawn as much to its openness as to its noise. The two later crossed paths at Towson University, deepening their ties to the city’s hardcore community.
The band formed in 2010 and solidified its early lineup in 2011: Yates on vocals, Ebert on lead guitar, Sean Cullen on rhythm guitar, Fang on drums and Franz Lyons — an Ohio transplant and former drummer who arrived by way of the mentor band Trapped Under Ice — on bass. Their first show was at The Sidebar on Lexington Street, and much of their formative education happened at Charm City Art Space on Maryland Avenue before it closed in 2015. Both were cheap, all-ages rooms where the line between the stage and the crowd essentially did not exist.
That environment is the single most important influence on the band. As Yates put it in a Baltimore Magazine profile, the city gave them “the grace and the space to find ourselves.”
Early Releases: Pressure to Succeed Through Nonstop Feeling
Turnstile’s first recordings were fast, cheap and regional. A 2010 demo on Reaper Records led to the EP Pressure to Succeed (April 26, 2011), circulated largely through Myspace, and Step 2 Rhythm (February 7, 2013), which spread via Bandcamp. Sets ran about twenty minutes and traded in the powder-keg intensity of Baltimore forebears like Gut Instinct and Next Step Up.
Their debut studio album, Nonstop Feeling, arrived January 13, 2015 on Reaper Records, recorded at Salad Days Studios with producer Brian McTernan. It was the first record where the band’s stranger instincts surfaced — hip-hop cadence, surf-rock guitar, and the dreamy Baltimore atmosphere of a group like Beach House sitting inside songs that still moved like hardcore. Touring behind it, including a run with New Found Glory and the Nonstop Feeling Tour with Superheaven, built the band a national audience.
Cullen stepped away after that cycle. Pat McCrory — from Carney, Maryland, and a member of the side project Angel Du$t — joined on lead guitar in 2016, and the EP Move Thru Me followed on September 16, 2016 via Pop Wig.
Roadrunner Records and Time & Space (2018)
Signing with Roadrunner Records in 2017 was the band’s pivot point. Time & Space, released February 23, 2018 and produced by Will Yip at Studio 4, kept the aggression but pushed hooks and structure to the front, working through themes of anxiety and loss. It topped Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums chart and put Turnstile in front of an audience well beyond hardcore.
The experimentation continued off-album. In January 2020, the EP Share a View paired the band with Australian house producer Mall Grab — an early public signal that Turnstile saw no wall between hardcore and dance music.
Glow On (2021): The Crossover Album
Released August 27, 2021 on Roadrunner, Glow On is the record that changed the band’s altitude. It debuted at No. 30 on the Billboard 200, reached No. 2 in the UK, and drew close to universal acclaim — Rolling Stone placed it at No. 8 on its Best Albums of 2021 list. Songs like “Mystery,” “Holiday,” “Blackout” and “Alien Love Call” (featuring Blood Orange) turned into genuine rock-radio and streaming hits.
The album earned Turnstile three nominations at the 2023 Grammy Awards: Best Metal Performance and Best Rock Song for “Blackout,” and Best Rock Performance for “Holiday.” A companion EP, Turnstile Love Connection (June 27, 2021), came with a short film directed by Yates — the start of the band’s habit of pairing records with visual work.
The touring that followed was deliberately genre-agnostic: support runs with $uicideboy$ in 2021, My Chemical Romance in 2022 and blink-182 in 2023, plus festival slots including Coachella. In August 2023, the EP New Heart Designs reworked Glow On material with Canadian jazz group BadBadNotGood.
Lineup Changes: Meg Mills Joins Turnstile
Founding guitarist Brady Ebert parted ways with the band in August 2022. Greg Cerwonka filled in temporarily before Meg Mills — an English guitarist previously of Big Cheese and Chubby and the Gang — came on as a touring member in 2023 and became an official member of Turnstile in 2025. She is the first member of the band who did not come up through the Maryland scene, and her arrival coincided with the group’s most exploratory record yet.
Never Enough (2025): Turnstile’s Grammy-Winning Album
Never Enough, released June 6, 2025 on Roadrunner, is Turnstile’s fourth studio album and their commercial peak. Produced by Yates and recorded between Los Angeles and Baltimore with engineering from Will Yip and Jason Lader, the record debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 with 38,000 album-equivalent units and topped Billboard’s Top Hard Rock Albums chart. It holds a Metacritic score of 83 — “universal acclaim” — with The Guardian praising “a profusion of ideas so deftly handled that it never feels sprawling,” and Kerrang! calling it “cinematic in its scope and execution.”
The guest list shows how far the band’s orbit now extends: Hayley Williams of Paramore and Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) on “Seein’ Stars,” saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings on “Sunshower,” Faye Webster on “Time Is Happening,” and hyperpop producer A. G. Cook on “Dull.” Singles “Never Enough,” “Seein’ Stars,” “Birds” and “Look Out for Me” spread the album across alternative, rock and metal radio simultaneously — “Never Enough” reached No. 1 on Alternative Airplay. A visual album premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival and had a theatrical release on June 5, 2025. The New York Times covered the album’s rollout as a genuine crossover moment for hardcore.
The band marked the release at home first. On May 12, 2025, Turnstile played a free hometown show at Wyman Park Dell that drew a reported 10,000 people and raised roughly $35,000 for Health Care for the Homeless, followed by a release show under the Kosciuszko Bridge in Brooklyn on June 5.
Did Turnstile Win a Grammy? The 2026 Awards
Yes. At the 68th Annual Grammy Awards on February 1, 2026, Turnstile won Best Rock Album for Never Enough and Best Metal Performance for “Birds.” They went into the night with five nominations, also competing for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance (“Never Enough”) and Best Alternative Music Performance (“Seein’ Stars”) — making them the first act ever nominated across the rock, alternative and metal fields in a single year. In the Best Rock Album category they beat Deftones, Haim, Linkin Park and Yungblud.
It is a genuinely historic result for hardcore, a genre that has spent forty-five years outside the Recording Academy’s field of vision.
Turnstile in 2026: NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS and Tour Dates
On August 21, 2026, the band announced NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS, out August 28, 2026 on Roadrunner. It is neither a remix album nor a covers album but a full reimagining of Never Enough, with a contributor list that reads like a summary of Turnstile’s entire aesthetic argument: Elton John, Four Tet, Julien Baker, Alex G, Blood Orange, Hayley Williams, Floating Points, Panda Bear, Slayyyter, Oklou, Mustafa, Porches, Faye Webster, A. G. Cook, Shabaka, Dan Deacon, Baltimore club pioneer Rod Lee, trumpeter Brandon Woody, Angel Du$t, Nourished by Time, Chanel Beads, Kettama and — at the far end of the spectrum — Maryland death metal institution Dying Fetus.
Live, the band plays The Piece Hall in Halifax, England on August 26, 2026, then All Points East in London on August 28–29 as part of Tyler, the Creator’s takeover. A North American run follows from September 9 through October 18, 2026, built on an unusual premise: every date has a different supporting bill. Confirmed guests across the run include Clipse, Vince Staples, Thundercat, Yves Tumor, Hatebreed, Pennywise, Ceremony, Terror, Agnostic Front, Slayyyter, Die Spitz, Texas Is the Reason, Porches and Angel Du$t.
Turnstile Discography
Studio albums
- Nonstop Feeling — January 13, 2015 (Reaper Records)
- Time & Space — February 23, 2018 (Roadrunner Records)
- Glow On — August 27, 2021 (Roadrunner Records)
- Never Enough — June 6, 2025 (Roadrunner Records)
EPs and other releases
- Demo — 2010 (Reaper Records)
- Pressure to Succeed — April 26, 2011 (Reaper Records)
- Step 2 Rhythm — February 7, 2013 (Reaper Records)
- Move Thru Me — September 16, 2016 (Pop Wig)
- Share a View (with Mall Grab) — January 7, 2020 (Roadrunner Records)
- Turnstile Love Connection — June 27, 2021 (Roadrunner Records)
- New Heart Designs (with BadBadNotGood) — August 11, 2023 (Roadrunner Records)
- NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS — August 28, 2026 (Roadrunner Records)
Why Baltimore Still Matters to Turnstile
The band’s success has not required leaving. Most members remain tied to the Baltimore area, and the scene’s egalitarian instinct — blurring the line between performer and audience, treating genre purism as a limitation rather than a virtue — is still legible in everything they do. Skate culture runs through it too, in collaborations with Carpet Company and a Converse sneaker release in January 2024. Yates and McCrory direct the band’s videos; Angel Du$t continues as a parallel outlet; and the hometown benefit shows keep the money circulating locally.
That combination is the actual story of Turnstile. A hardcore band from Baltimore won Best Rock Album at the Grammys by getting stranger, more melodic and more collaborative — and by never treating the room they came from as a rung on a ladder.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the members of Turnstile?
Turnstile’s current lineup is Brendan Yates (lead vocals, keyboards, percussion), Pat McCrory (guitar), Meg Mills (guitar), Franz Lyons (bass, vocals) and Daniel Fang (drums). Former members include founding guitarist Brady Ebert, who left in 2022, and rhythm guitarist Sean Cullen, who departed in 2015.
What genre is Turnstile?
Turnstile is a hardcore punk band, though their music incorporates alternative rock, hip-hop, dream pop, house, soul and funk. That range is why they have been nominated in the rock, alternative and metal Grammy categories simultaneously.
Did Turnstile win a Grammy?
Yes. Turnstile won two Grammy Awards on February 1, 2026 at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards: Best Rock Album for Never Enough and Best Metal Performance for “Birds.” They were previously nominated three times in 2023 for songs from Glow On.
When was Turnstile formed?
Turnstile formed in Baltimore, Maryland in 2010, with the lineup solidifying in 2011 and the band playing its first show at The Sidebar.
What is Turnstile’s most successful album?
Never Enough (2025) is their highest-charting and most decorated album, debuting at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 and winning the Grammy for Best Rock Album. Glow On (2021) was their commercial breakthrough, peaking at No. 30 in the US and No. 2 in the UK.
What is NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS?
NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS is a companion album released August 28, 2026 on Roadrunner Records that reimagines the Never Enough material with contributors including Elton John, Four Tet, Julien Baker, Blood Orange, Hayley Williams, Alex G and Dying Fetus.
Is Turnstile touring in 2026?
Yes. Turnstile play The Piece Hall in Halifax, England on August 26, 2026 and All Points East in London on August 28–29, followed by a North American tour running September 9 to October 18, 2026. Each date on the North American run features a different supporting lineup.