Steelheart's Matijevic Teams With Ex-In Flames Guitarist as the Global Heavy Metal Underground Keeps Building

Some weeks the metal world hands you one massive story. This week it handed us a dozen smaller ones, and stitched together they tell you exactly where the global metal scene is headed as we barrel toward 2026: veterans are reinventing themselves, deathcore is getting louder and more confrontational, and the hardcore underground is once again wrestling with who gets to stand on its stages. Let's get into it.