Roadrunner Signs Haywire, God's Hate Won't Slow Down, and the Underground Just Keeps Grinding
Some weeks the metal news cycle hands you a tidy narrative. This week it handed us a grab bag: a hardcore band landing a major label deal, a former Slipknot drummer opening up about therapy, a bluegrass legend shredding blast beats with a death metal band, and Andrew W.K. deciding that instrumental jazz-noir is the move in 2025. The global metal scene has never been tidy, and that's exactly why it's worth paying attention to every corner of it.
Haywire Levels Up, and the Hardcore Underground Keeps Its Foot on the Gas
The hardcore-adjacent metal underground had one of its bigger weeks in recent memory. Haywire have officially signed to Roadrunner Records and announced a new full-length, produced by Citizen's Mat Menton and mixed by Taylor Young — a name that carries serious weight in the scene right now. The band reportedly threw cash into the crowd at Sound & Fury, which tells you everything about the energy surrounding them heading into this next chapter, and they're not slowing down on the road either.
Meanwhile Young's own band, God's Hate, pulled off one of the better surprises of the festival season with an unannounced Sound & Fury set followed almost immediately by a surprise EP. As if that weren't enough activity for one calendar stretch, God's Hate have now locked in a one-night-only Chicago show alongside Foundation, with support from Hold My Own, Si Dios Quiere, and Augment. That's a genuinely stacked bill, and it's the kind of lineup that reminds you why hardcore's crossover with metal keeps producing some of the best heavy metal songs and riffs coming out of the underground right now. If you're into that lane, the thrash-and-hardcore hybrid attack of Malinche is worth a spin while you wait for tour dates near you.
Andrew W.K. Goes Jazz-Noir, and Metal's Experimental Fringe Gets Weirder (In a Good Way)
Andrew W.K. has spent more than two decades being impossible to predict, and "Temptation to Exist," his first album in five years, might be his biggest curveball yet: a fully instrumental jazz-noir record from an artist most people associate with party-anthem maximalism. It's a reminder that the boundary between "metal" and "not metal" has always been porous for artists willing to walk it, and that some of the most interesting work in heavy music right now is happening in genuinely experimental territory that doesn't fit neatly on a festival poster.
That spirit of genre-blur is alive in plenty of corners of the current underground too. Progressive, boundary-pushing acts like Aphellium are proof that extreme metal doesn't have to stay in its lane to stay heavy — sometimes the weirdest structural choices are what make a record memorable a decade later. As World Metal Index keeps cataloging bands across the spectrum, it's worth remembering that "experimental" isn't a dirty word in this scene; it's often where the next generation of new metal bands in 2026 will come from.
Thrash Keeps Reshuffling Its Lineups
Sacred Reich fans got some real insight into the making of "Into the Abyss," the Arizona thrash veterans' follow-up to 2019's "Awakening," due via Metal Blade. Bassist/vocalist Phil Rind revealed that guitarist Joey Radziwill wrote ten of the album's eleven songs — a striking amount of creative control shifting toward a newer member of a band that's been carrying the thrash torch since the '80s. It's a good reminder that even legacy acts evolve internally, and that the health of 80s metal bands still touring today often depends on exactly this kind of generational handoff within the lineup itself.
Elsewhere in thrash, guitarist Ira Black has departed Vio-lence to focus fully on Apocælypse. Lineup shifts like this always sting for longtime fans of a specific era of a band, but they're also just the nature of a genre built on musicians who've been playing together — and occasionally apart — for thirty-plus years. Keep an eye on where Black's energy goes next; Apocælypse just inherited a serious talent.
Mental Health Gets Louder in the Conversation
One of the more genuinely moving stories this week had nothing to do with a new release. Former Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg spoke candidly with HeartSupport's Bryce Maopolski about the emotional fallout of his sudden dismissal from the band and the therapy that followed. Weinberg described the process in blunt, human terms:
It finally felt like an unlocking of a door.
That HeartSupport exists at all — a nonprofit built specifically around music-based mental health support for fans and musicians — says something important about where this scene has landed culturally. Metal has always been a genre that processes pain loudly, but conversations like Weinberg's push that processing into something constructive rather than just cathartic. It's the kind of story that deserves more real estate than the algorithm usually gives it.
Strange Crossovers, Great Covers, and One Very Online Celebrity Admission
Not everything this week was heavy in tone. Cryptopsy brought bluegrass star Billy Strings onstage to shred through "Open Face Surgery," and apparently this isn't even the first time Strings has sat in with the death metal band — which somehow makes it funnier and more legitimate at the same time. It's a genuinely great reminder that technical virtuosity translates across genre lines when the player is good enough, and that death metal audiences will absolutely lose their minds for a guest who can actually keep up.
Bad Wolves dropped their cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene," a reimagining that was originally supposed to feature Parton herself before her passing on August 25 following a brief illness. The band pushed forward with the release regardless, and it lands as much as tribute as it does cover song — a reminder that some of the best metal albums of all time have always had unlikely country and Americana threads running underneath them if you listen closely enough.
Butcher Babies frontwoman Heidi Shepherd also opened up about the band's upcoming record "Nightbloom," landing October 2 via Judge & Jury Records, noting the writing process stayed consistent with how the band has always worked — no dramatic reinvention needed when the formula's already delivering. And in the "celebrities are just like us" file, John Goblikon's MetalSucks column revealed that Javier Bardem is apparently a genuine metal fan, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes an otherwise ordinary Monday better.
Touring, Tributes, and Looking Ahead to 2026
On the touring front, Drain have announced early 2027 dates across Australia and Asia, kicking off in late February — proof that the appetite for hardcore-leaning heavy music keeps expanding well beyond North America and Europe. Combined with everything happening around Haywire and God's Hate, it's clear metal bands touring 2026 and beyond are increasingly thinking globally from the jump rather than treating international dates as an afterthought.
Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, meanwhile, made a small but pointed statement during the band's August 29 Toronto show, referring to Lake Ontario by its actual name in defiance of a U.S. executive order attempting to rename it. It's a minor moment in the grand scheme of a legendary band's career, but Dickinson has never been shy about using the stage for a little pointed commentary, and Maiden fans ate it up.
On a heavier note, the officer who shot and killed Dimebag Darrell's murderer spoke publicly about the career-ending PTSD that followed, stating plainly that he has no regrets about the outcome despite the toll it took. It's a sobering footnote to one of the darkest chapters in metal history, and a reminder of how far that single act of violence rippled outward beyond the band and its fans.
Harm's Way closed out a guest-filled tribute set for the late Bo Lueders with a Colin Young-fronted cover of Crowbar's "Planets Collide" — fan-filmed footage of which is now circulating, and it's worth tracking down if you want to see the hardcore and metal community doing what it does best: showing up for its own.
Whether you're chasing thrash lineage, hardcore crossover, experimental left turns, or just trying to catch a band before they blow up, the scene keeps moving in every direction at once. Check upcoming shows near you, and if your band belongs in this conversation, submit your band to get on the radar.
