Performing at Loud As Hell Open Air Festival 2026 w/ Fallujah, Allegaeon, Summoning the Lich, Crimson Shadows, Edge of Paradise, and more! Rising from decades […]
The post Out Now! GRAVEMASS (ft. members of Zimmers Hole, 3 Inches of Blood, Revocation) Ignite Their Reign of Brutality w/ Debut Album “This Is The Way” appeared first on Metal-Rules.com.
Italian Christian power-prog metal band Metatrone returns with the new single “Stato Infame”, alongside an official lyric video. The track is the third preview from the band’s […]
The post METATRONE Unveils New Single “Stato Infame” From New Album SANGUEACQUA appeared first on Metal-Rules.com.
Southern California melodic death metal newcomers Ravenmocker have unleashed their second single, “Where The Raven Flies,” in 2026, following the strong reception of their debut track, “Infallible.” The new […]
The post RAVENMOCKER Delivers Second Single of 2026 w/ The Native American Lore of “Where The Raven Flies” appeared first on Metal-Rules.com.
Explosive dinosaur mayhem continues as the band unveils another track from their upcoming album, World War Dinosaur,
Arriving on April 17th via PERCEPTION!
Stream / Listen:
https://victorius.rpm.link/battalionPR
German power metal warriors VICTORIUS have released the official music video for their brand-new single “Brachio Bazooka Battalion.” The track is taken from the band’s upcoming studio album World War Dinosaur, set for release on April 17, 2026 via PERCEPTION – A Division Of Reigning Phoenix Music.
Packed with massive hooks, pounding rhythms, and the band’s signature blend of tongue-in-cheek storytelling and thunderous power metal energy, “Brachio Bazooka Battalion” once again dives deep into VICTORIUS’ outrageous dinosaur battle universe.
Explosive power metal collides with full-scale dinosaur showdown in a blazing anthem of riffs, hooks, and chaos. Heroic, melodic, and unapologetically over the top, the track delivers pure VICTORIUS energy forged in fire and dino steel.
The band comments:
“Brachio Bazooka Battalion was actually the first song we wrote for the new album. The title came first it sounded so absurdly epic that I immediately wanted to build everything around it. A catchy keyboard melody, a driving rhythm, it’s larger than life, fun and pure power metal madness. Exactly what VICTORIUS stands for!”
With its big chorus, soaring melodies, and cinematic atmosphere, the new single offers another glimpse into the high-octane world of World War Dinosaur. Brace for impact, the “Brachio Bazooka Battalion” is rolling into battle!
Stream / Listen: https://victorius.rpm.link/battalionPR
Watch the clip premiering here: https://youtu.be/uoDA11lEe5M?si=Ho1bMgdJXCEqEYSB
Pre-Order “World War Dinosaur” now at: https://victorius.rpm.link/wwdPR
Album Track Listing:
01. Kingdom of the Strong
02. World War Dinosaur
03. Dino Race From Outer Space
04. Raptor Squad Attack
05. Brachio Bazooka Batalion
06. March to War
07. Evil Mean Megalodon
08. Dino Power Resistance
09. Prehistoric Panzer Power
10. Lazer Ninja Thunderstorm
11. Golden Glory
12. Lost Legacy
World War Dinosaur sees VICTORIUS unleash their most powerful and cinematic chapter yet. The mayhem between dinosaurs and ninjas enters its next stage – louder, larger, and more explosive than ever before! Across twelve new tracks, forged in cosmic steel and powered by pure imagination, the band invites you into a universe where power metal meets Saturday-morning-cartoon chaos.
“It’s the most epic and hymn-like album we’ve ever written,” the band adds.“100% Victorius, but bigger, tighter, and more intense. We’ve never worked this hard on an album before. ‘Only more is more’ and this time, we went all in!”
For More Info Visit:
https://www.victoriusmetal.net
https://www.facebook.com/victoriusmetal
https://www.instagram.com/victorius_metal
VICTORIUS on Tour: https://www.victoriusmetal.net/live/
Source: C Squared Music
The psych rock duo are currently enjoying some massive viral successs.
The post Angine De Poitrine Set Dates For North American Headlining Tour appeared first on Theprp.com.
Post-hardcore band Chiodos is back and they’re heading out on tour this summer like all the other cool kids. Having reunited not too long ago, the band is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album All’s Well That Ends Well.
Coming along for the ride across the U.S. and Canada will be supporting acts 156/Silence, Sace6, and Calva Louise. The tour will run from May 15 in Anchorage, Alaska and will come to a close on October 3 in Sacramento, California.
If you’d like to catch Chiodos live, you can do so at any of the tour dates listed below. General tickets go on sale this Friday, March 20 at 10 a.m. local time.
CHIODOS TOUR DATES:
May 15 — Anchorage, AK — Williwaw Social Outdoors
May 17 — Columbus, OH — Sonic Temple Festival
July 30 — Denver, CO — Fillmore Auditorium
August 1 — Salt Lake City, UT — Rockwell at The Complex
August 3 — Boise, ID — Knitting Factory
August 5 — Bend, OR — Midtown Ballroom
August 6 — Spokane, WA — Knitting Factory
August 7 — Vancouver, BC — Commodore Ballroom
August 9 — Calgary, AB — The Palace Theatre
August 10 — Edmonton, AB — Union Hall
August 11 — Saskatoon, SK — Coors Event Centre
August 12 — Winnipeg, MB — Burton Cummings Theatre
August 14 — St. Paul, MN — Myth Live
August 15 — Green Bay, WI — EPIC Event Center
August 16 — Chicago, IL — House of Blues
August 19 — Toronto, ON — The Concert Hall
August 21 — Montreal, QC — Vans Warped Tour
August 22 — Montreal, QC — Vans Warped Tour
August 23 — Portland, ME — State Theatre
August 25 — Providence, RI — Fete Music Hall
August 26 — Huntington, NY — The Paramount
August 28 — Asheville, NC — The Orange Peel
August 29 — Nashville, TN — Marathon Music Works
September 12 — Mexico City, Mexico — Vans Warped Tour
September 19 — Louisville, KY — Louder Than Life
October 3 — Sacramento, CA — Aftershock
The post Chiodos Swear ‘It’s Not You, It’s Me’ with Their Upcoming North American Summer Tour appeared first on MetalSucks.
That six-song outing is now streaming.
The post Midwinter Release New EP “CHAPTER THREE: Still Hurts”, Debut “Lying Figures” Music Video appeared first on Theprp.com.
No. The data points in the opposite direction: global music streaming hit a record 5.1 trillion streams in 2025, rock was one of the fastest-growing genres in the U.S., and metal and hard rock are still moving huge numbers in albums, festivals, and live attendance.
Every few years, somebody tries to bury metal again. Then the numbers show up and ruin the funeral.
This time, the disconnect is especially funny. The “metal is dead” take sounds dramatic, but the actual market is telling a very different story.
If metal were actually fading into irrelevance, the larger rock and hard rock ecosystem would not be growing the way it is.
According to Luminate’s 2025 year-end data, global music streaming hit a new single-year record of 5.1 trillion streams, up 9.6% from 2024. In the U.S., rock grew 6.4% year over year, and Luminate’s Jaime Marconette said rock was “the largest growth genre this year,” meaning it gained share faster than any other major genre. The same report said rock also posted the second-highest total of new current streams.
That last part matters.
A lot of lazy “metal is dead” arguments rely on the idea that heavy music survives only on catalog nostalgia. But if rock is still producing one of the biggest totals of new current streams, then this is not just older fans replaying old records. New music is still connecting.
Fans interested in catching metal shows happening right now can browse tickets here.
Luminate flagged hard rock as one of the standout U.S. streaming stories of 2025, and it did not do that in a vacuum. The company specifically pointed to major releases from Sleep Token and Ghost hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 within two weeks of each other in spring 2025.
That is not what a dying genre looks like.
That is what a genre looks like when it is expanding beyond its old boxes.
Sleep Token did not just get big inside metal. Ghost did not just win over legacy rock fans. Both acts proved that heavy music can still break through at the album level when the project is strong enough and the audience is there. And clearly, the audience is there.
If promoters believed heavy music was collapsing, they would not be scaling rock and metal festivals the way they are.
Welcome To Rockville’s official site says the 2025 edition drew 230,000 fans, calling it the biggest year in the festival’s history. That is not a cute niche turnout. That is serious demand at mass scale.
And it is not an isolated case. Sonic Temple leaned even harder into heavy music programming, and the festival’s 2025 run was widely reported at 175,000 attendees.
Metal fans still buy festival passes. They still travel. They still build full weekends around this culture. The crowds are not behaving like a scene in hospice.
The touring side is where the “metal is dead” argument really starts falling apart.
Metallica’s 2025 Denver stop drew more than 152,000 fans across two sold-out nights, setting a new two-show attendance record for Empower Field at Mile High, according to Live Nation reporting carried by Denver7.
Iron Maiden’s official 2026 “Run For Your Lives” routing stretches across Europe, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. That is not a legacy band quietly cashing checks on a nostalgia circuit. That is a global heavy metal institution still operating at full international scale.
If anything, live music is showing the opposite of collapse. The upper tier of metal is still drawing huge, and the middle tier is healthier than people think because younger bands are finally moving into headline territory.
This is the part people miss when they obsess over whether metal is “mainstream” in the exact same way it was in 1999.
The genre does not need to look like old-school radio metal to be alive.
Bad Omens are sitting near 7 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Sleep Token just turned mystery, atmosphere, and modern heaviness into a genuine commercial force. Poppy is crossing between alternative pop, metal, and hard rock radio and still landing chart success. Luminate’s own audience data says hard rock listeners are highly engaged, over-index on gaming discovery, and are far more likely than average listeners to buy into vinyl culture too.
That does not sound dead. That sounds like a genre that stopped asking permission.
And honestly, that may be what is confusing people. A lot of listeners still define “alive” as “looks exactly like the scene I grew up with.” Metal in 2026 is bigger than one template. It is festival metal, algorithm metal, crossover metal, legacy metal, underground death metal, and weird left-field internet metal all at once.
That is not weakness. That is range.
One of the cleanest proof points here is Slipknot.
Luminate wrote in late 2025 that Slipknot reached 2.2 billion global on-demand audio streams in 2024, up 15% from 2023 and double their 2020 total. That is catalog growth, yes — but it is also proof that heavy music can still scale globally over time in a streaming economy that supposedly does not favor it.
You do not double that kind of number in four years if the culture has stopped caring.
Because people keep confusing cultural centrality with extinction.
Metal is not the universal youth monoculture. Fine. Almost nothing is anymore.
But dead? No chance.
Dead genres do not grow share. They do not put up No. 1 albums. They do not move 230,000 festival-goers. They do not fill stadiums over two nights. They do not generate billions of streams for bands as extreme or uncompromising as Slipknot.
What has died is the old, lazy way of measuring metal’s relevance.
The genre adapted.
It learned how to live on streaming platforms without losing its identity. It learned how to let newer bands grow without sounding like clones of the old guard. It learned how to turn subculture loyalty into long-term business.
That is why the old obituary keeps aging badly.
Metal did not disappear. It diversified, fragmented, globalized, and kept selling.
So no — metal is not dead in 2026.
It is just no longer asking people outside the culture to validate it first.
The clearest recent data says rock grew 6.4% in U.S. streaming in 2025 and gained share, while global music streaming overall reached a record 5.1 trillion plays. That does not prove every metal subgenre is booming equally, but it does undercut the idea that heavy music is dying as a commercial force.
The strongest evidence is the combination of streaming growth, major No. 1 hard rock albums, record-setting festival attendance, and massive tour numbers from acts like Metallica and Iron Maiden.
Yes. Sleep Token and Ghost both hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2025, while Bad Omens and Poppy continue to show strong streaming and chart traction in the broader hard rock space.
The genre is less centralized now. Instead of one dominant mainstream sound, heavy music in 2026 is spread across legacy acts, festival headliners, streaming-native crossover bands, and thriving niche scenes. That makes it less uniform — not less alive. This last point is an inference based on the streaming, touring, and chart data above.
The post Is Metal Dead In 2026? The Data Tells A Very Different Story appeared first on Loaded Radio.
For the necromantics out there.
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