Colorado technical deathcore outfit Crown Magnetar have released “Shut Up and Bleed”, the latest single from their upcoming third full-length album, The Hollowing Of Godflesh. The album is scheduled for release on September 25th via Unique Leader Records. Check out the music video below. Read moreâŠ
Spotify announced today that profiles for fully AI-generated artists will now be labeled as “AI Personas,” and the streamer will exclude music from these profiles from their editorial and algorithmic recommendations. It’s an intriguing step in a saga that is becoming central to the health of the music industry.
Blackie Lawless told Loaded Radio that a Chris Holmes reunion is never happening â and his reason has nothing to do with the decades of bad blood between them. Days later he posted a statement calling Holmes “our Brother and originator” and asked W.A.S.P. fans worldwide to help fund the guitarist’s prostate cancer treatment in France. Both things are true at once, and understanding why is the most interesting thing about where these two men stand in 2026.
Ask a W.A.S.P. fan what they want and you’ll get the same answer you’d have got twenty years ago. Not a new record. Not another tour. They want Blackie and Chris Holmes on a stage together, one more time, before it’s too late.
So we asked him about it. He didn’t dodge.
What Blackie Told Us About Chris Holmes
The first thing worth saying is that he didn’t run the man down. He was straight about the chemistry in those early years â whatever happened later, the thing that made those first records hit was two people who worked well together.
“In the very beginning there was a chemistry. It was between all the members of the band, it wasn’t just him.”
He was just as direct about Holmes as a performer.
“Chris is a great performer.”
Then the answer. It’s no.
“I would have to turn my back on the band that I have. Like I said I’ve been with these guys for over thirty years and this is the band that I know.”
Read that again, because the reasoning isn’t what most people assume. This isn’t a guy holding a grudge. It’s a bandleader saying he won’t tell the musicians standing next to him that they’re a placeholder for a nostalgia ticket. Agree with it or don’t â it’s consistent with everything else he says about how W.A.S.P. operates now.
He had things to say about Randy Piper too.
“We saw Randy. He came to one of the last shows on the last tour.” When asked if any bad blood had remained between him and Randy Piper, Blackie simply responded “No. Everything’s fine.”
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How Bad It Actually Got
To understand why any of this matters, you need to know how far apart these two have been.
Holmes played guitar in W.A.S.P. from 1982 to 1990, came back for a second run from 1995 to 2001, and spent most of the years since giving interviews about Blackie Lawless. Lawless mostly refused to return fire, which somehow made it worse.
The clearest read on the temperature came in 2024. Asked about Mean Man: The Story Of Chris Holmes, the documentary on Holmes’ life, Blackie said he had no interest in watching anything connected to it. He argued that a person’s own truth doesn’t automatically make it fact, and suggested that somebody with real creativity wouldn’t spend so much energy on what he was doing. Asked why he wasn’t in the film, he said he didn’t recall being invited.
That was two years ago. Cold doesn’t quite cover it.
Then August Came
On August 1, 2026, a statement went up on W.A.S.P.’s social media that stopped a lot of people mid-scroll.
Chris Holmes, now 68, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He and his wife Catherine had launched a fundraiser explaining that he’d started radiotherapy in France, that the treatment couldn’t be interrupted, and that a paperwork error over their marriage registration had dumped him onto emergency-only health coverage. He can’t leave the country without putting that coverage at risk, which means he can’t tour and can’t perform.
It’s the second time. He beat throat and neck cancer in 2022 and got the all-clear five months later, though he talked afterwards about losing his sense of taste and about how brutal coming off the morphine had been.
Blackie’s response didn’t hedge. He called Holmes the band’s brother and originator, said the W.A.S.P. family were devastated, and asked everyone who’d ever been moved by the band to stand with him â money if they had it, words if they didn’t. Let him know what he meant to you.
Put that next to the 2024 comments and the distance travelled is obvious. A man who wouldn’t sit through a film about Chris Holmes, publicly calling him a brother and asking a global fanbase to carry him through treatment.
No. And the reasons are clearer now than they’ve ever been.
The immediate one is brutal and simple: Holmes is in treatment, he can’t leave France, and he can’t perform. Every reunion conversation is theoretical while that’s true, and the only decent thing to want right now is for the man to get well.
The deeper one is what Blackie told us. He isn’t weighing a reunion against 1984. He’s weighing it against the band he has, and he won’t devalue those players to sell a ticket on memory. That position hasn’t moved, and nothing about August changed it.
What did change is the temperature. There’s a difference between two men who can’t be in a room together and two men who simply won’t share a stage. The first is a feud. The second is a decision.
Fans have spent thirty years asking for the reunion. What they got instead was the reconciliation. Given where Chris Holmes is standing right now, that’s the one worth having.
Blackie Lawless told Loaded Radio a Chris Holmes reunion will not happen
His reason isn’t the feud â he won’t diminish his current band for a nostalgia booking
He was open about the chemistry the two had early on, and called Holmes a great performer
In 2024 he refused to watch the Holmes documentary and questioned the man’s creativity
On August 1, 2026 he called Holmes a brother and asked W.A.S.P. fans to fund his cancer treatment
Holmes, 68, is being treated in France for prostate cancer, his second cancer after throat and neck cancer in 2022
Reconciliation and reunion are different things. Fans keep asking for the second one
FAQ
Will Chris Holmes rejoin W.A.S.P.?
No. Blackie Lawless told Loaded Radio it won’t happen â not out of animosity, but because he won’t diminish the band he currently has. Holmes is also unable to travel or perform while undergoing cancer treatment in France.
Was Chris Holmes an original member of W.A.S.P.?
He was there at the start, and Blackie Lawless has publicly called him an originator of the band. Holmes played guitar from 1982 to 1990, then returned for a second stint from 1995 to 2001.
Does Chris Holmes have cancer?
Yes. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2026 and is being treated in France. He previously fought throat and neck cancer in 2022 and was given the all-clear five months later.
What did Blackie Lawless say about Chris Holmes’ cancer?
In a statement on August 1, 2026, he said the W.A.S.P. family were devastated, called Holmes their brother and originator, and asked fans to support and honour him with money or with words.
Whatever you think of how it ended, Chris Holmes helped build this band â and right now he could use the noise. Tell us what W.A.S.P. meant to you in the comments, and follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
Just last year, the LA-based indie rock minimalist Lael Neale released her album Altogether Stranger on Sub Pop. This fall, she’ll follow that LP with a new one called As Killers Do â sick title â on her own label Consensual Sound. Lead single “Slip Away” is a haunted, sophisticated garage rock jam that sits on some grand cosmic continuum between Stereolab and the Ramones. It promises great things ahead.
Chat Pile have released “Same Rules”, their new single from their forthcoming third full-length album, Who Loves The Sun, scheduled for release on September 4th via The Flenser. The track is accompanied by a music video directed by Bug Mane. Read moreâŠ
Frank Beard‘s health has forced ZZ Top off the road, at least for now. Rolling Stone reports that health issues affecting the band’s longtime drummer led to the cancelation of the group’s Hollywood Bowl date last week, part of the ongoing “The Big One” tour.
A ZZ Top spokesperson confirmed to the outlet that guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis are continuing the tour without Beard, with drummer Michael Monahan filling in behind the kit.
When the Hollywood Bowl show was scrapped, Gibbons addressed the cancellation directly. “Insurmountable obstacles require canceling their Hollywood Bowl performance”, he said in a statement, adding that the “friends, fans, and followers of ZZ Top are the best in the business and that the band is counting on everyone to bear with them for this brief interruption”.
Beyond the Rolling Stone report, other outlets have filled in more of the timeline. Beard and the band reportedly played through the cancelation’s immediate aftermath, with Monahan stepping in for an August 8 show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California, days after the Hollywood Bowl date fell through. Beard‘s more familiar substitute, longtime drum tech John Douglas, has not been the one covering this particular absence, a departure from how the band has typically handled Beard‘s time off in the past.
This isn’t the first health scare Beard has dealt with recently either. He stepped away from the band’s “Elevation” tour last year for an unspecified procedure, later reported to involve foot and ankle problems, and needed another break from touring later in the year before returning to the lineup. Douglas covered those absences, just as he did back in 2002 when Beard underwent an emergency appendectomy.
Beard has held down the drum stool for ZZ Top for more than 55 years, playing on every one of the band’s studio albums starting with ZZ Top’s First Album in 1971.
His billing on those records tells its own small piece of trivia. He was credited under the nickname “Rube,” appearing as “Rube Beard” on the band’s debut and again on Tres Hombres, the group’s third album, while being listed under his real name on Rio Grande Mud, the second. Every album after Tres Hombres has credited him simply as Frank Beard. Fittingly for a founding member of one of rock’s most bearded bands, he’s the one member of ZZ Top who doesn’t actually have a beard, sticking mostly to a mustache aside from a brief goatee phase in the 1990s.
Away from the band, Beard lives in Richmond, Texas, where he owns and runs the Top 40 Ranch. He’s also a scratch golfer with a local reputation built on tournament play and community appearances.
ZZ Top was formed by Gibbons in 1969, with both Beard and the band’s late bassist Dusty Hill joining the following year. Hill died in July 2021 at age 72, with Francis, previously Hill‘s longtime guitar tech, stepping into the bass role.
No word yet on how long Beard will be away from the tour or further specifics on his condition.
Richie Owens, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for fusing deep country roots with rock and punk grit, will embark across the Atlantic this August for a run of UK tour dates with fellow roots musicians Bob Ocker & Joe Sharp. Deemed the The UK Pub Crawl, this trek marks Owens‘ return to the UK stage […]
Dark ambient pioneer Lustmord and metal’s most restless drummer have officially teamed up. Dave Lombardo, best known for his tenure behind the kit in Slayer, and Lustmord, widely credited as one of the architects of modern ambient electronic music, are now working together as Lustmord Lombardo.
The pair’s debut album, The Pulse of Atoms, arrives Oct. 2 via Ipecac Recordings. As a preview, they’ve dropped “Paleomagnetic Resonance” today, giving the first real taste of what the collaboration sounds like in motion.
Lustmord described the record as deliberately hard to place in time or genre. It isn’t tied to a specific period, he explained, whether that’s last year, a decade ago, two decades ago or five years into the future. The goal was to build something with its own identity rather than leaning on familiar musical language or history, something that reaches back much further than that. He called it the sound of planets dying or stars being born, a bigger picture than any one genre, the sound of the universe being born and dying. It’s not rock and roll, he said.
The two go back further than this record suggests. Lombardo and Lustmord first crossed paths backstage at a FantĂŽmas show, introduced by mutual friend Buzz Osborne around the time Lustmord and Melvins released Pigs of the Roman Empire, their 2004 collaborative album. Roughly two decades on, the pair reconvened as Lustmord Lombardo, landing on a sound that swings between cold and distant one moment, frantic and engaging the next. The Pulse of Atoms pulls a side out of Lombardo that longtime fans haven’t heard before and pulls Lustmord back toward his industrial roots.
The writing process skipped the traditional song structure altogether. Lustmord constructed shifting walls and vortices of sound first, then left space for Lombardo to layer in percussion and synthesizer parts on top. Once everything was tracked and arranged, Lustmord handled mixing and mastering himself, a job that meant finding balance between two players whose musical footprints are both, in their own ways, enormous.
Lombardo said he’s especially proud of the collaboration because it stands apart from everything else he’s done. Working on this body of work with Lustmord, whom he called legendary, capable of rattling the plaster off venue walls, made the project feel different from anything in his catalog.
Pre-orders for The Pulse of Atoms are live now, including two limited vinyl variants (clear and smoke), a CD pressing, and digital pre-saves.
Lustmord has long been regarded as one of the founding figures of dark ambient and industrial music, active since the early ’80s. His work leans on field recordings, low-frequency drones and cinematic sound design to build immersive, atmospheric pieces, and his catalog stretches across dozens of solo records and collaborations, with his fingerprints turning up in film and game scoring as well as experimental electronic production more broadly.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey just crossed a billion dollars at the global box office. Tom Holland, the permanently fresh-faced young actor who played Telemachus in The Odyssey, might hit double that number with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. If only for zeitgeist-related reasons, this is obviously a good moment for the LA-based musician and producer who calls himself Telemakus to announce an album, and Telemakus is doing exactly that today.
Rising Swedish death metal stars Orbit Culture have paid tribute to late At The Gates frontman Tomas Lindberg, four years after taking part in Lindbergâs final tour before his death.
Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, singer/guitarist Niklas Karlsson, whose band supported At The Gates and fellow Gothenburg melodic death metal pioneers In Flames across Europe, remembers Lindberg as a âmetal uncleâ who was approachable and down-to-earth.
Although At The Gates played a handful of festival shows in 2023, it was their last full-length tour with their singer before he was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer of the mouth and pallet, in December 2023. He died in September 2025 aged 52, following complications in his recovery.
â[Lindberg] was so fucking kind to new, young bands,â Karlsson says. âThe most down-to-earth guy youâll ever meet. In one of the green rooms, he was watching skiing and drinking beer, and he was like, âYou want to go out and play some darts?â So we played darts with him and shit like that. He felt like a metal uncle, and itâs so sad that he got taken away at such a young age. We miss him.â
The singer/guitarist also remembers how In Flames, who headlined the tour, became one of Orbit Cultureâs biggest champions. As well as opening for In Flames in Europe, Orbit Culture have performed at the bandâs festival Göteborg Brinner and played with them across North America in summer 2022.
âOur stupidest risk was our first US tour with In Flames in 2022. We were worth maybe $4,000 and we rented a bus for 60 grand. The funny thing is that we sold so much merch, we actually came home with profit! It was a stupid risk and I wouldnât advise it, but, when you have a dream, you just try to pursue it, I guess.â
Lindberg co-founded At The Gates after the split of his previous band, Grotesque, in 1990. Though they initially specialised in a form of progressive death metal, they became one of the leading forces of the melodic death metal scene in the mid-90s, alongside In Flames and fellow Gothenburg band Dark Tranquillity. Their third album, 1995âs Slaughter Of The Soul, is seen as a masterpiece of the genre.
At The Gates split in 1996 but reformed in 2008 and made another four albums. The latest, The Ghost Of A Future Dead, was released after Lindbergâs death and featured vocal takes that he demoed shortly before his cancer surgery in early 2024. The music, artwork and tracklisting were approved by the singer.
News of Lindbergâs death was met with a wave of tributes from fans and peers. Opethâs Mikael Ă kerfeldt said that âas a frontman ⊠he was awesome, plain and simple. Wild!â and âintellectually, he seemed to be a step above and beyond your generic metal musicianâ. Triviumâs Matt Heafy called him âone of the most important singers/screamers of any metal bandâ.
At The Gates have not confirmed whether or not they will continue without Lindberg. Their last show was at Aalborg Metal Festival in Denmark in November 2023.
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