The battle cry has been sounded. Finnish folk metal titans Ensiferum have officially announced their return to North American shores for the “Winter Storm Over North America 2026” tour. Set to kick off this September, the trek promises a massive display of melodic death metal and heroic anthems. Joining the horde as direct support is Firewind, the power metal powerhouse led by legendary Greek guitar virtuoso Gus G., world-renowned for his tenure as Ozzy Osbourne’s right-hand man.

This tour marks a major milestone for Ensiferum as they continue to dominate in support of their critically acclaimed concept album, Winter Storm.

You can get your tickets at this location.

The “Winter Storm” Legacy: A Pandemic-Forged Concept

Winter Storm, released via Metal Blade Records, represents a bold creative leap for the band. Much of the album’s architecture was built during the global COVID-119 lockdowns, a period that bassist Sami Hinkka described as a “kick in the balls” following the momentum of their previous record. Despite the challenges—including band members taking on day jobs to survive the hiatus—founding guitarist Markus Toivonen and Hinkka successfully crafted a fantasy narrative that pushed the band’s sound into grandiose new territory.

A centerpiece of the current Ensiferum era is the vocal prowess of singer/organist Pekka Montin. His soaring, crystal-clear high notes have become the perfect foil to the band’s traditional grit, with many critics labeling him one of the greatest vocal discoveries of the decade. Produced by Janne Joutsenniemi and mastered by the legendary Jens Bogren, the Winter Storm material is designed for the stage, featuring complex orchestrations and guest appearances that the band is eager to translate into a live environment.

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Gus G. and the Firewind Factor

The addition of Firewind makes this one of the most technically proficient double-bills of the 2026 season. Gus G. remains one of the most respected figures in the guitar community, and Firewind’s brand of high-octane power metal is the ideal catalyst to prime the crowd for Ensiferum’s epic storytelling. Apart from the opening night at ProgPower USA, Firewind will be present for the entirety of the North American run.

Tickets for all dates officially go on sale Friday, April 24 at 10 a.m. local time.

“Winter Storm Over North America 2026” Tour Dates:

• Sep. 09: Atlanta, GA (ProgPower USA XXV) *
• Sep. 11: Nashville, TN
• Sep. 12: Fort Wayne, IN
• Sep. 13: Pittsburgh, PA
• Sep. 14: Detroit, MI
• Sep. 16: Cleveland, OH
• Sep. 17: Madison, WI (Blades of Steel)
• Sep. 18: Des Moines, IA
• Sep. 20: Winnipeg, MB
• Sep. 22: Edmonton, AB
• Sep. 23: Calgary, AB
• Sep. 25: Vancouver, BC
• Sep. 26: Portland, OR
• Sep. 27: Seattle, WA *Ensiferum only

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TL;DR:

Finnish folk metal leaders Ensiferum have announced a September 2026 North American tour dubbed “Winter Storm Over North America.” Support will come from Gus G.’s Firewind on all dates except the tour opener at ProgPower USA. The tour supports Ensiferum’s 2024 conceptual masterpiece Winter Storm, with tickets going on sale April 24th.

The post Folk Metal Fury: Ensiferum Announces “Winter Storm Over North America 2026” Tour with Firewind appeared first on Loaded Radio.

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Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest returns to Denver for its fifth round, tapping the Fillmore Auditorium as home of the world’s loudest, heaviest, most extreme craft beer festival on Friday and Saturday, December 4-5, 2026.

Southern doom supergroup Down make their first Denver appearance in over 12 years to headline Saturday night (December 5), while crossover thrash metal legends Suicidal Tendencies will unleash their first Denver headline performance in over eight years on Friday night (December 4).

The full band and brewery lineup will be revealed in the coming months, but 2-day and 3-day “Early Bird” passes—which include admittance to a special Pre-Fest at Ratio Beerworks (Larimer Street location) on December 3—are on sale now!

TWO-DAY TICKETS
THREE-DAY TICKETS (INCLUDES PRE-FEST)

“Just Metal” Ticket (21+)

Admittance to the day’s event, but as the name suggests, you just get to see the show—no beer samples.

“Metal & Beer” Ticket (21+)

Admittance to the day’s event plus unlimited* sampling from our diverse lineup of breweries presented by 3 Floyds Brewing. Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest: Denver 2026 sampling cups provided.

Limited tickets are also still available for next weekend’s Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest: Philly on May 2-3 at the Fillmore in Philadelphia, featuring the return of Power Trip, special sets from Municipal Waste (The Art of Partying), Cryptopsy (None So Vile) and Cro-Mags (The Age of Quarrel) as well as killer performances from Kylesa, Necrot, Spirit Adrift and more! Daily lineups and all ticket option details for Metal & Beer Fest Philly 2026 can be found below:

MAY 2 TICKETS
MAY 3 TICKETS
TWO-DAY TICKETS

MAY 2
Municipal Waste (special The Art of Partying set)
Cro-Mags (special The Age of Quarrel set)
Kylesa
Haggus
No/Más

MAY 3
Power Trip
Cryptopsy (special None So Vile set)
Necrot
Spirit Adrift
Blood Monolith 

The post ON SALE NOW 🍻 Early Bird Tickets to Metal & Beer Fest: Denver 2026 ft. DOWN & SUICIDAL TENDENCIES! appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Posted on April 24th 2026, 5:00p.m.

Cox was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer in April 2025.

The post Coal Chamber’s Mikey “Bug” Cox Breaks Silence On His Private Cancer Battle, Auctions Off Drum Kit For Charity appeared first on Theprp.com.

Fifty years ago, on April 23, 1976, Ramones dropped their debut Ramones and set off a shift that still runs through punk and hard rock. Built on speed, volume, and stripped-down songwriting, the record cut through the excess of the time with a direct approach. The lineup — Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone and Tommy Ramone — delivered short, sharp tracks like “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Judy Is A Punk” that reshaped the sound and attitude of rock.

Reflecting on the album’s impact, Rolling Stone wrote: “Punk rock started in 1976 on New York’s Bowery, when four cretins from Queens came up with a mutant strain of blitzkrieg bubblegum,” when naming Ramones the No. 1 “Greatest Punk Album Of All Time” (later naming it the No. 1 “Best Debut Album Of All Time”). “But even if punk rock began as a kind of negation — a call to stark, brutal simplicity — its musical variety and transforming emotional power was immediate and remains staggering.”

Decades later, the record still carries weight. As The New York Times put it: “the album’s influence has been incalculable”, and the reach of Ramones continues to expand. To mark the anniversary, the band’s camp has teamed up with Rhino Entertainment to roll out a year-long series of events focused on the album’s legacy and the wider impact of punk.

One of the key pieces is an official exhibition organized by The Punk Foundation alongside Linda Ramone and Ramones Productions Inc. The exhibit will debut at The Punk Rock Museum on July 4, 2026, bringing together music, memorabilia, and the broader cultural footprint of the band. The program will include live performances, artist talks, interactive elements, guided tours, and workshops tied to the band’s influence across music, art, and design. The museum will also host a 4th of July bash featuring the Ramones tribute band Mama’s Boy.

Additional releases and tribute events are planned through the end of 2026. A set of remastered and upgraded videos is already available, covering tracks like “I Wanna Be Sedated”, “Psycho Therapy”, “Rock N Roll High School”, “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker”, “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)”, “We Want The Airwaves”, “Time Has Come Today”, “I Wanna Live”, “Something To Believe In”, “Howling At The Moon” and “Do You Remember Rock And Roll Radio?”.

The post RAMONES Mark 50 Years Of Debut With Reissues And Museum Exhibition appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

(written by Islander) Brisbane-based Gutter Prince Cabal has established a reputation as a go-to platform for exposing the world to killer underground metal from Australia and New Zealand, and they’ll continue doing that in May when they present the debut of NZ’s Molosser. Here’s the vivid language they use in introducing the record: Set for […]

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Longtime At the Gates guitarist Martin Larsson picks his favorite song off every one of the band's albums, as well as their first demo. Continue reading…

Written by Ellis

It is not lost on me that I have come out of an unintentionally long review hiatus to talk about an album that everybody knows is gonna be good anyway, but if I ever pass on the opportunity to say nice things about Terror please know that someone has taken my family and I am operating under duress. This is the best hardcore band of the 21st century with no asterisk needed anywhere near that, back with what’s being billed as their tenth full-length album although I actually think it’s their ninth as I concur with the likes of No Echo and The Metal Archives that Lowest of the Low was an EP. Anyway, we’re not here to count we’re here to fuckin’ rock and with Still Suffer coming out on one of the hottest labels in the scene in Flatspot Records one should have no trouble doing exactly that.

Even with the remarkable consistency of their discography in mind, excitement for this one feels particularly justified given the strength of its 2022 predecessor Pain Into Power, which saw the band team up with OG guitarist and Nails mastermind Todd Jones as producer to trim even the tiniest amount of fat and craft an 18-minute ripper that stands with a fair shout for a place in their top three (alongside the aforementioned Lowest of the Low and 2004’s One With the Underdogs for my money). Jones is back for this one, joined this time by engineer Taylor Young (of Twitching Tongues and God’s Hate and all that), who is also credited with some additional production, and with mixing and mastering from Jon Markson and Brad Boatright respectively.

It is Markson’s involvement that is perhaps most interesting here. He has credits on a load of Drug Church records, the last couple of Drain LPs, and even the most recent Story So Far album—all evidence of a slightly more ‘polished’ pedigree which translates on Still Suffer to a crisp and spacious mix. Nick Jett’s drums sound absolutely massive, the bass is chunky, the guitars are sharp, and the inimitable Scott Vogel stands front and centre and booming throughout, ready to share the mic with an inevitable onslaught of stage divers as he deals in bread and butter themes of owning your shit and finding strength through adversity and turning your back on haters and traitors and so on with his usual ‘angriest life coach in the world’ type panache.

The tracks themselves are all the bangers or ragers or ass-beaters they should be, with all but one clocking in at under three minutes and even the exception only falling outside of that on a technicality which I’ll get to in a moment. The title track is an early highlight—a chugging steamroller of a verse and a catchy chorus stuffed with gang vocals running into the guaranteed bone-juddering breakdown to close. “Destruction of My Soul” a couple further along is another and maybe the most pissed on the record, with Vogel’s snarl of “There’s only one way out / Burn it to the fucking ground” setting up another dick-swinging, sick-riffing breakdown to close.

Later on, “Beauty in the Losses” starts with a well-placed hip-hop type interlude courtesy of Jay Peta of Mindforce and Crush Your Soul, who in turn jumps in for another bouncy highlight when the song itself kicks in, while penultimate track “To Hurt the Most” forces the third mention of Lowest of the Low in this review as its sub-90-second runtime careens by with the kind of blistering intensity that the band came tearing out the gates with almost 25 years ago. In the midst of all this, perhaps the closest Still Suffer comes to a surprise is the guest spot of Chuck Ragan of one of Vogel’s well-documented faves in Hot Water Music on fifth track “Fear the Panic”. While having a gruff voice is essentially Ragan’s whole deal, he straight up attacks his four bars here, with way more ferocity than one might have expected given his more tuneful regular gig. It’s a shame they had to let this particularly vicious cat out the bag early by releasing it as a single, but, as everyone keeps telling me, that is just the game nowadays.

Ok fine, a bit of criticism: the last five minutes or so of closer “Deconstruct It” are unnecessary. The track itself is a proper chonky beast, made chonkier still by a pair of monstrous turns from Brody King of God’s Hate and Dan Seely of King Nine, but after about two minutes it ends with a bit of silence followed by what is essentially just Vogel’s answering machine played over another Peta produced Wu Tang type beat. Everyone from Andrew Vacante of Combust to Austin Sparkman of Haywire to Aaron “Knuckles” Butkus of Death Threat dials in to talk hardcore or tour memories or just to pay homage to a band that definitely deserves it, but it does go on a fair bit and in turn pushes the runtime to around 27 minutes instead of the tight 22 it would have been otherwise. Maybe this is the band’s way of subbing for the lost art of shouting out your friends and influences in the liner notes—and if it gets someone into some of the deeper cuts like Krutch then all power to them—but it’ll probably be a skip for most people after they’ve heard it once, especially because it’s right at the end of the record.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Bottom line is it’s Terror init. Why have you read this? Thanks if you have but honestly you should have known this was gonna be great. If you are completely unfamiliar with the band Still Suffer is a strong place to start, particularly for its fantastic production, and if that is the case and you like what you hear then you my friend are in for the discography run of a lifetime. MORE STAGE DIVES.

The post Album Review: Terror – “Still Suffer” (Hardcore) appeared first on Noob Heavy.

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