The group previously found themselves in a similar situation with their cover of “Zombie”.
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Beartooth have today released their new album Pure Ecstasy via Fearless Records. The record, their first full-length for the label, finds the band operating at full force, channeling the intensity that has defined their career into one of their most immediate and expansive releases yet. Written, recorded, and largely produced by frontman Caleb Shomo, Pure […]Symphonic metal pioneers Nightwish are marking three decades of musical wizardry. To celebrate this milestone, the band announces their most ambitious retrospective collection yet: The Greatest 30 Years On Earth, which will be released on December 11th via Nuclear Blast Records.
This massive anniversary release arrives as a love letter to fans, capturing the grand scale of the band’s historic career through rare audio, visual spectacles, and unprecedented behind-the-scenes access.
The Greatest 30 Years On Earth brings together the definitive modern live experiences of Nightwish. The collection features audio and video recordings from two monumental, contrasting eras of their recent touring history: the high-octane arena spectacle in Amsterdam (2022) and the deeply emotional, triumphant homecoming show in Kitee (2023).
In addition to traditional concert recordings, the release unearths exclusive, highly sought-after live-in-the-studio audio captured during the band’s groundbreaking virtual live events, with all of the audio once again mastered at Finnvox Studios. This sonic journey is paired with an expansive, curated treasure trove of photographs spanning thirty years of touring, studio sessions, and candid moments.
For the first time, fans will get an intimate look into the creative engine of Nightwish. The release includes a brand-new, deeply insightful documentary focusing on founder and primary songwriter Tuomas Holopainen. The film explores his visionary approach to composition, the evolution of the band’s mythos, and the personal philosophy that has sustained Nightwish at the forefront of the global metal scene for three decades and was directed by Ville Lipiäinen.
The band comments: “The whirlwind of 30 years is still scooping up building materials and curios: new interviews, documentaries, remixed songs from the Islanders Arms, photos, and, are you ready? concert footage of the Human :ll: Nature tour, shot in Holland and Finland. This is Nightwish: The Greatest Years on Earth so far!”
To give fans an immediate glimpse into the sheer power of this release, the band has dropped the live music video for “7 Days To The Wolves,” recorded live in Amsterdam (2022).
Pre-order The Greatest 30 Years On Earth here, in the following formats:
The post NIGHTWISH Celebrates 30 Years of Symphonic Metal Mastery with Massive Anniversary Release “The Greatest 30 Years On Earth” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
A double helping of the two Steves — Steve Hackett and Marillion’s Steve Rothery — lead The Roaring Waves to the heights one expects of players of this magnitude. Written and recorded in fits and starts over nearly a decade, the seven songs here surf across all kinds of stylish musical waves from what’s been described by both guitarists as an organic, improvisational process. The album’s collaborators include Riccardo Romano, who co-wrote, mixed, and played keyboards and bass, plus drummers Leon Parr and Daniele Pomo.
Spreading high strings into high scaling riffs of “The Storm” starts us off. With its beginning overdriven guitar strikes, this dramatic, epic soundtrack-like first tune flows into a heavy plodding rocker, about two minutes in and we are off to the chunking races as the guitar masters trade off. From the outset, fans of each player (or both) will probably be able to distinguish who is playing what (mostly), as the interweaving of styles works perfectly.
“Red Dragon,” with its flute-like opening and an in-the-pocket solid beat from Pomo, provides the best early tune for me. There’s lot of vibrato guitar in the beginning around slipping sliding key leads and single note electric guitar flurries mining the main theme; a solid fine pop prog instrumental based around a sure Middle Eastern-theme scape.
I’m guessing again, but it surely sounds like the former Genesis guitarist opening the title track with expert classical guitar picking and strumming. Way back on “Horizons” fans of this man were introduced to what he could do on this kind of guitar and surely, he’s still doing it. After the opening keys slice in and we get high flying single not electric.
Not only is the album’s title track but the centerpiece, but this is a surely epic piece that gives each player his due across quite a few mood changes in the piece. Argeiateng keys keep “K‑129” running with both guitarist trading leads. The spacey and slower last two minutes are especially heightened, as we wait for the last stratospheric leading. And “Pacific Coast Highway,” with its opening harmonica, played by Hackett, “Ahhs” and wild rockin’ beat is not only the heaviest tune here, but provides the most all-out-fun with Hackett having at harmonica wailing, Romano organ leads, Rothery canoodling, and Parr pushing them all along. It took a while to get Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery to produce The Roaring Waves. I hope we don’t have to wait as long until they get time to produce a follow-up to this wonderful instrumental album.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
Dedicated heavy metal fandom isn’t a passive relationship with music. It’s a set of recurring financial decisions that stack up across concerts, physical media, merchandise, and travel — and fans who don’t plan for that reality tend to find out the hard way. The question isn’t whether the hobby is expensive. It is. The more useful question is how fans who sustain their passion long-term actually manage it.
The Arabiccasinos Team, whose editorial work tracks entertainment spending habits across the Arabic-speaking world, has observed this pattern from the outside. Adults managing a fixed discretionary budget don’t have the luxury of spending reactively across every leisure category at once. Live events compete with vinyl runs, merchandise drops compete with travel, and digital entertainment sits in the same finite pool. Online casino gaming, for instance, draws from exactly the same discretionary allocation as a festival pass — and for fans in the Arabic-speaking scene, a comparison resource like arabiccasinos.guide is where people evaluate those platforms before deciding what ceiling to put on that category. The discipline is identical to what a serious metal fan applies when deciding how much of the year’s entertainment budget goes toward a single weekend festival versus a dozen smaller shows. Capping each category deliberately, rather than spending until something runs out, is what keeps the fandom sustainable.
The ticket is only the beginning. Major metal festivals structure their entry across tiers — a day ticket, a full weekend pass, a VIP upgrade — and even the base tier represents a significant commitment before a single logistical cost is added. Travel to a festival site, accommodation for a multi-day event, food and incidentals on the ground — all of it compounds the headline figure fast.
The secondary ticket market adds another layer of pressure. When a high-demand show sells out quickly, resellers price tickets well above face value, sometimes by a meaningful multiple. That forces a concrete decision: is this specific show, on this specific night, worth what the market is now asking? Fans who’ve answered yes to that question too many times in a single year know where it leads. For those who follow bands across regions or travel internationally to attend an annual festival they treat as a fixed calendar event, the live category can become the single largest entertainment expenditure in their year.
Streaming is cheaper. Fans know this. Many still choose to buy.
Vinyl has sustained a genuine resurgence over the past decade, with physical formats returning to relevance for independent labels and artists who depend on revenue beyond fractions of a cent per stream. That streaming royalty structure has pushed dedicated fans toward direct purchases as an act of deliberate support — buying from a band’s own webstore ensures more of the money reaches the artist rather than a retail chain or a platform algorithm.
The limited-edition mechanic intensifies the financial pull. Colored vinyl pressings released in small numbered runs routinely sell out before or on release day. Copies surface later on collector resale markets at higher prices. The fan who hesitates often pays more for it second-hand than they would have at retail, or misses it entirely. That scarcity creates urgency that isn’t manufactured out of thin air — it’s a real feature of how these releases are produced and distributed. A serious collector knows that sitting on the decision is itself a financial choice.
There’s a consistent price gap between merchandise at a venue stand and the same or equivalent item through a band’s online store. The venue premium is real, and it reflects something fans generally understand — you’re paying for immediacy, for the context of the night, for the object that carries the memory of the show. That premium is also, for many fans, genuinely worth it.
The signed and numbered tier sits above that. Limited pressings, tour posters, instrument-related memorabilia — items in this category have a documented tendency to appreciate in market value over time. A fan who buys a signed pressing at retail price is making a purchase that sometimes crosses the line into financial investment territory, whether they intend it to or not. The emotional value they place on that item — the sleeve from a show they attended, the poster from a tour that never came back through — consistently exceeds whatever the secondary market would pay. The object means more to the person who was there.
Fan club memberships and presale-access programs add a recurring cost that sits underneath all of this. Bands have broadly adopted tiered subscriber models that offer priority access to tickets, exclusive merch, and presale windows in exchange for an annual or seasonal fee. For fans who would otherwise pay secondary-market prices for a guaranteed seat, the membership cost can be rational. It’s still a recurring line item that has to be budgeted.
The real test of how a fan manages this isn’t what they spend when money is loose — it’s what they prioritize when it isn’t. The categories don’t all compress evenly. Skipping a secondary-market ticket to hold funds for a festival pass is a trade-off that makes structural sense. Choosing a direct-buy vinyl release over a streaming subscription for the month is a values-aligned decision with a clear logic. Setting a ceiling on venue merchandise so the signed collector piece becomes affordable is a form of planning, not deprivation.
Dedicated fans tend to know which category they won’t compromise on. For some it’s the live experience — no expense saved when a bucket-list band tours. For others it’s the physical collection, the shelf of records that represents years of deliberate acquisition. The key isn’t ranking categories the same way as anyone else. It’s knowing your own ranking and allocating toward it before the reactive spending fills the gaps.
The fans who sustain this long-term aren’t the ones who spend the most in a given year. They’re the ones who know where each line item sits, cap the categories that aren’t their priority, and don’t let a last-minute merch table clean out the budget they’d set aside for a spring festival pass. That kind of discipline doesn’t diminish the fandom. It’s what keeps it alive across years, not just peak seasons.
Heavy metal has always demanded real commitment from the people who love it most. The economics of fandom are just that commitment made concrete.
The post Being a Heavy Metal Fan Costs Real Money — Here’s Where It All Goes appeared first on Loaded Radio.
Six tracks landed this week and two of them arrived attached to albums that are out today. Mastodon released their first record without Brent Hinds. In This Moment released their ninth. Amon Amarth put a Norse god’s eight-legged horse in a modern American Western. Hatebreed broke a six-year silence. And there’s a new Carnifex record with a Whitechapel guitarist behind the desk. Here’s everything worth your Friday.
STREAM THE METAL BREAKDOWN DAILY NOW:Scott Penfold runs through the week’s biggest new tracks on today’s Metal Breakdown Daily — the Mastodon opener with a guest drummer, the Amon Amarth video that turns Norse mythology into a cowboy film, and the label quietly signing half of heavy music. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and get it every weekday morning.
The heaviest thing on this list in every sense, and it’s the opening track of an album released today.
Marrow Deep is Mastodon’s ninth album, out now via Loma Vista, and it’s their first without founding guitarist Brent Hinds — who left the band in March 2025 and died in a motorcycle accident that August. The record arrives a year and a week later.
The temptation to make it a memorial record must have been enormous. They didn’t. Reviewers have been near-unanimous on that point: Mastodon made a Mastodon album.
“Barbarians Blood” throws the doors open with no ceremony whatsoever. Deep layered keys from João Nogueira sit under enormous riffs from Bill Kelliher and new guitarist Nick Johnston, and — here’s the detail worth knowing — Ben Koller of Converge plays drums on it. He drives the thing on a punkish, forward-leaning groove that recalls Mastodon’s earliest sludge with modern width behind it.
A guest drummer on a Mastodon track, when your own drummer is Brann Dailor, is a genuinely unusual creative choice.
The album was co-produced with Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou, and it’s built around the Three Fates of Greek myth — the sisters who spin, measure and cut the thread of a life. Geezer Butler and Josh Homme both guest elsewhere on it.
Grief made into something you can play loud. Nobody does that better.
The most enjoyable video of the week, and the last thing you’ll hear before album thirteen.
The Allfather Awakens arrives October 2 via Metal Blade, and “Eight Legs Of Thunder” is the final single. It’s a steamrolling anthem about Sleipnir — Odin’s eight-legged horse, the greatest steed in Norse mythology — built on a galloping main riff and a chorus designed for eighty thousand people at Wacken.
Then there’s the video. Director Dariusz Szermanowicz has set it in a gritty modern American Western. Cowboys, pickup trucks, open roads, and Sleipnir himself turning up in a surreal dream sequence. His stated aim was to break the traditional metal video mould — a high-octane cinematic ride with cowboy tension, raw action and a touch of dark humour.
A Viking metal band making a spaghetti Western about a mythological horse. Thirty-four years in and they’re still finding new places to put the longships.
The album itself came together differently. The band wrote while touring rather than waiting to come off the road, recorded across two sessions months apart at Jacob Hansen’s studio in Denmark, and finished each song completely — drums, guitars, vocals — before starting the next. Olavi Mikkonen’s framing: they worked on one song at a time and made each one as good as possible.
They also moved from 5150 amps back to Marshalls, giving the record a deliberately less modern foundation. And “Upphaf,” an earlier single, was the band’s first genuine excursion into acoustic territory.
If you want the full picture of where this lands, our complete Amon Amarth discography ranking covers everything up to this point, and they sit at the very top of the Viking metal canon.
The other album out today, and the most emotionally exposed track on this list.
Witch is In This Moment’s ninth album and their first for Better Noise, out now. “I Want To Believe” is track two and it features Rory Rodriguez of Dayseeker, whose vulnerable clean vocal set against Maria Brink’s theatrical menace is the record’s most anticipated moment.
Brink’s own description is the best thing written about it: the song is the flicker of light you protect as shadows close in. Reaching for a hand that’s slipping away, knowing endings are inevitable, and clinging to the glow of hope anyway. The quiet fight to believe in light while the world shifts.
Rodriguez said the two bands toured together last year and In This Moment were so kind to them that he jumped at the chance to make something together.
It’s a pairing that makes complete sense if you know both bands — Dayseeker have built a career on exactly that kind of devastating clean vocal, which is why they turn up on our guide to bands like Sleep Token.
Witch is also the most guest-heavy record In This Moment have made: Kim Dracula on “Heretic,” Kat Von D on a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall,” and it closes with a reading of Nine Inch Nails’ “Something I Can Never Have.”
Two minutes and forty-two seconds. Gets in, throws hands, gets out.
The title track of Hatebreed’s ninth album, out November 6 via BLKIIBLK — their first full-length since 2020’s Weight Of The False Self, and a new label after years on Nuclear Blast. Longtime collaborator Chris “Zeuss” Harris produced.
The band’s own description is unimprovable: a groove-driven anthem with the kind of breakdown that leads to bloody noses, bruised limbs and broken teeth in the pit.
That’s the whole appeal. Nobody presses play on a Hatebreed song hoping they’ve discovered synth-pop. Chugging riffs, thick groove, d-beat aggression, Jamey Jasta’s bark, and a breakdown built to turn a venue floor into a disaster area. Zero wasted motion, three decades running.
Two things deeper in the record are worth flagging. John Tardy of Obituary appears on “Sacrifice Season.” And the album closes with Hatebreed covering Corrosion Of Conformity’s “Poison Planet” — which is neat timing, given CoC are out on a US co-headline run with The Sword this November.
The visualiser leans on security cameras, the American flag and hands working puppet strings. Subtle it is not.
The title track of album eleven, out November 6 via Sumerian.
We covered this on yesterday’s show, so the short version: it was recorded in Tennessee with Zach Householder of Whitechapel and mixed by Jeff Dunne — the first time Carnifex have worked with that production team, and a genuinely interesting pairing.
Whitechapel spent the last decade making deathcore atmospheric and emotionally heavy rather than just brutal. Carnifex have always been the blunt instrument of that scene. If any of Householder’s instinct rubbed off, this could be their most interesting record in years.
Ten tracks. Chaney Crabb of Entheos guests on “The Process Of Pain.” Song titles include “Licking Love From A Knife” and “Heart Made of Teeth,” so nobody’s gone soft.
They’re touring relentlessly behind it — North America with All Shall Perish through September, Furnace Fest in October, then a twenty-date European and UK run with Despised Icon and Suffocation.
Track nine from Nightbloom, out October 2 via Judge & Jury Records, and released as a single today.
The album is produced by Howard Benson — My Chemical Romance, Halestorm, Skillet, Daughtry — which is a serious swing at something bigger from a band who’ve spent fifteen years as one of the most ferocious live acts in American metal.
Heidi Shepherd has been unusually open about where this record came from. She’s said she found herself in a stretch of darkness she couldn’t shake, shut off social media, started therapy for the first time in her life, and wrote her way through what came back up. Her summary of the album: it isn’t about the suffering, it’s about the survival.
It’s also their first full album written entirely as a single-vocalist band following Carla Harvey’s departure in 2024.
They’re out with Chad Gray of Mudvayne through the autumn, plus Louder Than Life next month.
Mastodon — “Barbarians Blood”
Amon Amarth — “Eight Legs Of Thunder”
In This Moment — “I Want To Believe” (feat. Dayseeker)
Hatebreed — “Fatal Paradox”
Carnifex — “More Than Misery”
Butcher Babies — “Leaving California”
All six are in rotation on the Loaded Radio stream this weekend.
Six standouts released the week of August 28, 2026: Mastodon’s “Barbarians Blood,” Amon Amarth’s “Eight Legs Of Thunder,” In This Moment’s “I Want To Believe” featuring Dayseeker, Hatebreed’s “Fatal Paradox,” Carnifex’s “More Than Misery” and Butcher Babies’ “Leaving California.”
Yes, released August 28, 2026 via Loma Vista Recordings. It’s the band’s ninth studio album and their first without founding guitarist Brent Hinds, who departed in March 2025 and died in a motorcycle accident that August. Nick Johnston joins on guitar with João Nogueira on keyboards, and the record features guest appearances from Geezer Butler and Josh Homme.
The Allfather Awakens arrives October 2, 2026 via Metal Blade Records. It’s Amon Amarth’s thirteenth studio album, produced by Jacob Hansen across two recording sessions in Denmark. “Eight Legs Of Thunder” is the final single, following “Gjallarhorn” and the band’s first acoustic track, “Upphaf.”
Rory Rodriguez, vocalist of Southern California band Dayseeker. The track appears on Witch, In This Moment’s ninth album and their debut release for Better Noise Music, out August 28, 2026. The album also features Kim Dracula and Kat Von D.
Six songs, two albums out today, and one band’s thirteenth record on the way. Which one’s getting the repeat plays — and what did we miss? Drop it in the comments. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream, where all six are in rotation — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
The post Best New Metal Songs This Week: Mastodon, Amon Amarth, In This Moment & More appeared first on Loaded Radio.
Silver Lining Music [Release date 26.08.26] Sha-Boom appeared in 1988 and disappeared almost as quickly in 1992. Fast forward to 2005 and they released ‘The Race Is On’, then radio silence for a couple of decades until they re-emerge with … Continue reading
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Their new album “Pure Ecstasy” has also just been released.
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Album #14 appears to be on the horizon.
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