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Last Friday, Krallice released Scour Order, their 16th album in 18 years. It’s as dense and cathartic as anything the band has ever put to tape; a reminder of where they came from but also how far they’ve come. It captures the paradox at the heart of Krallice’s sound: music that is both extremely technical yet undeniably organic, precise not in a purely mathematical or perfectionist sense, but in a way that feels intensely studied and practiced.

From the thunderous percussion-forward opening of “Agonal Shining,” Scour Order immediately announces itself. This is the start of a new chapter for Krallice, and though its members have returned to its original formation–Mick Barr on guitar (right), Colin Marston on guitar (left), Nick McMaster on bass, and Lev Weinstein on drums–this is not quite the same Krallice that released Dimensional Bleedthrough or Mass Cathexis. Rather, Scour Order falls somewhere between their first two phases, blending the ascendant tremolo harmonies of the first four albums with the knotty counterpoint of their mid 2010s releases. As with any Krallice album, the band continues to push itself to its limits, not content to merely settle for the familiar. 

Langdon Hickman and I chatted with Colin Marston about the genesis of the new album, the creative and practical choices behind Krallice’s numerous permutations, and the core principles that have kept the band fiercely inventive nearly two decades after its inception. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and continuity.

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Alex: Scour Order is unique for a number of reasons, the first being that it was a commission from the folks at Roadburn Festival. How did you get in touch with one another? How did that collaboration come about?

We’d technically been in touch with them for a really long time, maybe over 10 years. I can’t remember all the details because I’m typically not the one who does social media and all that stuff–that’s all done by a different band member.

Anyway, they had asked us to play a long time ago, but we just really didn’t focus on touring and playing shows for most of the time we’ve been a band. We did a little bit of touring in the really early days, and in the middle years we did a couple of tours. But our focus has been more on the writing and recording, so it never made sense to us for whatever reason to play Roadburn. I had also had some mixed experiences playing festivals with Gorguts over the years, and was just like “You know what? I don’t know if Krallice is a festival band”. It really didn’t make that much sense to me to present the music in that way. I also didn’t fully understand what the vibe of Roadburn was, and that it was kind of the anti-fest fest! It’s not like your German metal fest that I was playing a lot of with Gorguts, so when the idea of doing it this year came up, we talked about taking a slightly non-standard approach. 

The idea that they presented to us was for us to do three separate sets at the fest and have one set be a set of brand new music, which was really exciting to us, but then also a set of our old material, and then also a set of our synth material from our last few albums. That seemed cool to us because we really like having a challenge, and having a deadline to write new music seemed fun. We’d also been talking about the idea of actually playing more shows and touring more, so we made the decision to go back to our old instrumentation, where Mick and I play guitar and [Nick] McMaster plays bass, because that’s a more practical touring lineup. The synth setup that I’ve been using for the last bunch of records just kept growing and growing, and it was very impractical by the end of it. We did a couple of tours with it anyway, and those were really, really fun, but it just doesn’t make sense to fly to Europe with like six analog synths and spend two hours setting up and tearing down every night. 

Alex: That’s a very practical explanation for the switch in instruments!

Yeah! It really was just for practicality–it was not a creative decision. But the thing is, we’re kind of cool with the practical decision becoming a creative decision, and just being like “OK, yeah, we can do that. We’ll do something different.” Even though it’s kind of a return to the old thing, we know that it wouldn’t sound exactly like our old music because we’re just different people now.

Langdon: About that relationship between the creative and the practical decisions…is that consistent across records, or does it change from album to album?

We typically do make music intuitively. The only times that we’ve done something that was very much a concrete decision usually just have to do with the instrumentation, not necessarily a musical direction. We sort of let the instrumentation inform the musical direction.

We did a weird album in 2020–it came out in 2021–called Demonic Wealth, which was your typical “pandemic album” where we couldn’t get together, so we’re like “OK, what can we do where we all do something remote?” That album that we made–the process was basically like Lev, our drummer, just improvised drums, recording on his cell phone using the voice memo, so it sounds like a total mess. Then he sent these recordings to me, and I kind of stitched together bits of what he did and wrote songs over it. On that record, I was like, “Oh, maybe it would be cool if I played guitar on half the songs but played synth only on half the songs.” And then as we worked on it more, Mick was like, “You know what? I don’t really want to play guitar on this record–I just want to do the vocals,” so we ended up with a record that was four songs of me playing all the guitar and all the synths, and then four songs where I only played synth and there’s no guitar. 

Then, once we started being able to get together after that record, I was like “When we come back to making normal Krallice records where we get together and practice and write together, maybe I’ll just stay on keyboards, and that could be interesting. I don’t remember exactly how it went down, but I think I said something like that, and Mick and McMaster were like “Well, maybe we’ll switch instruments and have Mick be the bass player and Nick be the guitar player, and now we’re a one-guitar band, now we have a different bass player, and there’s this whole different vibe to our writing style.”

So we didn’t decide to get “more atmospheric” or “more traditionally black metal” or any of those things, but maybe those were kind of a byproduct of us just playing different instruments. And I certainly write differently on keyboards than I write on guitar, and Mick, you know, I think writes differently on bass than he does on guitar and so on.

Langdon: It’s hard for me to shake from my mind how I first encountered you guys, which was the Behold…the Arctopus/Orthrelm split. What stuck with me even since I was a teen–when I was first getting into your music–is that from the outside, it’s difficult to tell what is composed in a Robert Fripp-ian kind of way and what is pure intuitive usages of technicality and more evocative textures. I’m curious about the relationship between those two.

I would say that even when our music seems very deliberate or technical, it’s not like we go into writing songs with some kind of overarching plan. Typically, one of us just presents our part with a structure, so if I’m on guitar, I’ll write a song, but it’s just my part. Then we’ll hand it off to all the other band members, and they write their parts over top. And usually, we’re not playing the same thing in Krallice. There’s times when we are, and we go back and forth with that, but often, it’s like we each have our own voice happening on top of each other. So in that sense, it’s very much felt out because there’s not this sense of one person calling all the shots. 

That’s very different than Behold [the Arctopus] on that Orthrelm split you were talking about. That was a piece where I wrote literally every note that every musician in the band played. So it was a very different approach from Krallice, and I won’t necessarily say that’s why it sounds different because with Behold, I’m just drawing from slightly different influences than with Krallice and had a different idea about what the band was supposed to be. I’m playing the Warr guitar, which just kind of lends itself to different kinds of writing. That’s mostly a tapping instrument. So the fact that Krallice is picked guitar means I’m using tremolo picking much more, and that became a very defining part of Krallice’s sound.

Also, with Krallice, we did originally set out to make a black metal record, so there’s definitely a black metal influence even though we never really made a “proper” black metal album, and we’re not strictly a black metal band. It just started with the idea of trying to make a black metal record, but pretty quickly, we realized it was just its own thing, especially after the first four albums we made. 

Between Years Past Matter and Ygg Huur, we made a concerted effort to drop the black metal thing almost entirely, and we really didn’t talk about what we were going to do stylistically. At that point, because there was no subgenre in mind, it was just a band that the four of us had together, and this was the music we wrote. 

There was even less of a plan with our middle-era stuff, which I guess ended up being a little more similar to Orthrelm or Behold the Arctopus–maybe a little busier musically, the song lengths became a little shorter, by and large, the music became denser and more technical. 

Then, once we switched instruments and did the synthy stuff, it became about more long songs and more atmosphere again. At this point, we’ve gone back and forth a bunch.

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Alex: On Bandcamp and social media, your band’s bio–which is amazing, by the way–is “black metal or not”, which is a great descriptor of Krallice’s sound. But that makes me wonder, there have been these big shifts, the changes in instrumentation that you discussed, but also deliberate genre shifts away from what was done prior. Throughout all of the different phases or periods that the band has gone through over the last 18 years, what have been some of the guiding principles, or the ethos–things that have remained distinctly Krallice across all of it? You mentioned that extremely collaborative approach to songwriting as one. Is there anything else that you would say is–if not part of the Krallice sound, is part of the Krallice experience of writing and composing?

This seems like a cop-out answer, but it’s almost like not having a plan is the vibe. We just like playing together, and we like making music, and we make too much of it–that much is clear–but you know, it’s kind of rare, I think, that you have a band where it’s all the original members, and we actually like being around each other and making music together. So at this point, it almost has more to do with just the four of us than any kind of a plan for a certain style of music.

Now, as we’re all in very firm middle age, the talk is now, “How do we make this band like…less physically exhausting? How do we make it less loud?” [Laughs] You know, all the stuff that just becomes less fun as you get older. We still really love playing together, but it’s like…a fucking four-hour band practice where you’re blasting yourself with distortion does not quite have the same charm it used to have. 

What else? I guess we’re all pretty open to changing things up…or not. There’s not this rule that we have to have every album be a whole new sound, maybe like a King Crimson vibe, where it’s like the band goes away and it comes back, and it’s a new lineup and new sound and a new album. We’ve never really had that, but we also don’t make the same record over and over and over again forever. So somewhere in between, maybe a little more like a Neurosis or something where it evolves over time, and there’s a very big difference between where it started and where it ended, but you can trace the evolution across the records. Because we make albums pretty regularly, maybe it’s harder for certain ones to stick out, but there’s still a lot of variety if you trace the line through all of them.

Langdon: From your perspective, what do each of the four members bring to the band? From my end, it feels like maybe Nick and Lev, especially Lev, bring more of the black metal, and that you and Mick bring the more avant-garde and progressive wing, but I’m curious what it feels like from inside the band.

In terms of writing, one other unique thing about Krallice is that both myself, Mick, and McMaster all write songs for the band, so we have three people always writing music, which is another reason we make so much music: it’s not just one person doing all of the composition. In terms of styles, we’re all metalheads, and we’re all into proggy stuff, so it’s not like there’s one member who’s into black metal or whatever. We all have pretty diverse interests, maybe Mick and McMaster even more than anybody else in terms of different styles of music from all over the place. We all bring a weird aspect in our own way.

There’s often a moment when Mick and I will be having a conversation, being like “Yeah, McMaster’s song is so weird!” and then I’ll be talking with McMaster, like “Yeah, Mick’s song is so weird!” I’m sure they’ve talked about how my music is very counterintuitive in certain ways, so we all just have very idiosyncratic ways of writing and our own logic with putting music together. It’s been really cool over the years to explore each other’s logic in writing music, and I’m sure we all influence each other. Mick was always a big influence on me; going back to Cromtech and Orthrelm, I was a big fan before we started making music together.

Alex: Occasionally you’ve revisited older music like on Go Be Forgotten–there was a track that I didn’t realize was an old Beastlor song. That was such a cool way to take something that was from the late 90’s or early 2000’s and bring it into this project.

To be clear–if it wasn’t clear–Beastlor is Mick’s solo project, so it wasn’t necessarily a cover, and we did a pretty different arrangement compared to the early one. But yeah, Go Be Forgotten is a good example of an anomaly because the album we were working on at the time was the Loüm album, the one with Dave [Edwardson] from Neurosis singing. That was the one that we were working on and practising and focusing on, and the Go Be Forgotten stuff was Mick saying “Well, I’ve got these other songs—let’s make this other album real quick”. Some of the songs we didn’t even play together. It was much more of an experiment. That has a song where I just play synth–the title track–and I do Warr guitar solos.

So we’ve tried a lot of different approaches over the years, and I think it’s just an openness to just doing whatever. It’s still going to sound like us no matter what we do, but there’s not this pressure that we put on ourselves to make the best album ever, or something that’s super distinctive. It’s both an advantage and a disadvantage because it’s more striking when a band doesn’t make music as often and they put something out and it’s very different from the last album. That’s really cool. I like it when bands do that, but at the same time, from being in the band, the process of just constantly working on stuff and never having much of a dead period creatively has been really great, and it’s really made the last 18 years fly by.

Langon: You in particular have quite a number of projects. I’ve talked with Lev about this a bit, and he was like “I genuinely don’t know how he does it!” How do you balance making that much music on your own, let alone the production and engineering end? Because one of the most recent Indricothere records was 14 hours long (by the way, I crave that).

Well, in terms of having the studio and having a lot of bands, those help each other, so the fact that I’m just here in the studio all the time means that we never have to worry about where we’re going to record! We practice where we record. That makes it very comfortable to make a lot of music. All I do is work on music. I don’t really have any other interests, I don’t have a family other than parents and a brother, I don’t have kids—there’s not a lot of other stuff going on in my life. Music-making is just my entire life, so it’s both what I do for work and what I do for fun. I think it’s because I’m such an unbalanced person in that sense that it’s just conducive to doing a lot of work [laughs]. And I find too that the more work that I make, the more work I make.

I had a really really active period between 2020 and…let’s say 2022 where I started all these new recording projects and collaborations and solo projects and stuff, and somehow I was making and releasing one to three albums every month. And that period is done [laughs]. Like, ever since I moved out of my studio and spent all this year property searching and then moving into my new place and trying to get it set up and, you know, managing a building that I own and so on, I’m definitely not making that much music anymore just because there’s other things going on in my life. But I think when I have the time and space in my life to make music, that’s what I’m going to do. For me, it’s really exciting to play new instruments, and for me, working on a new project is really inspiring. It doesn’t feel like “Oh man, now it’s this other burden that I have.” That’s what makes me stoked.

Getting into the world of hardware over the last six years has been really inspiring as well, and it’s caused me to just want to make more music and more projects to have excuses to use these instruments that are really exciting to me. At this point, guitar feels a little boring! Like yeah, I played the guitar for 33 or 34 years, but having a new sound palette to work with makes me want to do nothing but that. 

I’m just a slave to creativity, I guess [laughs].

Alex: Speaking of the new studio, is it officially Menegroth? Menegroth II?

I decided to keep the same name, but I’ve been calling it Menegroth II or New Menegroth. I was planning on changing the name, and then I realized after no good ideas came to me after a year, I was like “Wait—why do I have to change the name? Wait—maybe it’s a better idea to not change the name because people already know the old name, so why would I change it?”

Alex: It’s become an institution! And to preface the next question, one of my current internet white whales is this 15 year old video of you doing a tour of the original Menegroth.

That’s still on Youtube, I think.

Alex: It was on Scion A/V’s channel, but that whole thing folded a while back.

Oh, so that channel’s just gone.

Alex: Yeah, I found the Youtube metadata on some scraping website, but the video itself is gone! I remember watching that years ago and being fascinated by your recording process. With Menegroth Mk.II, is there anything about the space that has changed the way that you record either other bands or Krallice?

In some ways, it’s very much the same, and in some ways, it’s very different. The space I’m in now, was not built to be a studio. This was like an antique store that I took over, and the live room I have now is really crazy. It’s way bigger than my last one, and it’s super reverberant. It has this stone flooring, so it just has this really crazy natural reverb. I’ve always wanted a room like this to work in. So now here I am, and I don’t have isolated booths or anything yet. I’ve kind of gone back to a little bit of the older way I used to record in my basement studio before Menegroth, where a lot of the times, if I was recording the whole band together, I’ll just run the guitars direct, and then after we’re done recording, I run them back out into the amps rather than setting up all the amps at once in different isolation booths. So there are some technical differences.

The vibe out here is totally different because I’m not in New York City anymore. I’m up in the Poconos, so it’s rural, but it’s dense rural, and it’s a lot of city transplants. It’s like a particular kind of non-urban environment. It’s really beautiful here. It’s the exact opposite of downtown New York City: there are trees, and I have a creek running right by my place, and it’s nice to not be in an urban environment. I’ve never not lived in a super urban environment. This is my first time in any situation like this, and I feel like it’s really what I’ve wanted for a really long time: to get out of the city. It’s nice. 

Now, when we have band practice and recordings, people come out for the weekend. They stay here. It’s not like everybody’s watching the clock, like “I gotta get out of here in an hour”, so there’s a more laid-back feeling, which is cool. But it’s also a trek for Nick and Lev to come out from New York to do Krallice practice and so on—that’s not lost on me. Lev, our drummer, used to live literally upstairs from my old studio, and then he got evicted, and we moved him like right next door when the building got sold. Then I had a few years left on my lease, which is why I was able to stay until 2024. So there are advantages and disadvantages, but overall, it’s a better, bigger studio, even though it’s not as “pro”. It actually sounds better, and I’m really happy with the results I’ve been getting out here so far.

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Scour Order is out now on Profound Lore Records.

There were still 15 concerts scheduled through mid-September when his tour suddenly screeched to a halt. Continue reading…

🔥 Who Will Rise as This Week’s Champion on the MDR Battle Of The Bands? 🔥
And who will dominate next month as Band of the Month on Metal Devastation Radio?
Last month’s winners, OKL’S FRUITLOOPS, crushed the competition with a staggering 5,083,542 VOTES , claiming the title of Band of the Month on Metal Devastation Radio! You can check them out HERE !
This is the weekly championship edition of the Band Of The Month – Battle Of The Bands that we host every month on MDR!
How does it work?
Every Monday, we launch a new poll featuring bands that submit music each week on metaldevastationradio.com. Voting runs until Friday at 9PM EST .
Each Friday night , at the start of The Zach Moonshine Show , I’ll be spinning the Top Six weekly winners , and announcing the #1 band of the week live on air — getting thousands of listens on Mixcloud !
At the end of the month , all weekly votes are added up, and the band with the highest total votes becomes our Band of the Month !
Winning Band of the Month gets:
A featured post on our Facebook page, reaching thousands of fans
A front-page spotlight on metaldevastationradio.com , which pulls in hundreds of thousands of views every month
A free PR email blast from Metal Devastation PR, hitting 40,000+ contacts including labels, zines, stations, and more
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If you want the world to know who your band is, this is the easiest way to make it happen!
💥 Want in on the next battle?
Comment below with your band name and we’ll add you to next week’s poll — or email me at zach@metaldevastationradio.com with “Battle Submission” in the subject line.
Bands can compete as many times as they want , and if you enter multiple weeks in the same month, your votes combine toward the Band of the Month title!
👇 Click on the bands below to vote as many times as you like, or add your own! Poll closes Friday, September 25th at 9PM EST!




Who Will Rise as This Week’s Champion on the MDR Battle Of The Bands? 09/22/26 – 09/25/26

Leprous singer Einar Solberg began his first-ever solo tour at The Garage in London this weekend, with a powerful cinematic performance that showcased a wide range of emotions, along with great arrangements and, of course, his exceptional vocal ability. 

Einar Solberg

The Garage, London – 18 September 2026

Words: Bogdan Bele

Photography: Rich Davies (Live Wire Music)

Tonight’s headliner takes the stage as the closer of a four-act bill. More on the other three a little later. Despite Leprous’ popularity, The Garage is not full tonight. However, progressive music fans who have missed this performance have many reasons to regret it.

While Solberg’s solo career is, inevitably, in part related musically to what he does in his day job, those having seen both live will agree that this is a completely different proposition. 

This tour is meant to promote his latest solo release, the exceptional Vox Occulta, an album featuring the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. And, if I may say, an album that puts wide cinematic musical landscapes first. Huge symphonic arrangements take precedence (together with Einar’s voice), rather than taking the somewhat traditional route of an orchestra complementing a traditional Metal band.

This is exactly the thing that makes Vox Occulta so special. If you have not yet listened to it, I can only recommend it. The record is an experience in itself. 

However, while Vox Occulta as a studio project must have been a very complex endeavour, one could only wonder how much more challenging it would be to do justice to those songs live. There was no need to have worried, even if the new record makes up the bulk of a set that lasts around an hour and a half.

In order to make this happen, no less than seven other musicians joined Einar Solberg on stage for this tour. Interestingly enough, some of them are also part of the opening acts. Bass player Eero Maijala is also a member of Royal Sorrow, and Raphael Weinroth-Browne has played a short cello set earlier in the evening. It is a phenomenal band, one that completely fills The Garage’s rather small stage. 

They come on dressed in monk-like hoods, and get straight into Stella Mortua, from the new opus I was mentioning. At which point any doubt as to how the arrangements would work is dispelled. It sounds full and powerful, the electric instruments and keyboards making up for any missing sounds.

I can only imagine the amount of rehearsal that this has involved. The band is tight, and Einar’s voice sounds as amazing as everyone remembers it.

As the show progresses into the next track, the monk attire comes off, and underneath it is the elegant suit on the cover of the album, complete with a bow tie. One can only imagine that this show would not be out of place in a theatre. The orchestrations are so beautifully cinematic (that word again), and the playing so tight throughout that you can only let yourself get carried away. 

As I mentioned, this is a set that relies a lot on the new tracks, all sounding spectacular and showcasing the ridiculous range Solberg has. It goes from lower notes into his trademark falsetto, as well as the harsh vocals that are not as present in what he does with Leprous most recently.

This is not as much a Metal/rock/symphonic show (you pick one) as it is a journey through a range of feelings and states of mind. They include those of the man relaxed and feeling good in his own skin, such as as Serenitas, an absolutely gorgeous, somewhat quiet, track. Another example is A Beautiful Life, possibly one of his best-known solo tracks.

He does mention at one point that playing such songs might not show him as a tortured artist, but that things are going well. 

He does alternate it with forays into the dark side, like Splitting The Soul, featuring Ihsahn on the album version, which sounds as heavy as you would expect. 

One can not help but feel that this is a man baring his soul in front of his audience. This is more poignant than ever on The Last Milestone, coincidentally a Leprous song, a dense track, which the singer explains is about his father’s last year, and the time they spent together then, before his parents’ decision to end his life.

With the next track, an imagining of his last moments, I look around me and see tears in the eyes of some of those around me. 

It is a powerful moment, part of an extremely powerful performance throughout. If you are able to see Einar Solberg live, whether you are a Leprous fan or not, you are certainly in for something very special. 

Royal Sorrow

Dressed in rag-like outfits that could remind one somewhat of the Mad Max series, the Finnish band is the last one of the night before the headliner. They give an energetic modern progressive performance. This is melodic progressive Metal with catchy choruses and riffs, as well as the occasional bout of electronica. 

It is well played and, on occasion, crushingly heavy. I personally find Covert, their new single, a highlight of the set. As mentioned, their bass player is also doing a great job in Einar Solberg’s band. 

They are very popular with a part of the crowd, which is singing their lyrics with them. A solid performance. 

Raphael Weinroth-Browne

If Royal Sorrow was a good fit for tonight’s headliner when it comes to the heavier stuff, the Canadian cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne is the one covering the classical side of things somewhat, as his cello playing is as Metal as it gets. 

When he steps onto the stage, alone with his string instrument, I can not help but think that it would become very odd, very fast. That is not the case, as he loops sequences, building songs from superimposed repeating parts, as well as showing off his virtuosity. It is certainly a joy to listen to, and so is his latest album, Empyrean. 

Jovian Moons

The French band is opening tonight’s show. It was very much worth getting there early on. I had listened to their record a few days prior and was impressed with their ability to move around a range of styles, while retaining a pop sensibility. 

The live show is no different. It is funky at times, trippy at others, even venturing into passages with a post rock feel, or cinematic ones (the word of the night).

Invisible is a highlight, with its interesting textures, at the crossroads where Air meets Steven Wilson, and with a driving bass line. An act to keep an eye on in the future.

The post Einar Solberg / Cinematic Emotion Meets Powerhouse Vocals At The Garage first appeared on MetalTalk – Heavy Metal News, Reviews and Interviews.

A recording from 2018 forms the basis of NUCLEARHAMMER’s newly unveiled EP, Xaos 333. The Toronto trio’s three-track release is now streaming in full through the No Gleaming Light YouTube channel, ahead of its September 25, 2026 arrival on CD and 12-inch vinyl via Iron Bonehead Productions. Xaos 333 is the band’s first recording to […]

Source

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the proudly messy Philadelphia DIY crew Empath, but they’re still going, and we think of them fondly. We recognized their last LP, the 2022 sophomore joint Visitor as an Album Of The Week. Empath haven’t released any new music in a few years, but they toured earlier this year. They haven’t broken up or anything. I’d assume that they’ll make another record at some point. In the meantime, bandleader Catherine Elicson has something else on deck — her first-ever solo album, which bears the viscerally tangible title River Of Fat.

The post Empath’s Catherine Elicson Announces Debut Solo Album <em>River Of Fat</em>: Hear “Figure” appeared first on Stereogum.

Helldrifter Begin Preparing New Material Following Busy Touring Cycle

German melodic death metal outfit Helldrifter are already looking toward their next chapter, with the band confirming that work on new material will officially begin after the summer.
German melodic death metal band Helldrifter are gearing up for the next phase of their career.
Following an extensive period of touring and live activity, the southern German outfit has announced that they will begin working on new material after the summer. While the songwriting process remains in its early stages, the band has revealed that a substantial amount of new music is already beginning to take shape behind the scenes.
The announcement comes as Helldrifter approach the end of a particularly active touring cycle supporting their latest release, Shell of Inexistence .
Over the past year, the band has taken their melodic death metal attack across Germany, including an extensive support run with Dutch death metal veterans Sinister . Helldrifter subsequently continued their campaign with a series of club shows throughout Germany, building on the momentum generated by the release.
The band are now preparing for their final festival appearances of the summer before turning their attention toward songwriting and the creation of what will become their next release.
Although Helldrifter aren’t revealing many details about the new material just yet, their latest announcement suggests that the band isn’t short on ideas.
Lead vocalist Billy Kolins comments:


“Something new is brewing, and we’re incredibly excited about what’s coming. It will take some time, but one thing is for sure: there will be a lot of new material.”


That last part should certainly get the attention of anyone who has been following the band.
With the Shell of Inexistence touring cycle winding down, Helldrifter are entering a different phase. Rather than immediately rushing another release into production, the band will have time to develop the material and determine where they want to take their sound next.
For a band operating in the melodic death metal territory occupied by acts such as Carcass, At The Gates, Benediction, and Death , expectations will naturally be high. For now, however, the details remain firmly under wraps.
What is known is that Helldrifter have new music brewing, the writing process is set to begin in earnest after the summer, and according to Kolins, there will be a lot of new material coming out of the process.
For fans who have been following the band through their recent touring run, the next chapter is already beginning to take shape.
Listen To Shell of Inexistence


For Fans Of

Carcass • At The Gates • Benediction • Death

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Bands with no original members are all over metal, and most fans only notice when it’s a name they grew up with. These are 23 metal and hard rock bands still playing live with nobody left from the lineup that started them. Some lost their founders to death, some to lawsuits, and some to a rehearsal-room coup before they’d recorded a note.

I’ve ranked them from the weakest claim to the name up to the strongest. Two of the biggest bands in heavy music are on this list, and the one at number one has a frontman most people would swear started it.

Last Updated: September 2026

How We Decided Who Counts

The rule is strict. An original member is someone who was in the band when it formed, either under the name it uses now or the name it started with. Anyone who joined afterwards doesn’t count, even if it was two weeks afterwards and even if they wrote every song you know.

The list runs across nearly every corner of the genre, from grindcore and thrash to folk metal and metalcore. That rule puts some bands on it that will make people angry, and I’m fine with that. Where a band only qualifies on a technicality, the entry says so.

The ranking comes down to one question. Has the current lineup earned the name? That means how many of the records you love were made by the people on stage now, and how long they’ve carried it. At the bottom are the bands playing on the name. At the top are the bands where the name belongs to the people using it.

23. Iron Butterfly

Iron Butterfly started in San Diego in 1966, formed by Doug Ingle, Jack Pinney, Greg Willis and Danny Weis. Ron Bushy came in that year, and Lee Dorman and Erik Brann arrived in 1967. That’s the lineup behind In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, the 17-minute proto-metal slab that went four times platinum.

All four of them are gone. Brann died in 2003, Dorman in 2012 and Bushy in 2021. Ingle, the last survivor of that classic lineup, died on 24 May 2024.

The band playing today is Eric Barnett, Jawn Star, Dave Whiston and Bernie Pershey. They first played together at HRH Prog in October 2024 and have done occasional shows since, including a cruise. They aren’t really touring. They turn up now and then.

It sits at the bottom because nobody alive today played on the record that made the name worth anything.

22. Quiet Riot

Quiet Riot formed in Los Angeles in 1973 around Kevin DuBrow, Randy Rhoads and Kelly Garni, and took the Quiet Riot name in 1975. Rhoads left for Ozzy at the end of the decade, and his story is its own tragedy.

DuBrow was the band. He sang Metal Health, which in November 1983 became the first heavy metal album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. He died in November 2007. After that, drummer Frankie Banali kept it going. He wasn’t a founder either, but he’d played on Metal Health. Banali died on 20 August 2020, and the band carried on at his request.

Today it’s Rudy Sarzo on bass, who first joined in 1978, with Alex Grossi on guitar, Johnny Kelly of Type O Negative on drums, and a singer’s seat that keeps changing hands.

Sarzo is real history. But a Quiet Riot with neither DuBrow nor Banali is a tribute band with a trademark.

21. Saliva

Saliva came out of Bartlett, Tennessee, just outside Memphis, in 1996. The founders were Josey Scott, Wayne Swinny, Chris D’Abaldo, Dave Novotny and Todd Poole. Every Six Seconds broke them with ‘Click Click Boom’, and ‘Always’ made them a radio fixture.

Scott left, and Bobby Amaru has fronted the band for more than a decade. Swinny was the last founder standing. He died on 22 March 2023 after a brain haemorrhage, in the middle of a tour.

Now there are two Saliva-shaped things on the road: Amaru’s lineup, which owns the name, and Josey Scott’s Saliva, launched a couple of months after Swinny’s death. Amaru has worked hard and he’s a good singer. But when the voice on the hits is touring his own version in the same market, it’s hard to argue this is the real one.

20. Vixen

Vixen was Jan Kuehnemund’s band. She started it in St. Paul, Minnesota, and built an all-female hard rock band that major-label radio couldn’t ignore, which they proved with the 1988 debut and ‘Edge of a Broken Heart’. Kuehnemund died of cancer on 10 October 2013, while she was planning a classic-lineup reunion.

Drummer Roxy Petrucci has kept it going. You’ll see her called a founding member, but she joined in 1986 from Madam X. She belongs to the classic lineup, and she arrived years after the band began. Around her now are Britt Lightning on guitar, Julia Lage on bass and Rosa Laricchiuta on vocals.

Petrucci earned her seat on the records that mattered, and the band is fun live. But Janet Gardner’s voice and Kuehnemund’s vision were the band, and neither is on stage.

19. April Wine

Hard rock rather than metal, but it’s the clearest case on this list of a band outliving the man it was built around. April Wine formed in Waverley, Nova Scotia, in 1969. The founders were Myles Goodwyn and the three Henman brothers, David, Ritchie and Jim. The Henmans were all gone by 1973.

Goodwyn was April Wine for five decades. He played his last show on 2 March 2023 and died on 3 December 2023, aged 75.

The band is still on the road, including a 2026 run opening for Triumph. It’s led by Brian Greenway, who first joined in 1977, with Richard Lanthier, Roy Nichol and Marc Parent.

Greenway played on The Nature of the Beast and he’s earned respect. But a band built around one songwriter carrying on without him is the definition of a heritage act.

18. Pantera

Pantera formed in Arlington, Texas, in 1981. The founders were the Abbott brothers, Darrell and Vinnie Paul, with Terry Glaze, Donny Hart and Tommy Bradford. Rex Brown joined in 1982. Phil Anselmo arrived in 1986.

Both of the men who started it are dead. Dimebag was shot and killed on stage in Columbus, Ohio on 8 December 2004. Vinnie Paul died on 22 June 2018.

So the Pantera that reunited in 2022 has no original members. It’s Anselmo and Brown with Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante in the Abbotts’ places. Anselmo and Brown made every record anyone ranks Pantera by, which is why this isn’t lower. But the guitar was the band, and I’ve already said where I stand on the celebration. Wylde plays those parts with love. He still isn’t the man who wrote them.

17. Finntroll

Finntroll started in Helsinki in 1997 as the idea of guitarist Teemu “Somnium” Raimoranta and vocalist Jan “Katla” Jämsen: black metal crossed with the bouncing folk of humppa. It worked. Jaktens tid in 2001 made them the reference point for folk metal.

Somnium died on 16 March 2003. The same year Katla had to stop performing because of a tumour on his vocal cords. Some sources say he kept writing lyrics afterwards, which is the one wrinkle here.

The core of the band now is Skrymer, Trollhorn and Tundra, all in since 1998, one year after the start. That’s close enough to the beginning that it’s their band too. But the two men who invented the sound are gone.

16. Riot V

Riot formed in New York City in 1975, built around guitarist Mark Reale, with drummer Peter Bitelli, bassist Phil Feit and singer Guy Speranza. Reale was Riot for 37 years. He died on 25 January 2012 from complications of Crohn’s disease, and Speranza had died in 2003.

The band came back in 2013 as Riot V, and it’s been a proper band ever since. Mean Streets came out in 2024.

The claim rests on two men. Bassist Don Van Stavern first joined in 1986 and played on Thundersteel. Guitarist Mike Flyntz has been there since 1989. Thundersteel is the album that matters most to most Riot fans, and one of the men who made it is still on stage. That lifts Riot V above most of the heritage acts. Reale’s name is still on every note, though.

15. GWAR

GWAR came together in Richmond, Virginia, in the mid-1980s. Dave Brockie’s punk band Death Piggy crashed into the Slave Pit, an art space run by Hunter Jackson and Chuck Varga. The costumes and the blood came from the art side, and the songs and the mouth came from Brockie.

Brockie, as Oderus Urungus, died in March 2014. Jackson left in 2000.

The GWAR on tour today has Michael Bishop fronting as Blöthar. He first played with the band in 1987 and came back to lead it after Brockie’s death. Around him are Mike Derks as Balsac, in since 1988, and Brad Roberts as Jizmak, in since 1989.

GWAR might be the only band on this list built to survive this. The characters are the band, and the characters are still out there spraying crowds on multi-month tours. But nobody replaces Oderus. They didn’t try, which is the right call.

14. Stratovarius

Stratovarius began in Helsinki in 1984 as Black Water. The founders were Tuomo Lassila, Staffan Stråhlman and John Vihervä. Timo Tolkki joined in 1985 and turned it into his band, writing the power metal records that defined it. Lassila, the last founder, left in 1995.

Tolkki quit in 2008 and now plays the old songs as Timo Tolkki’s Strato.

That leaves Stratovarius without its founders and without its main songwriter. It still has singer Timo Kotipelto, in since 1994, and keyboard player Jens Johansson, in since the mid-1990s. Both played on Episode and Visions. Matias Kupiainen has spent nearly two decades writing a new chapter.

This is a working band that still makes records. The founders had checked out before anyone knew the name.

13. Of Mice & Men

Of Mice & Men was formed in 2009 by Austin Carlile and Jaxin Hall. Hall was gone within a year. Carlile, the voice and the face, left on 30 December 2016 because of his health.

The current lineup qualifies on a technicality. Drummer Valentino Arteaga and guitarist Phil Manansala were both recruited in 2009, straight after Carlile and Hall started the band. They aren’t founders by the strict rule, but they’ve been there from essentially day one.

Aaron Pauley, in since 2012, took over lead vocals, and Alan Ashby has been on guitar since The Flood. They’ve made more records without Carlile than with him, including Another Miracle in 2025.

This is the rare case where losing the singer made the band. Pauley’s era is a band that knows exactly what it is.

12. Norma Jean

Norma Jean started out in Douglasville, Georgia, in 1997 as Luti-Kriss. Josh Scogin, Scottie Henry, Chris Day, Josh Swofford and Daniel Davison were in that first lineup. Scogin sang Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child and then left to start The Chariot.

Cory Brandan took over in 2004, and his first album with them was O God, the Aftermath, which picked up a Grammy nomination for its packaging. Guitarist Chris Day was the last founder left, and he was gone by the mid-2010s.

Brandan has now been Norma Jean for twenty-plus years and most of the discography. The version of this band most people know has always been his. Metalcore’s revolving doors don’t usually end this well.

11. Asphyx

Asphyx was formed in Oldenzaal in the Netherlands in 1987 by drummer Bob Bagchus and guitarist Tony Brookhuis. Martin van Drunen came over from Pestilence in 1990 and sang The Rack, the doom-soaked death metal record the band is still measured against.

Bagchus stayed the longest. When he left in March 2014, Asphyx was left with no original members.

Van Drunen is the voice people hear when they think of Asphyx, and he’s still out front. His band has been Paul Baayens on guitar since 2007, Alwin Zuur on bass since 2010 and Stefan Hüskens on drums since 2014. Necroceros in 2021 proved it wasn’t a nostalgia run.

The drummer who started it is gone, but the voice of the album that made it matter is still screaming.

10. Dark Angel

Dark Angel began in Downey, California, in 1981 as Shellshock. The founders were Don Doty, Jim Durkin, Rob Yahn and Mike Andrade, and they renamed the band in 1983. Eric Meyer and Gene Hoglan joined in 1984. Darkness Descends came out in 1986, and it’s still one of the fastest, most punishing thrash records ever pressed.

Durkin stopped playing live in 2020 and died on 8 March 2023, leaving Dark Angel with no original members.

But look who’s left. Hoglan and Meyer played on Darkness Descends. Ron Rinehart, in since 1987, sang Leave Scars. Mike Gonzalez has been on bass since 1986. That’s most of the band’s classic era on one stage. Extinction Level Event came out in 2025, and they toured it.

Durkin was the founder. The records were made by the people still in the room.

9. Chelsea Grin

Chelsea Grin started in Salt Lake City in 2007, first under the name Ahaziah. The founders were Alex Koehler, Chris Kilbourn, Austin Marticorena and Michael Stafford, with Andrew Carlston on drums. Koehler lasted the longest, and his exit in April 2018 left the band with no founders at all.

Bassist David Flinn joined in 2009 and has played on every Chelsea Grin album. Tom Barber came over from Lorna Shore in 2018 and turned the vocals into something frightening. Stephen Rutishauser has been on guitar since 2015.

The Suffer in Hell and Suffer in Heaven double is the heaviest thing the band has made. The strongest period in its history came after the last founder walked out. That’s rare enough to rank them this high.

8. Accept

This is the most argued-over entry on the list. Accept’s roots go back to Solingen in 1968, when Udo Dirkschneider started a band called Band X. It became Accept in the early 1970s. Wolf Hoffmann joined at the end of 1975 when the band was looking for a new guitarist. He was 16.

Accept itself counts its history from 1976, and on that count Hoffmann is an original member. On the strict rule, the band was already running when he walked in, so he isn’t.

Either way, Udo is gone. He was fired in 1987, came back twice, and turned down the 2009 reunion. Mark Tornillo has fronted Accept since. Peter Baltes left in 2018 after 42 years.

Hoffmann is on every Accept album, including Balls to the Wall. Five decades of riffs is a claim nobody else here can match, technicality or not.

7. Possessed

Possessed formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1980s. The founders were guitarist Mike Torrao and drummer Mike Sus, with singer Barry Fisk and bassist Jeff Andrews. Fisk died in 1983. Jeff Becerra came in on vocals and bass that year.

So Becerra isn’t a founder, even though you’ll constantly see him called one. He was the voice on Seven Churches in 1985, the album that closes with a song called ‘Death Metal’. In 1989 he was shot during a robbery and paralysed from the chest down.

He brought Possessed back anyway. Revelations of Oblivion came out in 2019, and he’s taken Seven Churches around the world for its 40th anniversary, performing from his wheelchair.

The people who formed it didn’t define it. Becerra did, and he’s still out there.

6. In Flames

In Flames was founded in Gothenburg in 1990 by Jesper Strömblad, as a side project that became a proper band in 1993. Anders Fridén came over from Dark Tranquillity in 1995. Björn Gelotte joined the same year, as the drummer.

Strömblad left in February 2010. That was the last of the man who started it.

But Fridén and Gelotte have been In Flames for thirty years. They made The Jester Race, Clayman and Come Clarity, and those albums are why melodic death metal sounds the way it does. They’re all over our ranking of the discography and the melodeath records that matter. Chris Broderick has been on guitar since 2022 and Liam Wilson on bass since 2024.

Strömblad wrote the early blueprint, but the band everyone argues about is Fridén and Gelotte’s.

5. Flotsam and Jetsam

Flotsam and Jetsam began in the Phoenix area in 1981 as Paradox, went through the names Dredlox and Dogz, and became Flotsam and Jetsam around 1983. Drummer Kelly David-Smith was there at the start and was the last founder to leave, in November 2014.

Singer Eric A.K. joined in 1982. That was after the band formed but before the Flotsam and Jetsam name existed, which is why this is disputed. He sang Doomsday for the Deceiver, the 1986 thrash record that took Jason Newsted to Metallica. Guitarist Michael Gilbert joined in 1985 at 17.

They’re still putting out records, and Rats in the Temple arrived in 2026. Eric A.K. has been the voice of this band for more than forty years. If you hear Flotsam, you hear him.

4. Cryptopsy

Cryptopsy formed in Montreal in April 1988 as O.C.D., started by drummer Mike Atkin, guitarist Steve Thibault and vocalist Lord Worm. It became Necrosis, fell apart when Atkin left in 1991, and was rebuilt around Thibault and Lord Worm. Flo Mounier joined that November, and the name Cryptopsy arrived in September 1992.

Lord Worm left for good in 2007. By the 1988 start date, no founder remains.

Here’s the thing, though. Mounier was there before the name was, and he’s on every Cryptopsy album, including None So Vile. He’s one of the most technically terrifying drummers death metal has ever produced. Christian Donaldson and Matt McGachy have been beside him for most of the last twenty years.

It’s disputed, but the band has only ever had one heartbeat, and it’s still playing.

3. Napalm Death

Napalm Death was started in Meriden, near Birmingham, in May 1981 by two schoolkids, Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge, aged about 12 and 13. Ratledge left in 1985. Bullen went at the end of 1986, having sung on the first side of Scum.

Nobody on stage now was there. It doesn’t matter.

Shane Embury joined on bass in 1987. Barney Greenway took the vocals in 1989. Danny Herrera has been on drums since 1991. That trio has made grindcore’s most important body of work from the early 1990s through to Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, and they still tour hard. John Cooke has handled guitar live since Mitch Harris stopped touring in 2014.

If the definition of a band is the people who made the music, Napalm Death has been Embury, Greenway and Herrera’s for more than three decades. The founders built the name as kids. These three made it mean something.

2. Trivium

Trivium formed in Orlando in 1999. The founders were singer Brad Lewter, guitarist Jarred Bonaparte and drummer Travis Smith. Lewter saw a teenage Matt Heafy at a school talent show and brought him in shortly after. Lewter was gone by 2000.

So yes, Trivium has no original members. Heafy wasn’t one of them.

Heafy is also the only reason Trivium is Trivium. He sang and played on Ember to Inferno in 2003 and Ascendancy in 2005, and he’s written the band’s whole story since. Corey Beaulieu has been beside him since 2003 and Paolo Gregoletto since 2004. Alex Rüdinger took over the drums in late 2025.

This is the technicality that proves the rule is silly. Nobody on earth thinks of Trivium without Heafy, and yet he joined a band someone else had started.

1. Opeth

Opeth formed in Täby, just outside Stockholm, in the spring of 1990. The founder was vocalist David Isberg, with Mikael Bergström, Dan Nilsson, Martin Persson and Rille Evén. At an early rehearsal, Isberg brought in a teenage Mikael Åkerfeldt on bass without telling the others. They walked out. Isberg left in early 1992.

So Opeth, one of the most distinctive bands metal has produced, has no original members. Åkerfeldt isn’t one.

He has written every Opeth album, from Orchid in 1995 through Blackwater Park to The Last Will and Testament in 2024. Martín Méndez has been on bass since 1997, Fredrik Åkesson on guitar since 2007 and Joakim Svalberg on keyboards since 2011. Waltteri Väyrynen has been on drums since 2022. If you want to see how much that catalogue covers, our Opeth ranking walks through all of it.

That’s why it’s number one. No other band here belongs so completely to someone who technically didn’t start it.

Near Misses: Bands That Still Have One Founder

These came up in the research and don’t make the list, because one founder is still in the band or the name is in dispute.

• Nazareth. Founding bassist Pete Agnew, there since 1968, is still in the band, alongside his son Lee on drums. Singer Dan McCafferty died in November 2022, but Agnew keeps Nazareth on the right side of the line.
• Helix. Brian Vollmer was in the original 1974 lineup in Kitchener, Ontario, and he’s still singing.
• Venom. Mantas started the band in 1978 and isn’t in it. But Cronos joined within months and is almost universally treated as a founder. He’s still leading it.
• Molly Hatchet. The 1976 recording lineup is all gone, but bassist Tim Lindsey was in the 1971 band and is back in it now.
• Sepultura. It qualifies on the strict rule, since Paulo Jr. joined months after Max and Igor Cavalera started it. The band is ending with a final show in São Paulo in November 2026, though, so it’s no longer a band that’s carrying on.
• Ratt. Nobody is performing as Ratt at all right now. Founder Stephen Pearcy is out playing the songs under his own name.
• The Quireboys. Founding singer Spike was pushed out in 2022, then reunited with other early members and kept the name. The other lineup renamed itself Black Eyed Sons.

The Full Ranking

1. Opeth
2. Trivium
3. Napalm Death
4. Cryptopsy
5. Flotsam and Jetsam
6. In Flames
7. Possessed
8. Accept
9. Chelsea Grin
10. Dark Angel
11. Asphyx
12. Norma Jean
13. Of Mice & Men
14. Stratovarius
15. GWAR
16. Riot V
17. Finntroll
18. Pantera
19. April Wine
20. Vixen
21. Saliva
22. Quiet Riot
23. Iron Butterfly

TL;DR

• 23 metal and hard rock bands are still playing live with no original members in the lineup.
• An original member here means someone in the band when it formed. Anyone who joined later doesn’t count, even weeks later.
• Opeth, Trivium and Napalm Death top the list because the current members made almost every record that matters.
• Pantera, Quiet Riot, Saliva and Iron Butterfly are near the bottom because the people who defined them are gone.
• Nazareth, Helix, Venom and Molly Hatchet don’t qualify, because a founder is still in each band.

FAQ

Which band on this list has earned its name, and which one should have retired it years ago? Tell us where the ranking got it wrong in the comments. Follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post Bands With No Original Members: 23 Metal Bands Still Playing appeared first on Loaded Radio.

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Posted on September 22nd 2026, 3:18pm