Metal Breakdown Daily is one page, every weekday: the episode on the player below and the three stories in print, so you can listen, read, or both. Today leads with the Def Leppard tour 2027 announcement: 45 North American arenas from March 2 to July 2 with Goo Goo Dolls and The Struts, five of them in Canada, and a dollar from every ticket going to City of Hope, the cancer centre treating guitarist Vivian Campbell, who revealed in August that his Hodgkin lymphoma has returned.
Also today: Los Angeles declares Friday, November 13 Billy Idol Day, with a free City Hall acoustic set from Idol and Steve Stevens the day before their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and Deafheaven surprise-release At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb, a three-song EP Kerry McCoy calls ‘the heaviest thing we’ve ever released’.
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Scott Penfold opens today’s Metal Breakdown Daily with the Def Leppard 2027 dates, the five Canadian stops and what a dollar a ticket means for Vivian Campbell, then Billy Idol Day in Los Angeles, Deafheaven’s surprise EP, and a Take on why heavy is back and why it isn’t nostalgia. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and stream the show now.
Def Leppard: 45 Arenas, Five In Canada, And A Dollar A Ticket For Vivian Campbell’s Hospital
Def Leppard’s 2027 North American tour runs 45 arena dates from March 2 at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania to July 2 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, with Goo Goo Dolls and The Struts on the bill and one dollar from every ticket going to City of Hope.
The Canadian stops are Montreal’s Bell Centre on March 5, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on March 9, Quebec City’s Centre Vidéotron on March 11, then Vancouver’s Rogers Arena on May 14 and Edmonton’s Rogers Place on May 16. Madison Square Garden is June 23 and the Hollywood Bowl is May 1. Presales open Monday, October 12 at 10am and the general on-sale is Friday, October 16 through Ticketmaster. The band’s statement is two sentences: ‘2027 just keeps getting better!’ and ‘This is going to be one for the ages!’
The dollar is the story. City of Hope is where Vivian Campbell was treated for Hodgkin lymphoma after his 2013 diagnosis. ‘In the winter of 2023, I got really scared about what was happening and the pace at which it was happening,’ he said in August; the treatment there ‘was my only hope to survive.’ Last year he was reported in remission. ‘Unfortunately, it didn’t stick,’ he said. ‘So the cancer has returned.’ He’s continuing treatment, and he’s listed for the tour.
Campbell has been fighting this longer than most fans realise, across the same years he was rebuilding his relationship with the Dio legacy and playing every Leppard date he could. Forty-five shows with a returning diagnosis is either reckless or the most Vivian Campbell thing imaginable, and anyone who’s spent time around touring musicians knows which. The road is the medicine. For a band whose 1980s run still anchors any list of the decade’s essential records, this is the tour where the ticket price buys something more than a seat.
Billy Idol: Los Angeles Declares November 13 Billy Idol Day, The Day Before His Rock Hall Induction
The City of Los Angeles will proclaim Friday, November 13, 2026 Billy Idol Day, with Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez presenting the decree to Idol and Steve Stevens at a council session, followed by a free acoustic performance on the City Hall steps; the pair are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the next night.
The set happens at City Hall Park in downtown LA, with surprise guests promised and no start time given yet. Twenty-four hours later, November 14, Idol and Stevens join the Class of 2026 at the Peacock Theater a few blocks away, with the ceremony airing in December on ABC and Disney+. After years on the list of acts the Hall kept passing over, the timing reads like a city making a point.
The year earned it. Dream Into It, his first album in over a decade, reached number seven on the US Top Albums chart and number four on the rock chart, with Avril Lavigne, Joan Jett and Alison Mosshart on it. The documentary Billy Idol Should Be Dead is on Hulu. He and Stevens took the Lifetime Achievement Award at the American Music Awards and he performed on that broadcast for the first time in his career. He’s a special guest at Aerosmith’s Hollywood Bowl show on October 29, and Rebel Yell gets an all-analogue One Step pressing on November 20.
There’s a version of Billy Idol’s story where he’s a punchline, the sneer and the fist and the motorcycle, and the documentary title tells you he knows it. Instead he’s seventy, sober, charting, and getting a day named after him by the city that watched him nearly die in it. Plenty of his hair-metal-era peers never got that second act. That’s not a comeback. That’s winning.
Deafheaven: Surprise EP At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb Is ‘The Heaviest Thing We’ve Ever Released’
Deafheaven surprise-released a three-song EP, At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb, with ‘Hunter’, ‘Three Princes’ and ‘Sorry Laid The Hearth’, after guitarist Kerry McCoy described it as ‘the heaviest thing we’ve ever released’ and ‘definitely the closest thing to black metal we’ve ever done’.
The title comes from Robert Del Tredici’s photo book about the people and places that built America’s nuclear arsenal, and the EP sits in the gap between a bomb’s consequences and the ordinary work that makes one. ‘Hunter’ arrives with a short film shot with Nico Poalillo, and the band had already road-tested the song in Chicago earlier this month; the EP had quietly been on sale at shows before it hit streaming overnight. McCoy’s quotes came in an interview with Binaural last month.
Context matters here. Deafheaven spent a decade being told they were the band that made black metal safe for people who didn’t like black metal, then made Infinite Granite in 2021 with barely a scream on it, then came back with Lonely People With Power in March 2025 and sounded like they’d never left. Eighteen months later, ‘heaviest ever’ from them isn’t a press-release reflex. From a band with their history inside the black metal lineage, it’s a decision.
The Take: Heavy Is Back, And It Isn’t Nostalgia
The bands going heavy this autumn aren’t chasing a trend, because there isn’t one; they’re choosing it, and chosen heavy is where the good records come from.
Look at the week. Trivium announce an album built on Kurosawa and 1970s Japanese horror and call it the record they’d been dying to make. Bring Me The Horizon re-record their deathcore debut because the singer never liked how it sounded. Whitechapel went back to the pit in the spring. And now Deafheaven, the band the purists spent ten years sneering at, put out a surprise EP and the first word out of the guitarist’s mouth is ‘heaviest’.
The counter-argument is fair and it’s old: every band says this. ‘Our heaviest yet’ has been on press releases since the Black Album, and it usually means the drums are louder. But there’s a difference between a band that was always heavy saying it and a band that left, got praised for leaving, and came back anyway. Infinite Granite reviewed better than most of Deafheaven’s catalogue. They didn’t need to return to this. They did because it’s what they wanted to play, and in a touring economy this strained, nobody makes a ten-minute black metal song about nuclear weapons for the money.
Yesterday’s post argued Black Sabbath got their ending right by leaving it alone. The flip side is this: the bands with decades left are deciding what they actually sound like, and more of them than not are landing on heavy. TikTok isn’t asking for it. That’s the point. When a band picks heavy instead of defaulting to it, that’s when you get records that last. Three songs. Go find out.
TL;DR
Def Leppard’s 2027 North American tour: 45 arenas, March 2 (Allentown) to July 2 (Indianapolis), with Goo Goo Dolls and The Struts; Canadian dates in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Vancouver and Edmonton; presale Monday, on-sale Friday October 16; one dollar per ticket to City of Hope, where Vivian Campbell is being treated after his cancer returned.
Los Angeles proclaims November 13 Billy Idol Day, with a free City Hall acoustic set from Idol and Steve Stevens, the day before their Rock Hall induction on November 14.
Deafheaven surprise-released the three-song At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb EP; Kerry McCoy calls it ‘the heaviest thing we’ve ever released’.
The Take: heavy is back across the scene this autumn, and it’s a choice, not a trend.
FAQ
When is the Def Leppard 2027 tour and where are the Canadian dates?
The tour runs March 2 to July 2, 2027, across 45 North American arenas with Goo Goo Dolls and The Struts. Canadian dates are Montreal (March 5, Bell Centre), Toronto (March 9, Scotiabank Arena), Quebec City (March 11, Centre Vidéotron), Vancouver (May 14, Rogers Arena) and Edmonton (May 16, Rogers Place).
When do Def Leppard 2027 tickets go on sale?
Presales begin Monday, October 12, 2026 at 10am, and the general on-sale is Friday, October 16 through Ticketmaster. One dollar from every ticket sold goes to City of Hope, the cancer research and treatment centre where Vivian Campbell has been treated.
Is Vivian Campbell still touring with Def Leppard?
Yes. Campbell, diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 2013 and treated at City of Hope, said in August 2026 that the cancer has returned after a period of remission and that he is continuing treatment. He is listed on the 2027 tour announcement.
What is Billy Idol Day?
Friday, November 13, 2026, proclaimed by the City of Los Angeles. Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez presents the decree to Billy Idol and Steve Stevens at a city council session, followed by a free acoustic performance on the steps of City Hall. Idol and Stevens are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the following night, November 14, at the Peacock Theater.
What is on the new Deafheaven EP?
At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb has three songs: ‘Hunter’, ‘Three Princes’ and ‘Sorry Laid The Hearth’. It’s named after Robert Del Tredici’s photo book on the nuclear weapons industry, and guitarist Kerry McCoy has called it the heaviest and most black-metal thing the band has released. ‘Hunter’ comes with a short film by Nico Poalillo.
Metal Breakdown Daily is Loaded Radio’s weekday rock and metal news show, hosted by Scott Penfold. New episode every weekday morning on the free Loaded Radio app for Apple iOS and Google Play, and right here. Follow Loaded Radio for the stories as they break.
“The Winepress,” the second single from Rosetta‘s final album, Temporal Lapse, is streaming right now. Previously, the post-metal band had shared the song “The Native Hue of Resolution” and announced that this would be their final album. Over six years in the making, the record drops on November 27th via Pelagic Records. Read more…
Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill has announced his retirement from the band effective immediately, confirming that he has taken the difficult decision to bring his career to a close due to an ongoing battle with arthritis.
Hill will be replaced in Priest by Davey Rimmer of Uriah Heep, with Rimmer having recently filled in for Hill at the band’s London show last month. It marked the first time Hill had ever missed a Judas Priest show.
The heavy metal legends confirmed the news in a statement released on social media today (Friday October 9), with Ian himself addressing the situation.
Read his statement in full below:
“Hello everyone, for a long time now, when asked ‘how long can you continue’ – I’ve always answered ‘until my performances suffer’.
I hate to say it, but that time has come.
For some years now, I’ve been struggling with the onset of the evil arthritis, which is now in an advanced state in my left shoulder and right hand, established in my right shoulder, and present in both knees. I’ve been fighting this with painkilling pills, gels, and recently with cortisone injections in my shoulder and hand.
Although, I was able to put bass lines to the songs for the new album, there were questions whether I’d be able to complete the recent European tour without incident, so we asked our good friend Davey Rimmer from Uriah Heep, and of course Elegant Weapons, to learn the set list to stand in for me if I had to pull out, which I did for the London show.
This was due to me snapping a tendon in my left shoulder (as if I didn’t have enough problems with it!) just before the encores during the Brussels show two days before. This led to me not being able to lift my arm enough to reach the neck of my bass. So we had to call Davey to stand in for me, who put in an incredible performance at such short notice!
I’ve seen specialists, who suggest I might get away without surgery, but even if I don’t there’s no guarantee either way that I’ll have enough strength in my shoulder/arm to complete a whole stage show.
In view of all this, and the fact that I’ve neglected my family life for fifty seven years, I’ve decided to retire and spend the remaining years making up for it and doing things with them before it involves one of ‘em pushing me around in a wheelchair.
The obvious choice for my replacement is Davey. He’s a great bassist, and a genuinely nice bloke who’ll fit the job perfectly, and I wish him the very best of luck!
There’s not a day goes by where I don’t give thanks for the incredible journey I’ve lived through, and it just remains for me to say that I love you all, and thank you for the life you’ve let me live.”
Ian was Judas Priest’s longest-serving member, having joined the band during its early days in 1970, and played on every single one of their 19 studio albums so far, including 2024’s widely praised Invincible Shield.
“Fun Night” is the debut single from The Brickabrats out of Portland, Oregon — a foursome that reminds me of all the bands that made me fall in love with punk rock back in the ’90s. The band likens itself to “Screeching Weasel making out behind a 7-Eleven with The Queers while Sloppy Seconds steals beer from the gas station next door,” and I am here for that! Sometimes I want to hear pop-punk that has found a way to grow up a little. But other times, I just want pop-punk to be simple, stupid, and (above all else) pure fun. The Brickabrats aren’t trying to be original or practice rocket science. They aren’t hiding their influences. They want to write the catchiest possible songs and blast them with maximum enthusiasm. It’s a simple approach that a million other bands have tried. But they pull it off so well that you wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Fun Night” is about getting ready to party, but they’re talking about the sort of party I would have actually gone to — where people chow down on junk food and listen to cool records. Getting into pop-punk in the ’90s wasn’t just about discovering music that seemed like it was made for me. It was about bonding with all the other misfits and weirdos who loved the same stuff. That spirit is baked into “Fun Night,” a song that is literally all about anticipating good times and putting everything else to the side. You know there will be shenanigans, but there’s an undeniable innocence at play as well.
“Fun Night” is the first taste of The Brickabats’ debut EP THWACK! (as far as I’m concerned, there can never be enough onomatopoeia in record titles), which releases January 22nd. I have to respect that level of planning ahead when I haven’t even figured out what I’m having for breakfast 40 minutes from now. If you’re not a pop-punk person, “Fun Night” won’t turn you to the dark side. But something tells me that The Brickabrats don’t make music for people who dislike pop-punk. If you do like pop-punk, this is a band to watch!
Against The Current have released another taste of their upcoming full-length ‘To Death & Back’, and it is more drama of the highest order.
The track is called ‘White Noise’, and finds the band at their most decadent and delicate. Beautifully melodic and brimming with fantastical emotion, it is another wonderful addition to his forever expanding era.
Vocalist Chrissy Costanza had this to say about the song:
“White Noise is one of those tracks that you instantly know is going to be insanely fun to play live. It’s about that feeling of someone that you just can’t seem to get out of your head, like ‘white noise’ in the background they’re always there. I loved getting to write with Cass and Max, the sessions are always a blast and that energy comes out in the song.”
‘To Death & Back’ is set for release on October 30. Here is previous offering. ‘Protégé’:
The band will be kicking off a UK/EU tour on the day of the album’s release. Here are all the dates they will be playing:
OCTOBER
30 – GLASGOW SWG3 (TV Studio) 31 – LEEDS Leeds Beckett Students Union
NOVEMBER
01 – MANCHESTER Academy 03 – BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute 04 – LONDON O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire 06 – PARIS Le Trianon 07 – SAARBRÜCKEN Garage 08 – BRUSSELS Ancienne Belgique 11 – KÖLN E-Werk 12 – UTRECHT TivoliVredenburg 13 – HAMBURG Grosse Freiheit 36 14 – BERLIN Metropol 16 – VIENNA Simm City 17 – MUNICH Muffathalle 19 – ZURICH Komplex 457 20 – STUTTGART LKA Longhorn 21 – WIESBADEN Schlachthof
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