Comeback Kid's 'Chosen Hell' Tour Rolls Toward PA While Defeat Holds Down the Viking Metal Underground
Hardcore never sleeps, and this week it's especially loud. Canadian veterans Comeback Kid just dropped the title track to their eighth album, Chosen Hell, out November 6 via SharpTone Records, and the guest list reads like a genre-agnostic wishlist: members of Spiritbox and Incendiary lend their voices to a record that's already got the hardcore internet buzzing. The band will back it up with a fall tour featuring Defeater, The Warriors, and Dead Heat — the kind of bill that regularly finds its way into Philly basements, Pittsburgh DIY spaces, and everywhere in between when hardcore package tours route through the Northeast corridor. If you've been meaning to check the upcoming shows calendar for metal concerts near me, now's the time — tours like this tend to sell out the intimate rooms fast.
It's also a good excuse to point out that Pennsylvania doesn't just consume hardcore and metal tours passing through — it exports plenty of its own heavy underground too. On the opposite end of the sonic spectrum from Comeback Kid's melodic hardcore assault sits Defeat, a black metal and viking metal outfit repping the state's colder, more atmospheric corner of the scene. Where Comeback Kid channels gang vocals and breakdowns, Defeat leans into frost-bitten tremolo and longform storytelling — proof that when people talk about the Pennsylvania metal scene, they're talking about a genuinely wide net, not just one sound.
Basement's Platinum Moment and What It Means for PA's Crossover Bench
Elsewhere in the alt-metal-adjacent world, UK post-hardcore mainstays Basement just landed their first platinum single in the United States — a milestone worth celebrating for a band that's long straddled the line between shoegazing melancholy and heavier riffage. It's a reminder that the audience for heavier, mood-driven guitar music keeps growing in the mainstream, which bodes well for Pennsylvania acts working similar territory. Bands like Sweet Pill and Circa Survive have spent years proving the state can produce emotionally heavy, genre-blurring records that resonate well beyond the metal underground — and platinum certifications for bands built on similar DNA only strengthen the case that this sound has real commercial staying power.
Ghost's Tobias Forge Steps Back, Fear Factory Introduces a New Voice, Anthrax Goes Small
Not every headline this week is about momentum — some are about restraint, which is its own kind of newsworthy. Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge addressed rumors about the band's future bluntly, making it clear he's not interested in manufacturing a record just to keep a release cycle going.
"I'm not gonna just go back to make an album or force myself to make an album for no reason. I need to want to make a record. I need to have something to say."
It's a refreshingly honest stance in an industry that often rewards output over intent, and it's worth remembering for any Pennsylvania band feeling pressure to rush a follow-up. Sometimes the healthiest thing a band can do for the scene is wait until the songs actually demand to be written.
Meanwhile, Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares is talking up new blood, saying incoming vocalist Milo Silvestro "shines" on the band's upcoming single "Roboticist," set to drop August 29 alongside new drummer contributions. It's the band's first real showcase of its retooled lineup, and industrial-tinged groove metal fans will be watching closely to see if the chemistry holds. On the East Coast, Anthrax is keeping things intimate, announcing a filmed show at the newly reopened Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood — proof that even arena-level thrash legends still value the sweat-on-the-walls club show experience. For PA metalheads who make the trip to NYC for shows like this, it's a good reminder that some of the best metal experiences happen in rooms holding a few hundred people, not a few thousand.
Death Metal's Old Guard Still Delivers — And So Does PA's Slam Underground
Photos from Obituary and Acid Bath's recent Pier 17 show in New York are making the rounds, and they're a good reminder that death metal's foundational bands are still out there packing rooms and reminding younger fans where the blueprint came from. Acid Bath in particular remains a bucket-list act for sludge and death metal purists alike.
That old-school death metal energy got a modern jolt this week too, with the Two Minutes to Late Night crew assembling members of Twitching Tongues, Pig Destroyer, Full of Hell, Phobophilic, and Disgrace for a cover of Morbid Angel's "Dawn of the Angry." It's exactly the kind of scene-crossing collaboration that keeps extreme metal's community feeling small and connected, even as the genre fractures into a hundred subgenres.
Speaking of subgenres, it's worth spotlighting one that Pennsylvania quietly does very well but rarely gets written up: slam death metal. The state's roster is deep here, with acts like Embludgeoned, Traumatic Insemination, and Cavern Womb all working in the same brutally low-tuned, breakdown-heavy space that made bands like Devourment and Dying Fetus into genre cornerstones. If death metal supergroup cover tracks are getting attention on a national level this week, it's a fitting moment to remember that PA has its own slam scene worth checking out at a local show near you.
Russian Circles Get Heavier, and PA's Doom/Sludge Underground Has Something to Say About That
Instrumental post-metal trio Russian Circles are getting plenty of ink this week for their new record Nine, which the band says draws more directly from hardcore and death metal than anything they've released before. It's a fascinating pivot for a band that built its reputation on slow-burning atmospheric builds, and it raises an interesting question for the region: where does Pennsylvania's own heavier, atmospheric underground fit into this conversation?
The answer, increasingly, is doom, sludge, and death-doom acts that share Russian Circles' patience but bring their own crushing weight to it. Cultic works the death-doom side of that equation with genuine menace, while Stalemate of Wills and American Honey hold down the sludge and stoner metal end of things. None of these bands sound like Russian Circles, exactly, but they're all working the same emotional territory — long-form, riff-driven heaviness that rewards patience over instant gratification. If national post-metal acts are trending harder and heavier, it's worth keeping an eye on whether PA's doom scene sees a similar bump in attention.
Quick Hits From Around the Metal World
Wednesday 13 dropped a live video for "In Misery," pulled from the upcoming Un-Alive from Pol'and'Rock 2025 release, giving horror-punk fans another taste of the veteran shock-rocker's live show ahead of the full release. Metalcore outfit Left to Suffer leaned hard into nu-metal territory with their new track "STFU," openly addressing critics who've accused the band of chasing trends — a bold, self-aware move that's generating plenty of discussion online. We Came As Romans debuted a new version of "Red Smoke" featuring Heavensgate as part of their forthcoming release All Is Beautiful... Because We're Doomed: Circularity, continuing the metalcore veterans' trend of reworking material with guest features.
Gamers and metalheads alike got good news with word that Mick Gordon's genre-defining DOOM soundtrack is getting a proper new vinyl, CD, and cassette release for its tenth anniversary — a record that arguably did as much to introduce a new generation to industrial-tinged extreme metal as any band tour could. And Tool/A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan addressed his recent hip replacement surgery directly, promising fans that upcoming tour dates are safe.
"I needed answers fast because I have s#!t to do."
It's the kind of blunt, no-nonsense update that longtime Tool fans have come to expect from Keenan, and it should ease any worries heading into the band's next round of shows.
What This Means for Pennsylvania
Between hardcore package tours routing through the region, death metal legends packing East Coast venues, and a national conversation about post-metal getting heavier, this week's headlines all point back to the same conclusion: Pennsylvania's scene has representation in nearly every corner of this conversation, from black and viking metal to slam death metal to sludge-soaked doom. If you're building a list of new metal bands 2026 should be watching, don't sleep on what's happening in your own backyard. And if you're in a band that thinks it deserves a spot on that list, you know what to do — submit your band and let the region's metal shows near me searches start finding you.