60 most anticipated albums of 2026

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Jerry Cantrell’s recent interview with Cleveland.com revealed that Alice in Chains were looking to work on new music in 2025, but those plans were paused after drummer Sean Kinney faced a unexpected health scare.

“We had some bad luck; we planned on doing much more this year, but it just didn’t work [out],” he said.

Though the grunge-metal vets had to pull out of a bunch of concert appearances, Alice in Chains will return. They’re apparently re-evaluating where they’re at in the new year, and whether they’ll “go in and make another record or do some shows — or both.”

If a follow-up to 2018’s Rainier Fog does prove to be in the cards, it would likely come in very late 2026 at earliest. The sooner the better, as far as we’re concerned.

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Canadian vocal powerhouse Alissa White-Gluz dropped jaws in November with a double reveal: She’d split from Arch Enemy following a fantastic 12-year run (capped with this year’s Blood Dynasty LP), and officially announced her upcoming ALISSA solo project through the sometimes chugging, sometimes mournful single “The Room Where She Died.”

So far, we know that she and Kamelot guitarist Oliver Palotai have worked on new music together, and White-Gluz promised more will be revealed in 2026. For those that have been waiting for her to drop the album since she signed to Napalm Records as a solo artist in 2016, this is obviously promising news.

Title Alter Bridge
Release date January 9

Alter Bridge are back with a vengeance, with the long-running hard rockers’ eight full-length release primed to — per vocalist-guitarist Myles Kennedy — tap into the “essence of the band.” They did so while recording at the late Eddie Van Halen’s iconic 5150 studios in California, with longtime friend and sometime tourmate Wolfgang Van Halen having loaned them the keys to Camelot, and some of the gear within.

Between doom-swung preview “What Lies Within,” the dueling bends and wails Kennedy and Creed shred lord Mark Tremonti bring to the record’s “Silent Divide,” and the singer’s enigmatically raspy yowl across both, you can expect solid, heavy riffage and anthemic choruses a-plenty.

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Viking-metal veterans Amon Amarth reminded us earlier in 2025 that they “rule the waves,” and they may well rule our headphones in 2026, as well.

The band are all set to spend part of their year touring North America with Dethklok and Castle Rat, and also have plans to launch their “The Allfather Awakens” campaign with Orbit Culture and Soilwork in Europe next fall.

After that, per Metal Blade records, the end of the year will find the berserkers unleashing “the wrath of Odin in the form of a brand-new album,” which, they added, sounds “sonically barbaric.” No shit.

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We’ve been holding on for the long in-the-works next Antrhax album for what feels like forever, but it finally looks like the Big 4 icons are just about to release their first album in a decade.

Guitarist Scott Ian had revealed back in 2024 that they wanted their follow-up to 2016’s For All Kings to “punch people in the face,” while Charlie Benante seemed to confirm more recently in a since-deleted story on socials that the band had completed the album and “it’s a Doozy.” Then in the last week of 2025 the band shot an outdoor music video for an upcoming single, to be dropped along with the album in 2026.

“The working album title is ‘hey, go fu** yourself,’” Benante had said earlier in the year, likely as a joke — though he didn’t write “Not” at the end of the post. “It’s a very New York album. You can grab a slice and walk around and listen to it while eating.”

We’re ready to feast.

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The arrival of At the Gates’ eighth full-length will be bittersweet. On the one hand, the record will be the band’s first with founding guitarist Anders Björler since he rejoined the band in 2022 following a five-year sabbatical. Tragically, it will also be the outfit’s first release since the passing of their incomparable vocalist, Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg, who passed away in September following a long battle with Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma, a rare oral cancer.

At the Gates revealed over the summer that they’d put a lot of work into the LP, and that Tompa had tracked all of his vocals just before heading into a major surgery that removed a significant portion of the roof of his mouth.

Details have yet to arrive on when to expect the follow-up to 2021’s The Nightmare of Being, but we know it’s going to be a tough yet essential spin for any melodeath fan.

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Consider it a good omen that Noah Sebastian and Co. contributed four new singles to their heavy canon throughout the back end of 2025 — proof positive that the band are inching towards the explosive next phase of Bad Omen-dom. Then again, the vocalist also quipped the following to Kerrang when asked about their plans for 2026: “Still no album.”

“To be honest, I’m only a little bit closer,” he said, regarding the progress towards completing a follow-up to 2022 breakthrough THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND. “There’s a lot of large moving parts and ideas being worked through, but there are still plenty of other things that have to get done for the record in the meantime.”

Nevertheless, between the brood-gazing melodies, girder-collapsing breakdowns and the occasional foot-twitching jungle break of their newest tunes thus far, it seems like Bad Omens’ next chapter will eventually speak volumes. And we’re dying to love it in full.

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Avenged Sevenfold guitarist Zacky Vengeance closed out 2025 with a surprise: his debut solo single, released under his birth name Zachary Baker, and an unexpected new sound for him.

Titled “Dark Horse,” the disarmingly heartfelt alt-country song arguably has more to do with 2010s-era stomp-clap music and Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls” than it does to metal or punk rock — though it does feature a distortion-seared guitar solo. The single is the first taste of an already-completed debut solo album that Baker hopes to get out in early 2026.

“I’ve lived a lot of life, and now I get to tell my story. I get sing it in my own voice,” he explained in an interview with Rock Feed. He added: “It’s gonna piss a whole lot of people off.”

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Better Lovers may have just issued a couple tracks as part of the deluxe version of their debut long-player, Highly Irresponsible, but there’s even more in store from the hard-hitting supergroup — which features former members of Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die and more.

Back in the summer, the group posted a few behind-the-scenes moments of themselves working on “LP2,” this including a preview of a danceable riff and the confirmation that the record will include at least one “rockin’ chorus.”

Fans, including Stranger Things villain Vecna (a.k.a. actor and musician Jamie Campbell Bower), are anticipating something heavy, manic and wild.

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Zakk Wylde and his Doom Crew kept plenty busy outside of BLS last year, between a Zakk Sabbath tour and BLS guitarist Dario Lorina’s debut LP with his side project, Dark Chapel. Yet Black Label kept things on-brand in 2025, too, via the release of their Mad Max-crazed “Lord Humungus” single, and the Southern-groovy follow-up track, “Broken and Blind.”

A Black Label Society tour with Zakk Sabbath and Dark Chapel is on the horizon in February, and apparently the follow-up to 2021’s Doom Crew Inc. full-length is not much further behind.

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Black Veil Brides sent out their symphonic and squealed-out outcast anthem “HALLELUJAH” last summer, and spent New Year’s Day teasing the arrival of a new tune titled “Certainty” with a ditch-digging, folk-horror-esque teaser trailer.

Not much else has been revealed about the band’s next LP, but vocalist Andy Biersack confirmed last summer that they’d wrapped the recording sessions on the self-produced album, that it’ll be out via Spinefarm, and that he is “hyped.” Praise be, so are we.

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Few details have leaked about the debut release from Burn Eternal — the new joint venture between Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz and former KSE vocalist Howard Jones — since the two longtime friends formally announced the project during their “Thai food lunch date” in December, 2024. They did say at the time, though, that an album had been mixed.

One possible hold-up? Jones’ in-the-works solo album, which he confirmed in July was being produced by Josh Gilbert (Spiritbox) and engineer Joseph McQueen (As I Lay Dying, Bullet For My Valentine).

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Clutch are touring machines, and they spent a good chunk of 2025 out on the road. That’s part of the reason why the funk-metal buccaneers have yet to officially announce a follow-up to 2022’s Sunrise on Slaughter Beach. But they’re working on it, with vocalist Neil Fallon assuring fans that when the band’s not on the road, they’re rehearsing and riffing out new ideas. They’re apparently almost out of the pre-production phase, and will switch gears to officially enter album-making-mode in early 2026.

“We did begin a pre-production and writing session earlier this year, but then we went back out on tour,” Fallon confirmed to Metal Hammer in late December. “There will be another writing session in January, and the plan is to record in late January or early February.”

Title Love Is Not Enough
Release date February 13

Following Converge’s lineup-and-sound-expanding Blood Moon: I album — which brought Chelsea Wolfe and Nineties-era bassist/Cave In leader Stephen Brodsky into the fold — the veteran hardcore group have resumed core-roster activities for their first album in over four years: Love Is Not Enough.

When the band ripped out the bleakly D-beating title track in November, it was explained that their 11th studio full-length is themed around “the turmoil of living,” while vocalist Jacob Bannon added that it’s got “a lot of powerful moments… and a lot of angry moments.”

What’s not to love about that?

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While 2025 saw Corrosion of Conformity set free a cover of Free’s “Fire and Water” as part of their recently launched Riffissippi Studio Jam Sessions series, fans of the legendary North Carolina heavy crew are desperate for the band to give us their first original LP since 2018’s No Cross No Crown. Here’s the good news: It’s apparently almost here.

In December, new C.O.C. bassist Bobby Landgraf told The Sonic Road Podcast that longtime vocalist-guitarist Pepper Keenan and founding guitarist Woody Weatherman had drafted him and Galactic drummer Stanton Moore into the sessions for a potentially double-sized concept LP for Nuclear Blast.

A due date has yet to be confirmed, but its rumored for a spring release.

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Blackgaze kings Deafheaven delivered one of 2025’s most magnificently jaw-dropping releases, via their mega-blasted, achingly melodied, and profoundly death-and-male-gaze-questioning Lonely People With Power. Our readers loved it, and so did we.

While the details are unclear, the good news is that the Cali masters will be powering out more material over the next 12 months, too.

A mid-December interview with Consequence found vocalist George Clarke confirming that 2026 is going to be a busy one for him and the rest of the band, and they’re going to hit the road hard. Possibly with even newer tunes in the setlist, since he promised that Deafheaven will “have new music next year.”

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We’d kept our fingers crossed for a new Dimmu Borgir album to arrive in 2025, after the symphonic black-metal mainstays served up a studio pic in late 2024. The bad news is that that obviously didn’t happen the way we had hoped, but the good news is that their 10th album is looking likely to arrive this year.

A since-deleted social post from producer Fredrik Nordström (At the Gates, Arch Enemy) revealed that the Norwegian corse-paint commandos wrapped up sessions at Nordström’s Studio Fredman in Sweden. He shared a photo of vocalist Shagrath and guitarist Silenoz, and wrote that the group’s next record is already mixed and mastered, and likewise that the sessions were “fun and also challenging.”

An ETA is unclear, but hopefully it’ll be out by the time Dimmu Borgir start touring with Behemoth and Dark Funeral next October.

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Down — the iconic Southern sludge collective comprising metal heavyweights Philip Anselmo (Pantera), Pepper Keenan (Corrosion of Conformity), Kirk Windstein (Crowbar), Jimmy Bower (Eyehategod) and Pat Bruders — have been in the “final stages” of completing their next album since at least last April. And we know it’ll be out through their new label home, Nuclear Blast Records.

Indeed, the record could arrive as soon as next September, according to Windstein. While speaking with Pod Scum, he let it slip that Nuclear Blast will first be supporting Keenan’s next COC full-length before we all get down with Down.

The supergroup’s members put out plenty of new music in 2025, between Scour (Anselmo), Sun Dont Shine (Windstein) and Windstein’s Ethereal Waves solo LP — and we’re grateful for that. But it’s also certain that sludge fans are more than ready for the band to finally stone the crow with their first proper album release since 2007.

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The German post-genre eccentrics rang our buzzer all year long with the metal-and-EDM-jolted vibrancy of songs like “Elevator Operator” and “TANZNEID,” yet Electric Callboy also went sensitive with an acoustic cover of Linkin Park’s “Crawling,” and hit a more serious tone — albeit through a fantastical video — with “Revery.”

This is all to say that the Callboys contain multitudes.

It’s unclear how the act will capitalize on their breakthrough 2025 in terms of a new album, but at the very least they’ll be bringing “pure dancefloor madness” around the globe for their upcoming “TANZNEID” world tour, which hits North America in the spring.

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Amira Elfeky has been playing the long game in the lead-up to her first longplayer.

Since arriving on the scene in 2023, the Gen Z singer has broken out on socials and streamers, and delivered a handful of singles and EPs that pit soul-warming nu-gaze textures with heartaching emotive lyricism. It’s put her on the radars of countless new fans, including Bring Me the Horizon and Architects. Behind the scenes, she’s been building out a “definitive world” while crafting her debut album — which she told us this year will have her screaming on-record for the first time.

Music saved Elfeky’s life, she told us. She’s hoping to pay it forward by giving her growing following an album for the ages.

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Evanescence and Amy Lee’s 2025 was pretty huge, between the band’s “Afterlife” and “Fight Like a Girl” singles and the beloved singer’s collabs with Halsey (“Hand That Feeds”) and Poppy and Courtney LaPlante (Revolver’s 2025 Song of the Year, “End of You”).

2026 is primed to be even bigger. On top of a world tour that will have Evanescence supported by Poppy and Spiritbox, Lee recently revealed that her band have put a ton of work into their first full-length since 2021’s The Bitter Truth. The record is due this spring, according to Lee, and may well act like a soothing balm for the band and their fans alike.

“It feels like an opportunity to put something good into the world, even if it’s just a way for people to relate, to speak about what’s true, and let it out,” Lee told Rolling Stone in December. “We need release. I need release.”

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Featuring three-fifths of cult post-hardcore outfit Blood Brothers and former OFF! bassist Autry Fulbright, Evil Island have spent several weeks in 2025 writing and recording a full-length debut with nu-metal godfather Ross Robinson — who’d worked with the Bros. on their 2003 release, …Burn, Piano Island, Burn.

The new band name is perhaps a sly nod as to what to expect, as the studio previews thus far reveal a similarly cactus-spiky approach to hardcore riffs, while vocalist Johnny Whitney is ramping back up towards his high-register, cat-scratch shriek. They also got Whitney’s Blood Brothers co-vocalist Jordan Blilie to add a few guest howls.

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Exodus toxic-waltz’d their way into 2026 by touring Canada with Megadeth and Anthrax. Not too long after that, per guitarist Gary Holt, the band should be setting us up with a brand-new album of prime Bay Area thrash.

Back in October, Holt confessed that the next Exodus album is done, and that it should be out sometime in March, though that hasn’t been confirmed by their label, Napalm Records. The album, which finds Rob Dukes resuming frontman duties for the first time since 2010’s Exhibit B: The Human Condition, is apparently “crushing, but it’s also all anthems,” and Holt says they’re “super proud” of it.

What’s more, the guitarist claims they’ve also tracked “80 percent of the next follow-up,” so fans are about to stare down two upcoming Exodus releases.

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Five Finger Death Punch spent 2025 looking back at their vast and hefty catalog, via their two-volume collection of re-recorded hits. Following that Taylor’s Version-esque turn of events, the grizzled metal bruisers will now be putting their best foot forward to focus on the making of their 10th full-length.

Guitarist Zoltan Bathory shone a bit of light on the project in an interview with Brazilian radio station A 89 Rádio Rock back in the fall, explaining that they’d written and worked on five or six new songs that may or may not make the release.

Internally, the band have apparently been discussing whether to stay the course with their familiar, arenas-pleasing sound, or make waves with a new kind of heaviness. Bathory noted, however: “It’s not like we are gonna sound like jazz fusion anytime soon, but should we try to approach this new album like, ‘Hey, let’s do something fresh and new completely?’”

Whatever the result may be, the band posted some studio pics in December, and promised that their 2026 “will be huge.”

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The end of 2025 took an unexpected turn for Gojira after frontman Joe Duplantier injured his hand and underwent minor surgery — forcing him to temporarily relinquish riffing duties on the group’s European tour to friend and fill-in guitarist Greg Kubacki of Car Bomb.

Perhaps just as unexpected will be the sound of Gojira’s in-the-works follow-up to 2021’s Fortitude. Duplantier recently told the Loudwire Nights podcast that they want to surprise fans with their new music, and “until it’s completed, it’s hard to tell people what it’s gonna be.” 

He added: “We’re trying to deliver something that is meaningful and impactful. We’re very ambitious in terms of writing songs and the quality of it. And we wanna take a clear step forward and upward with this album. So, we’re putting all our love and energy on it.”

Title I Promised the World
Release date January 16

I Promised the World are Gen Z kids exploring the emotional heights, melodically-chugging riffs and the bowl-cuts-and-bootcut aesthetic of early Aughts post-hardcore and screamo.

The previews we’ve caught from their five-song self-titled EP for Rise Records pay homage to those that paved the way, like Misery Signals, From Autumn to Ashes and Alexisonfire. Another way to put it is we would’ve paid a premium to have the high-energy drive of “Bliss in 7 Languages” as our Nokia ringtone back in the day.

With an upcoming headline tour and a support slot on the Devil Wears Prada’s next North American tour on deck for 2026, I Promised the World are a band to watch.

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Spencer Charnas and the rest of his movie-obsessed theatricore crew have yet to formally announce plans for their next album, but we’ve long anticipated Ice Nine Kills’ Silver Scream 2 follow-up.

INK sated bloodlusts somewhat this year with their Matrix-referencing “The Great Unknown” and their riotously guffawing and death-growl-heavy Batman ’89 homage, “The Laugh Track,” so it seems the band are broadening their horizons beyond the slash-happy Horrorwood era to also salute sci-fi faves and classic comic-book adaptations.

However the next Charnas-crafted cinemassacre ultimately shows up, we’re sure it’s going to kill.

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Having closed out last year with the string-quartet-accompanied “The Black Finale” tour across Europe, it’s fair to say that Swedish metalcore outfit Imminence are ready to close the books on their The Black era — though the band confirmed on Instagram that the 2024 release, as well as 2025’s expanded The Return of the Black deluxe edition, gave them “more than we could ever imagine.” The feeling was mutual for the fandom.

Where will they go next? Well, when the fully raging Return single “Death Shall Have No Dominion” arrived last February, guitarist Harald Barrett noted that the track was Imminence’s most extreme yet, and that it had taken the band into “deeper and darker” depths than ever before.

So, here’s hoping Imminence are stepping out of The Black and into an even greater abyss.

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Though In This Moment have spent the past few years in GODMODE, it’s looking like they may soon have new worship music for the faithful.

We don’t know when they’ll ascend into this next era, but it seems like they’re close. Back in the summer, vocalist Maria Brink told the Mistress Carrie Podcast that an upcoming offering was in production behind-the-scenes.

“We’re working on the [new] album. It’s just about done,” she revealed. “We only probably have, like, two songs left. We thought we were done, and then we kind of had to step away and look back, and it just feels like it needs a little bit more.”

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Incubus spent much of the last couple years celebrating their milestone 2001 album, Morning View. But for fans wishing that new music was here, the wait should soon be over.

Indeed, the alt-rock crew’s ninth album has been mixed, mastered and “ready to go” for the better part of a year, per vocalist Brandon Boyd, and had been expected to arrive this past October. That obviously didn’t happen, so the question lingers around the ETA of their tentatively-titled Something in the Water: If not now, then when?

Though the timeframe has yet to be pegged down, what’s sure is that the record will be Incubus’ first full-length since 2017, it was produced by longtime studio collaborator Brendan O’Brien, and it features bass-plunking from Nicole Row, who’d started playing with the band in 2023.

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Post-everything conceptualist Kim Dracula delivered “In Threes” last Halloween, marking their first piece of new, original solo music in over two years (to be fair, though, they’d come out swinging in 2025 on the anarchic “Heretic” collab with In This Moment, and spent the previous year going wild for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical adaptation of The Warriors).  

Nothing firm has been put in place for the Tasmanian artist’s follow-up to 2023’s A Gradual Decline in Morale, though they’d noted “the snake has shed its skin” upon the arrival of “In Threes.” We’d expect plenty of boundary-pushing, experimental weirdness from Kim Dracula, however it slithers our way.

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Kerry King and his solo band are ready to rise from hell — again.

The Slayer icon’s vocalist, Mark Osuegeda (also of Death Angel), told the That Metal Interview podcast in November that the group are “busy writing, getting the material together for the second record,” which would follow 2024’s From Hell I Rise, and that things are “coming along.” He suggested that they may start recording in the first quarter of 2026.

King, meanwhile, admitted that he’d already started writing for the record earlier in 2025, having riffed out a couple tracks shortly after the band wrapped a U.S. tour.

Title: Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920
Release Date: TBA

It’s now been a full year since King Diamond cracked the doors of his Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920 open and let us take a peek at its ripping “Spider Lily.” Fans that caught the Danish royal and the rest of his band on their late 2024 North American tour also got jolted by newer tune “Electrotherapy.”

While it had been speculated that the record would’ve arrived last year, the King hasn’t quite pegged down when he’ll release the phantasmagoric LP in full. That said, in 2025 he told Fistful of Metal that other songs set in the haunted institution could include “Under the Surface,” “The Nun,” “Faceless” and “Lobotomy.” “I just want to make sure that it’s the best material I’ve ever released,” he said regarding the delay.

For now, we’re all still sitting in the waiting room.

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Knocked Loose absolutely owned 2024 with the monstrous sounds of You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To — a Revolver fan favorite which also yielded a Grammy nod over its Poppy collab “Suffocate,” and brought pig brees to the televised masses during their viral Kimmel performance. To say the Kentucky wrecking crew’s next record is much anticipated would be a major understatement.

So far, both vocalist Bryan Garris and guitarist Isaac Hale have teased on Instagram that the Oldham County faction are “writing.” The band also shot a music video for an undisclosed tune back in October.

None of this will arrive before it’s supposed to, but the suspense is killing us.

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Korn continued to tour across the globe in 2025, which meant updates on their next album, their first since 2022’s Requiem, were pretty sparing. Yet not entirely absent.

Guitarist Brian “Head” Welch, for instance, noted to the BBC that the nu-metal trailblazers are still “sweating it out” in the studio, and that they’ve been laying all their news songs down to traditional analog tape, old-school-style.

Back in 2024, he promised that they were writing “the best and heaviest Korn stuff in years” — adding that we can expect “vintage Korn… with a modern twist.”

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Lamb of God first gave us “Sepsis” back in October — and it felt pretty damn good! The sludgier-than-usual feel of the single was explained to be a gnarly love letter to the Virginia veterans’ local scene, and we fell for it hard.

Then Randy Blythe went all aggro on the Internet age for follow-up heater “Parasocial Christ,” which leaned more heavily into LOG’s thrashy side.

Both cuts bode well for the forthcoming follow-up to 2022’s Omens.

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Limp Bizkit soared to irreverent, rap-rocking highs last year, via the release of their patently audacious “Making Love to Morgan Wallen” single, and sank to devastating, personal lows, with the tragic passing of OG bassist Sam Rivers.

2026 should find them riding high again. Fred Durst and Co. started teasing new material in 2024, and also posted photos from recording sessions in Nashville in 2025. While a follow-up to 2021’s Still Sucks is majorly anticipated, it’s unclear how much music they’d recorded with Rivers ahead of his passing, or whether current fill-in bassist Kid Not (of Ecca Vandal’s band) will join their ranks in on a more permanent basis. 

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Loathe vocalist Kadeem France once told Revolver that the band would “absolutely” be releasing an album in 2024. They’ve long since missed that mark, though 2025’s alternately alt-metal-aching and jazzily-djented “Gifted Every Strength” gave us six minutes of sweet relief.

Details are still pending on the full-length follow-up to 2020’s insta-classic I Let It In and It Took Everything, and the band have copped to the fact that life has complicated the crafting of a new LP.

“The fact is that we were changing as people so much, and that was changing our tastes,” bassist Feisal El-Khazragi told Kerrang! last spring of the delay. “It’s taken a while for the dust to settle within our tastes and to land on something that we felt comfortable with, that we can put out and present as a band.” 

Title One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2
Release date TBA

Considering Marilyn Manson’s 2024 comeback album was called One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1, the faithful would be in their right mind to assume that the shock rocker has authored at least one more chapter in his ongoing goth-metal narrative.

Manson confirmed as much last November, posting in the caption of an Instagram carousel of behind-the-scenes photos from the Chapter 1 era: “It has been a great year since the release of Chapter One. Be prepared for Chapter Two very soon.”

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Mastodon experienced an unbelievably trying and tragic 2025, between their split with founding member Brent Hinds and the guitar hero’s shocking death just a few months later.

On the flip side, the band also marked their 25th anniversary last year, a milestone celebrated by Revolver with a special collector’s issue devoted to the Atlantan greats.

No matter how you look at it, the next Mastodon album will mark a major turning point in the iconic metal force’s discography. Guitarist Bill Kelliher has said he’s been working on new tunes for quite some time, and confirmed this year that the record will feature performances and perhaps songs written by the group’s newest six-stringer, Canadian prog shredder Nick Johnston.

Title Megadeth
Release date January 23

While Dave Mustaine suggested Megadeth’s farewell tour could be a multi-year event, what seems surer is that one of the founding fathers of thrash is ready to lay his long-running band to rest with this final full-length statement. And from what we’ve heard so far, it’s going to rip.

First single “Tipping Point” is an inspired, ‘tude-heavy beater. The snottily punky “I Don’t Care” has Mustaine going full Mustaine with his many grievances. And “Let There Be Shred,” well, shreds.

While we’re all stoked to hear the final set of Megadeth originals, we’re also eagerly anticipating the group’s revamp of Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning,” both an earnest tribute to Mustaine’s old bandmates and a reclamation of the all-time metal anthem he helped co-write in the Eighties.

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Though Al Jourgensen reclaimed his early era in 2025 by re-recording a bunch of melodic old synth-pop tunes for Ministry’s The Squirrely Years release, the industrial-metal pioneer is probably going to get a lot heavier on his band’s long-planned final LP.

No due date has been given for Ministry’s swan song, but we know that classic-era bassist Paul Barker will be back in the fold for it, marking his first album with the group in 23 years.

“Buckle up, this is going to be a good one,” Jourgensen noted in late 2024. “It’s like wrapping a bow on a 40-plus year career.”

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Chris Motionless is finally ready to shine a light on a new batch of songs.

It’s already been confirmed that Motionless in White will be issuing a new single, “Afraid of the Dark,” on January 28th — and what’s more, the song will kick off the promo campaign behind the goth-tinged metal unit’s forthcoming, yet-to-be-detailed album, their first since 2022’s breakthrough Scoring the End of the World.

Even beyond the album plans, it’s going to be a big 2026 for MIW, between their international tour schedule with Dayseeker, fest appearances lined up at Sonic Temple and Welcome to Rockville, and a spring run of dates supporting Bring Me the Horizon.

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Mudvayne bounded back into action this year while deliver a walloping two-fer in the form of the battering nu-metal cut “HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE” and the more pensively brooding anti-bullying piece, “Sticks and Stones.”

The tracks appeared on streamers and as a limited-edition 7-inch, and they’ve whetted appetites for Mudvayne’s eventual sixth full-length release.

Not much has been revealed about the LP, which will be their first since 2009 and released via concert promoter Danny Wimmer’s Alchemy Records, but vocalist Chad Gray had a simple, straight-forward message at Welcome to Rockville: “It’s coming.”

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Trent Reznor brought Nine Inch Nails back in a major way in 2025.

For starters, he and his revered industrial institution launched their wildly thrilling “Peel It Back” world tour, which will continue in 2026. Then there was the TRON: Ares soundtrack, which found Reznor and his longtime partner in crime Atticus Ross delivering dramatic, synth-phonic cues and outright bangin’ new NIN anthems like “As Alive As You Need Me to Be.” Now it sounds like there’s even more music on the way.

“We are working on new stuff and we’re excited to work on it, and we are prioritizing working on Nine Inch Nails over just taking on every single thing that comes up in the other category,” Reznor confirmed with Consequence in December. “So, beyond that, I can’t say much, but the difference between now and a year ago is the fuse has been lit and the desire is there.”

Title The Wilted EP
Release date January 2

Paleface Swiss took control of our headphones with 2025’s Slipknot-ian Cursed LP. But there’s no rest for the wicked: The Swiss deathcore contortionists already have a more bite-sized and experimental follow-up prepped for the top of this year, The Wilted EP.

Truth be told, we’ve heard a good chunk of the five-song release already, between the Stick to Your Guns collab (“Instrument of War”), a night terrors-fueled beatdown (“Let Me Sleep”), and the power ballad-esque “Everything Is Fine.” Still, any amount of new Paleface Swiss is a good thing, and we’re stoked to kick off 2026 with the full thing.

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Poison the Well wowed fans right at the top of 2025, delivering their crushing “Trembling Level” single, their first new tune in 15 years. Its arrival seemed to signal that their highly anticipated follow-up to 2009’s The Tropic Rot was just around the corner.

The metalcore pioneers first teased an upcoming sixth studio album in 2024 — in the most niche way possible, via a thank you note included in their vinyl discography box set. Now, after spending much of the past year celebrating The Opposite of December on a 25th anniversary tour, the heavy vets seem poised to finally issue that comeback album, which they recorded alongside producer Will Putney (Better Lovers, Fit for an Autopsy).

Title Empty Hands
Release date January 23

Coming off 2024’s much-loved and mega-heavy Negative Spaces, Poppy once again teamed up with metal producer and former Bring Me the Horizon member Jordan Fish to deliver what we expect will be another genre-blurring, yet scream-centrically stomping classic.

Already we’ve received a twitchily break-beating anthem in “Unravel,” the nu-pounding “Bruised Sky” and the soaring melodicism of “Guardian.” It’s impossible to know exactly what to expect going into a Poppy album, but wherever her adventurous, artistic whims take her this time around, rest assured listeners won’t be coming out empty handed.

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We’ve known since at least 2022 that Texas crossover magnates Power Trip were inching towards a new album — which would be their first since breakthrough 2017 LP Nightmare Logic, and, more poignantly, since the passing of their founding vocalist, Riley Gale.

While nothing’s set in stone, guitarist Blake Ibanez did hint at the band actively working towards “opening up a new chapter” with current vocalist Seth Gilmore, who also plays in Fugutive with Ibanez.

“I feel really confident about writing more together,” he told Altars of Metal. “[It’s] maybe not exactly the same, but it’s awesome and inspiring in a different way. And we’re gonna do the best we can…” 

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Few acts captured the imagination in 2025 quite like PRESIDENT — the mystery masked band that paradoxically delivered one of last year’s most earnestly naked works in the form of their King of Terrors EP, and developing a fervent fan base in the process.

If King of Terrors was the inauguration, what’s in store for PRESIDENT’s first term? For one, a debut full-length, which their anonymous frontman says is being crafted at the moment.

“I’ve got four songs written already, and I’d say three of those are the best I’ve ever written,” he told Metal Hammer, adding, “This album is going to be an evolution. It takes bits of the EP, and it’s pushing certain elements even further.”

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After Tim “Herb” Alexander vacated the drum seat in late 2024, funk-centric alt-metal legends Primus spent the first half of 2025 sorting through more than 6,100 resumes in search of their new percussionist. That led them to pick up new skinsman John Hoffman, who then developed a feel with bassist Les Claypool and guitarist Larry “Ler” Lalonde across multiple tours.

Claypool says a new Primus album is “probably very likely”, but he’s also got a three-years-in-the-making LP from his progadelic Delirium project with Sean Lennon on the back burner. Both could arrive in 2026, and who knows? Maybe the acts will tour together.

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Pretty Reckless leader and sometime Soundgarden singer Taylor Momsen capped her 2025 by delivering a Christmas EP that had her duetting with her childhood self, via a punky re-recording of a Grinch soundtrack classic. In 2026, she might be gifting us a full-length banger from her longtime hard-rocking project — one that you can crank to the max all year long.

It’s been almost five years since the group delivered their last LP, Death by Rock and Roll, and Momsen recently admitted that they’re nowhere near completing the follow-up. Yet the raspy cries and ‘tude-heavy feel of this fall’s “For I Am Death” single was a promising start to Momsen and Co.’s next era.

Title Normal Isn’t
Release date February 6

If you were one of the lucky few that got to experience all of Puscifer’s new album last summer, as part of a pair of intimate concert experiences in Los Angeles, then you already know all about the band’s forthcoming, goth-and-post-punk-inspired Normal Isn’t LP.

Those not so lucky, meanwhile, had their hair blown back by the fuzzy, guitar-forward hypnotism of lead single “Self-Evident,” which has Maynard James Keenan and Carina Round harmonizing the music world’s best-ever usage of the word “bunghole.” Fans likewise reveled in the “dramatic and romantic nature” of the synth-laden “Pendulum.”

We can’t wait ‘til they swing the rest of the album our way.

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The truth, as we know it, is that nu-metal lifers Sevendust wrapped up the sessions behind their 15th studio effort — which will be their first since 2023’s bombastic Truth Killer — back in November, when the band posted a series of photos of them celebrating alongside producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette.

This included one pic that showed off a monstrous wall of axes, which guitarists Clint Lowery and John Connolly probably put to work pretty hard.

The band begin 2026 by touring Europe with Alter Bridge. Hopefully they’re about to bring some of their new tunes to the stage.

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Shinedown swung for the rafters across 2025 while launching a series of singles that ranged from foot-shuffling, groove-fracked rock (“Dance, Kid, Dance”) to reflective pop (“Three Six Five”) to the countrified “Searchlight,” the last of which they debuted at the legendary Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee.

Vocalist Brent Smith revealed earlier in 2025 that the tunes are all leading up to a new album, which will mark the rock-radio hit-makers’ first full-length statement since 2022’s Planet Zero. He suggested the follow-up could be out by March, but also noted that “you can’t rush the art because it’s forever.”

Title Look Outside Your Window
Release date TBA

Per a recent Discord Q&A, Slipknot percussionist-conceptualist M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan has promised that the band’s long-awaited, experimental and perhaps Radiohead-esque Look Outside Your Window album — originally recorded in 2008 — will finally see the light of day in 2026.

We’re also still anticipating a new Slipknot LP, the first to feature Eloy Casagrande behind the kit. Then again, it’s been almost two years since they teased their “Long May You Die” single.

Whatever 2026 brings or doesn’t bring, Slipknot never fail to surprise and provoke. In the meantime, Maggots will just have to wait and bleed.

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Angels that they are, Aussie hardcore crew SPEED blessed us with a three-song EP in 2025. Even so, we’re praying that they’ve got even more quick-pivot heaviness in store for us in 2026, specifically in the form of a proper follow-up to 2024 debut LP, ONLY ONE MODE.

By the sounds of it, their knuckles-down, flutes-up aesthetic should be getting a big push eventually, as vocalist Jem Siow confirmed “LP2 is on the horizon” and that he’s “psyched for the music we’re writing at the moment.”

“We’re not the best musicians, by far… however one thing we can vouch for is the passion and the energy and our personality,” Siow told BrooklynVegan at Coachella last spring. “Now that we’ve got a debut LP under our belts and a couple other records, we’re just trying to see if we can unlock a little more identity in our sound.”

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More than six years have passed since TOOL released their last full-length, 2019’s Fear Inoculum. That’s a good chunk of time to be without new TOOL music, but that’s not to say that the alt-metal vets have been resting on their polyrythmic laurels the whole time.

Bassist Justin Chancellor confirmed at the top of 2025 that the band members had been sending musical ideas to each other, and that they had also carved out time to work on a “really good pile of stuff” in the studio later that spring. Once finalized, that material could appear on a new album or be released as standalone singles or an EP, as Chancellor has hinted.

Whatever form the music eventually ends up taking, always remember that these prog wizards operate on TOOL time — so hold out hope, but don’t hold your breath.

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Former Slipknot and current Suicidal Tendencies drummer Jay Weinberg let us peek behind the veil of his new solo project in late 2025 via his bleak, beautiful and battering “Sandstone,” which features a most-fitting set of shrieks from Deafheaven’s George Clarke.

The heavy track launched a singles series that will culminate in a forthcoming EP release. Weinberg is handling guitars, bass and drums, while a rotating group of to-be-detailed vocalists will be showing up to support their friend’s new eponymous era. We’re eager to find out who hits the mic next.

Title: The Great Satan
Release date: February 27

All hail the Great Satan!

Rob Zombie is back with even more devil music — his eighth full-length solo release to do so — and he’s brought along some of his favorite Hellbilly noisemakers to help him demon-speed into his new chapter: guitarist Riggs and bassist Blasko.

That said, the two singles released thus far, “Punks and Demons” and “Heathen Days,” lean into raw, grinding, Ministry-esque industrial more than the ass-shakin’, grass-smokin’ disco metal of Zombie’s early solo career.

With The Great Satan, he’s promised a “new aesthetic of ugliness.” Sounds like he’ll be delivering.