Heavy music fans may sometimes scoff at the mainstream tastes of the Grammy Awards , yet it’s still fascinating to find out which members of the metal community get hailed by the music industry’s biggest mainstream award show. Wonder no more, the Grammy voters just officially unveiled their picks for the Best Metal Performance of the year.
The full list of nominees for the 68th annual Grammys was announced this morning (November 7th), and this naturally included Best Metal Performance. For clarity, “performance” refers to a single song rather than a full-length album. And their picks for the 2026 award show are pretty well-rounded, reflecting a mix of prog-rock, djent-pop, melodic hardcore, occult-metal and more.
The Best Metal Performance nominees were announced in a pre-recorded message from Sharon, Kelly and Jack Osbourne, and they include Dream Theater’s “Night Terror,” Ghost’s “Lachryma,” Sleep Token’s “Emergence,” Spiritbox’s “Soft Spine” and Turnstile’s “BIRDS”
The Osbournes also unveiled the nominees for Best Rock Album, which include Deftones’ private music, Haim’s I Quit, Linkin Park’s FROM ZERO, Turnstile’s NEVER ENOUGH and Yungblud’s Idols.
Later in the morning, it was revealed that Nine Inch Nails, Sleep Token, Hayley Williams and Turnstile are in contention for Best Rock Song, while the Best Rock Performance statue could go to Amyl and the Sniffers, Linkin Park, Turnstile Hayley Williams or Yungblud’s Back to the Beginning peformance of Black Sabbath’s “Changes.”
You’ll find the full list of categories and nominees over on the Grammy website.
The 68th annual Grammy are being held February 1st at Los Angeles, California’s Crypto Arena. A list of performers has yet to be unveiled.
Best Metal Performance:
Dream Theater “Night Terror”
Ghost “Lachryma”
Sleep Token “Emergence”
Spititbox “Soft Spine”
Turnstile “BIRDS”
Best Rock Album:
Deftones private music
HAIM I Quit
Linkin Park FROM ZERO
Turnstile NEVER ENOUGH
Yungblud Idols
Best Rock Performance:
Amyl and the Sniffers “U Should Not Be Doing That”
Linkin Park “The Emptiness Machine”
Turnstile “NEVER ENOUGH”
Hayley Williams “Mirtazapine”
Yungblud featuring Nino Bettencourt, Frank Bello, Adam Wakeman, II (Sleep Token) “Changes” (Live From Villa Park)
Best Rock Song:
Nine Inch Nails “As Alive As You Need Me to Be”
Sleep Token “Caramel”
Hayley Williams “Glum”
Turnstile “NEVER ENOUGH”
Yungblud “Zombie”