Nu Metal News 5 October 2026: Turnstile On SNL, Blind Channel And Aaron Pauley, Twiztid Redo Papa Roach

Nu Metal News 5 October 2026, welcome to Monday. The weekend was a loud one. Turnstile took Baltimore hardcore onto the Saturday Night Live stage, Blind Channel pulled in Aaron Pauley for the final stretch of their album campaign, Twiztid rebuilt a Papa Roach single in their own image, and Tom Morello spent a day in Maryland handing his stage to half of heavy music. Under all of that, Comeback Kid kept a new record rolling, a four piece from the north west of England booked their first headline run, and an Edinburgh five piece put out the first song from an EP worth clearing space for. Here is the lot.

Turnstile Take Baltimore Hardcore To Saturday Night Live

Turnstile played Saturday Night Live this weekend, on the Dakota Johnson episode, and they did not soften a thing for the cameras. The Baltimore five piece opened with “BIRDS”, built around a Daniel Fang drum break that the broadcast mix thankfully let breathe, then came back for a second number staged against a wall of phones and hard white light. Outlets described that second slot slightly differently: NME and Kerrang both called it an “I CARE” and “DULL” medley, while Billboard framed it around “Never Enough”. Either way, it was two songs welded together and played at full tilt.

Consequence made the point that lands hardest. By their count this was the first hardcore band on Saturday Night Live in forty five years, the last being FEAR in 1981, a booking that ended with slam dancers in Studio 8H and a repair bill. Four decades of caution, and the band that finally broke the seal did it with a bird mascot, a drum solo and songs from Never Enough that have been filling rooms all year. It was their first time on the show, after earlier runs on Jimmy Kimmel and NPR Tiny Desk.

What is worth noticing is how little Turnstile have had to change to get here. The arrangements are the same ones that work in a 300 capacity room. The band still plays facing each other as much as the crowd. Heavy music has been quietly colonising live television for a while now, something we wrote about in yesterday’s column on heavy bands turning up on prime time, and Turnstile just put the loudest possible full stop on that run. Their official site is at turnstilehardcore.com.

Blind Channel And Aaron Pauley Go Into The Void

Blind Channel dropped “Into The Void” on 1 October, the fourth single from Painstream, and brought Aaron Pauley of Of Mice & Men along for it. Pauley is one of the most underrated voices in the genre, a bassist who sings like a frontman and a frontman who never over sings, and the Oulu band have written him a part that uses exactly that. The verses sit low and tight, the chorus opens wide, and Pauley takes the top of it without ever turning it into a guest spot showcase. It is the kind of feature that makes both acts sound bigger.

Painstream is Blind Channel’s sixth album and lands on 30 October through Century Media Records. The tracklist runs twelve deep, with “Messiah”, “Youthanasia”, “Stars We See”, “Types Of Killing”, “Revolution: Now” and “No Encores In A Swan Song” among the titles, and “Into The Void” sitting fourth. This is the first full record since the lineup settled around Niko Moilanen, Joonas Porko, Olli Matela, Tommi Lalli and Aleksi Kaunisvesi, and on the evidence of four singles the band have come back heavier and more direct.

The live plan is already drawn. Helsinki Ice Hall on 14 November, Tokyo and Osaka on 18 and 19 November, then a European headline tour through February and March 2027 taking in Germany, the UK, Poland, France and the Netherlands. Guest features have been a running theme in this column lately, from Distant handing a verse to Spite’s Darius Tehrani on Friday to this, and the hit rate has been high. Everything official lives at blindchannelofficial.com.

Twiztid Rebuild Papa Roach’s Getting Away With Murder

Twiztid have put out a “Redux” version of Papa Roach’s “Getting Away With Murder”, and it is a smarter piece of work than a covers novelty usually gets to be. Madrox and Monoxide rebuild the track around their own production, write fresh verses into it, and leave the chorus more or less intact with gang vocals chanting the title underneath. That restraint is the whole trick. The hook was always the reason the 2004 single went as far as it did, and the Detroit duo know better than to sand it down.

It also sits in a sweet spot for both acts. Twiztid have spent thirty years operating just outside the genre borders that this site cares about, close enough to rap metal and horrorcore to share a crowd, far enough out to build their own label in Majik Ninja Entertainment and run it their way. Papa Roach, meanwhile, have long since proved that Getting Away With Murder was more than a radio moment. Putting the two together is less of a stretch than it looks on paper, and if you want the longer version of that story our complete guide to nu metal bands and their history covers the era it comes from.

One caveat worth flagging: outlets have logged the release on different days, with some filing it on 1 October and others on 4 October, so treat the exact drop date loosely. The Redux arrived as audio rather than a music video, so there is nothing to watch yet. What is coming is the Freek Show twenty fifth anniversary tour, which opens on 30 October. For anyone drawn to the paint and the masks as much as the music, our guide to the nu metal aesthetic traces where that look came from. Twiztid live at twiztid.com.

Power To The People Turns Merriweather Into One Enormous Guest List

Tom Morello’s Power To The People festival ran on 3 October at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, streamed free on YouTube all day, and raised money for pro democracy and voting rights groups, grassroots organising and mutual aid. Bruce Springsteen headlined. Foo Fighters played. Dave Matthews played. But the day belonged to Morello’s own set, which turned into a rolling guest list of people who built the rap metal and alternative canon between them.

Serj Tankian came out for a collaborative track called “Adjourn It” and stayed for an Audioslave “Like A Stone”. Dave Grohl joined for a KISS cover. Chuck D and B-Real reassembled the Prophets of Rage front line. DMC of Run-D.M.C. turned up for several songs, with “It’s Tricky” and “Walk This Way” becoming full stage pile ons. Scott Ian, Sen Dog, Flavor Flav, Jack Black and grandson were all in the mix, and Morello closed on “Killing In The Name” with his son Roman on guitar.

Two side sets deserve their own paragraph. Jack Black played a full Black Sabbath tribute billed as Jack Sabbath with Geezer Butler on bass, fresh from recording with Mastodon, and Roman Morello again on a Randy Rhoads style polka dot V. Then came the Sons of Soundgarden, with Morello taking the Kim Thayil parts through “Spoonman” and “Outshined”. Springsteen’s finale pulled nearly everybody back out for the John Lennon song the festival took its name from. After last week’s run of festival bookings including Faith No More’s first Mystic headline slot, this is the bar for 2027.

Comeback Kid Let Go With Yesterday’s Gone

Comeback Kid released “Yesterday’s Gone” on 2 October with Brendan Garrone of Incendiary on guest vocals, and it is the Winnipeg band doing the thing they have always been best at. Andrew Neufeld put it plainly: the idea was to “play to our strengths” by “establishing our melodic signature sound with aggressive upbeat hardcore”. That is exactly what it is. Big open chords, a chorus you can shout back on the second listen, and then a breakdown that drops the floor out from under all of it.

Garrone is a shrewd choice. Incendiary deal in a flatter, more unforgiving kind of hardcore, so putting his voice against Neufeld’s melodic lines gives the track two very different kinds of weight. It is one of only two guest spots on the record, which tells you the band were not simply collecting names. Neufeld described the lyric as being about “letting go of the past and not letting that weigh you down”, and the arrangement follows that shape, tense early and wide open by the end.

The song is the latest from Chosen Hell, the band’s eighth album, out 6 November through SharpTone Records, produced by Will Putney at Graphic Nature Audio in New Jersey. Putney has a habit of making hardcore records that still feel like a room rather than a grid, and this one sounds like it. Neufeld has said the whole band pushed more material into the writing this time. We have been tracking a lot of album campaigns through this column lately, including Imminence opening up Axis Mundi, and this is among the strongest runs of the lot. Find the band at comeback-kid.com, with the back catalogue on Bandcamp.

Aleya Book Their First Headline Run Behind Old Friends

Aleya are a four piece from the north west of England, independent, and they put out “Old Friends” on 2 October. It is their third single of the year and the best of them. Frontman Tom Evans wrote it about the people who do not get to see who you turned into, and he is direct about where it came from: “experiencing death can fundamentally change your perspective of life itself.” The song carries that without ever tipping into a dirge, building from a clean figure into something with real bite in the last ninety seconds.

It is the second piece of a bigger picture. How It Ends is the follow up to their 2023 debut EP Idle Minds, produced by Dan Fox at Treehouse Studio, six tracks with loss running through all of them. That is a lot to ask of a second EP, and the thing that makes it work is that Evans writes specifically rather than abstractly. Nobody in this band is reaching for a mood. They are describing a particular absence and then finding a riff that holds the shape of it.

They have also booked their first headline dates, three of them in November: Thursday 12 November at Subside Bar in Birmingham, Friday 13 November at Live Rooms in Chester with 7eventh Sea and Noiseless, and Saturday 14 November at The Old Salutation in Nottingham. Small rooms, no label behind them, a band doing it the long way. If you are anywhere near those three cities, go. Their site is aleyauk.com and the merch lives at shop.aleyauk.com.

Featured Band: Perpetua Tear Through Veil Of Deception

Looking Ahead: A Friday EP And Two Busy Album Weeks

Friday 9 October brings Bloodrave II, the new EP from NOWHERE2RUN, the electronic project built by Jami Morgan and Eric Balderose, out through Nowhere Recordings. They warmed the ground for it with a remix of Loathe’s “Fangs” that turns a funk leaning alt rock song into something closer to a club record while keeping the twin vocals of Kadeem France and Eric Bickerstaffe front and centre. It is a long way from where either of them started and it works.

Then the calendar tightens. Friday 30 October gives you Blind Channel’s Painstream and the opening night of Twiztid’s Freek Show twenty fifth anniversary tour. A week later, Friday 6 November, Comeback Kid’s Chosen Hell and Perpetua’s Saviour To None arrive on the same day, which is a nice accident of scheduling given one is a band eight albums deep and the other is four songs into their recording life.

Further out, Moonspell have announced a God Is A Vampire European tour for March and April 2027 with Iotunn and TodoMal in support, a long run that takes in France, Spain and most points between. And Deafheaven have debuted a new song called “Hunter” live in Chicago, trailed as part of a coming EP, which is worth a flag for anyone who likes their heavy music loud and unresolved. We will keep you posted on all of it.

Get Your Band In This Column

Perpetua came out of a news search. Plenty of the bands in this column do not. If you are in a band, send us your music through our Get Featured form and we will listen to all of it. We cover unsigned and self released acts alongside the big names every single day, we never charge for coverage, and if we write about you we email you the link so you can share it.

What helps: a song or a video we can actually hear, the release date, your links, and a line or two about who you are and where you are from. What does not matter: how many followers you have. Some of the best things we have run this year came from bands with three figure monthly listeners.

Nu Metal News 5 October 2026, Your Questions

What songs did Turnstile play on Saturday Night Live?

Turnstile opened with “BIRDS” and returned for a second slot that most outlets, including NME and Kerrang, described as a medley of “I CARE” and “DULL”. Billboard framed that second performance around “Never Enough” instead, so accounts differ slightly on how it was billed. The episode was hosted by Dakota Johnson and it was the band’s first appearance on the show.

When does Blind Channel’s album Painstream come out?

Painstream is out on 30 October 2026 through Century Media Records. It is the Finnish band’s sixth album and runs twelve tracks, with “Into The Void” featuring Aaron Pauley of Of Mice & Men sitting fourth on the list.

Is Twiztid’s “Getting Away With Murder” a new Papa Roach song?

No. It is a Twiztid “Redux” of the Papa Roach single that first appeared in 2004. Madrox and Monoxide rebuilt the production, wrote their own verses and kept the original chorus, adding gang vocals chanting the title. It arrived as audio only, so there is no music video for it yet.

Who performed at Tom Morello’s Power To The People festival?

The festival ran on 3 October 2026 at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. Bruce Springsteen headlined, with Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews also on the bill. Morello’s set brought out Serj Tankian, Dave Grohl, Chuck D, B-Real, DMC, Scott Ian, Sen Dog, Flavor Flav, Jack Black and grandson. Jack Black played a Black Sabbath tribute set with Geezer Butler, and a Sons of Soundgarden set covered “Spoonman” and “Outshined”.

Who are Perpetua and when is their EP out?

Perpetua are a five piece groove metal band from Edinburgh, made up of Ben Smith, Andy Dickson, Nick Whyte, Will Keogh and Tony Corio. Their EP Saviour To None is a four track release due on 6 November 2026 through Bleeding Art Collective, led by the single “Veil Of Deception”. They have a show with The Haunted at Slay on 10 October.