Nu Metal News 8 October 2026, welcome to Thursday. One of the biggest bands in British heavy music dropped a single nobody saw coming, two of the genre’s most reliable live acts put out videos on the same afternoon, a 1996 classic is getting the full thirty year treatment, and a four piece from Oakland came through our own front door with a video and a warehouse full of attitude. Here is everything worth your time.
Enter Shikari Reach Higher Ground With No Warning
Enter Shikari surprise released a new single called “Higher Ground” on Tuesday, with no campaign, no countdown and no artwork leak to spoil it. The band wrote it during the sessions for their eighth album Lose Your Self, then set it aside because it clearly wanted to stand on its own rather than sit inside a tracklist. They finished it slowly across spring and summer, which is exactly what a song like this needs.
Rou Reynolds framed it around perspective. He talked about how we often gain clarity when we find time to zoom out, whether that is a personal mess or one of the enormous problems facing everybody at once, and said the broad view brings a strange calm in relentless times. That is a very Shikari idea, and it arrives as one of the warmest, most open things they have put their name to.
It lands right before they move. Warm up shows hit the O2 Academy in Oxford on 21 October and the O2 Academy in Leicester on 22 October, then the arena run starts at Motorpoint Arena Nottingham on 13 November and takes in Cardiff, Hull, Glasgow, Manchester and two nights at Alexandra Palace, before Belfast and Dublin in early December. Already Heard lists Holding Absence and The Callous Daoboys on the arena dates, and the Daoboys have had a busy fortnight of their own since they started work on album four earlier this week.
The band have also said they will fall dormant as a recording and performing entity after the end of 2027, with 2027 itself carrying anniversaries for Take To The Skies, A Flash Flood Of Colour and The Spark. Take that as an invitation rather than an ending. Twenty years in, they are still writing songs that sound like they mean it, and “Higher Ground” is proof.
Alien Ant Farm Call Out The Gaslighter
Alien Ant Farm put the official video for “Gaslighter” online on Wednesday through Judge & Jury Records, the Los Angeles label founded by Howard Benson and Neil Sanderson that they signed to for this album cycle. The song itself premiered back in September, so the video is the moment it finally gets a face, and it is a sharp one.
Dryden Mitchell described the track as a razor edged gem that calls out the liars and manipulators in our lives, an anthem that rocks steadily and races toward a hopeful resolution. He has also said the idea started somewhere completely different, as a piece of wordplay about code talkers, the Native American servicemen who carried coded messages through both world wars. Howard pushed for “Gaslighter” instead, and the title stuck.
Musically it is the version of this band that has always worked best, bright guitars and a chorus built to be shouted back, wrapped around a subject that could easily have come out bitter and instead comes out hopeful. It is on the album they have been building toward all year, and on this evidence that record is in very good shape.
They are busy with it too. US dates run through the middle of October, Sick New World Texas in Fort Worth follows on 24 October, and then they cross the Atlantic for a UK and Ireland run alongside Skindred, Spineshank and Orgy, including Alexandra Palace on Halloween. Four bands from that exact lineage on one stage is the sort of bill the whole nu metal aesthetic was built for.
Skindred Want You To Big Em Up
The same afternoon, Skindred released the video for “Big Em Up” through Earache Records. The track comes from You Got This, the Newport band’s eighth album, which went to number one on the UK chart earlier this year and has kept them on the road ever since.
Benji Webbe has been clear about what the song is for. He talks about how easily life piles up, bills and family tragedies and the constant negativity coming off a phone screen, and the chorus is simply an instruction to lift the people around you. “Please check on those around you. Big Em Up!!” is how he put it. Coming from a frontman who has spent decades turning a crowd into one organism, it reads as a mission statement rather than a slogan.
The UK and Ireland run is dense. Two nights at Rock City in Nottingham on 23 and 24 October with Spineshank, then Birmingham O2 Academy and Alexandra Palace with Alien Ant Farm, Spineshank and Orgy on 30 and 31 October, Dublin 3Olympia on 6 November, Belfast Telegraph Building on 7 November and two nights at the Barrowlands in Glasgow on 13 and 14 November. If you have only ever caught them on a festival bill, the indoor shows are where this band genuinely takes the roof off.
Bush Reopen Razorblade Suitcase At Thirty
Bush are giving Razorblade Suitcase a thirtieth anniversary deluxe edition on 11 December through Craft Recordings. It pairs the original thirteen track album with eleven extras across two CDs and digital, and the selection is a lot more interesting than the usual anniversary scrape.
The B sides are all here, “Old”, “Broken TV”, “Sleeper” and “Bubbles”, alongside sixteen ounce demos of “Greedy Fly” and “Cold Contagious” that show the songs before Steve Albini got hold of them. There is also the Tricky produced take on New Order’s “In A Lonely Place” that originally turned up on The Crow: City Of Angels, which remains one of the strangest and best things anyone involved has ever done.
Live material fills out the rest. “Glycerine” from Pinkpop in Holland, “Insect Kin” from the band’s Saturday Night Live appearance on 23 November 1996, and “Insect Kin” and “Personal Holloway” from The Forum in London. The demo of “Greedy Fly” is already out as a preview. A limited two LP pressing of Razorblade Suitcase (In Addition) on gold and blue swirl vinyl, with four bonus tracks, runs alongside it through the band’s own store and Craft.
It is worth remembering how brave that record was at the time. Bush had the biggest alternative rock album in America and chose to follow it with something rawer, drier and far less friendly to radio. Thirty years on it sounds like the correct decision, and the demos make the case better than any reissue essay could.
Dark Divine Take Rhiannon Somewhere Darker
Orlando’s Dark Divine released their first ever cover on Wednesday, a metalcore reading of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” through Thriller Records. Covering a song that famous is a risk, because everyone already has a version of it in their head. This one earns the attempt by committing completely.
Anthony Martinez said the idea had been in his back pocket for almost as long as the band has existed, and that he wanted the cover to express this band’s energy and what their sound has become. That is the right instinct. The original is all mystery and swirl, and Dark Divine lean into the witchcraft rather than sanding it off, keeping the melody intact while the floor drops out underneath it.
It arrives mid run, which tells you how hard they are working. Headline dates with Fire From The Gods and Outlier run through October, then they support Motionless In White and Dayseeker from the end of the month into late November, including Apocalypse Fest in Philadelphia on Halloween. Early 2027 takes them across Europe with Bullet For My Valentine and Pendulum, and in March and April they join the From Ashes To New run we covered yesterday with Nevertel and Hollow Pact.
Amira Elfeky Dates Her Debut Album It Was Only A Dream
Amira Elfeky has announced her debut album. It Was Only A Dream arrives on 13 November through Anemoia Records and Atlantic, following the Skin To Skin and Surrender EPs, and it is the record a lot of people have been waiting on since she started putting Deftones and Evanescence through a shoegaze pedalboard.
The lead single “Breakdown” opens the album and sets the weather, woozy and hypnotic with the guitars sitting somewhere between a wall and a fog. She describes it as chapter one in a trilogy, about wanting to change but being too exhausted to take the first step. That is a very specific kind of honesty, and it is the thing that separates her from everyone else currently filed under nu gaze.
Elfeky grew up in Simsbury, Connecticut, moved to San Francisco at eighteen and now works out of Los Angeles, and her brothers get the credit for handing her nu metal in the first place. She is in the middle of a European run supporting I Prevail right now, with Zurich, Milan, Vienna, Warsaw and Berlin still to come this month, and the two acts already have a song together in “Paradise”. Guest spots have been a good look for her lately, in the same way that Blind Channel pulling in Aaron Pauley earlier this week worked for them.
A Perfect Circle Start The Sonic Temple Drip, RADAR Opens Its Hand
A Perfect Circle are the first act confirmed for Sonic Temple Art + Music Festival 2027, which runs 13 to 16 May at Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. The festival is doing this as a slow drip rather than one poster, so expect names to keep landing for weeks. Starting with this one is a statement, and it fits a spring 2027 touring plan the band already have in motion behind the recent single “To Whom It May Concern”.
On the other side of the Atlantic, RADAR Festival opened its 2027 lineup, running 30 July to 1 August at Magna in Sheffield with Mick Gordon already confirmed to headline. The first wave brings Arcane Roots, Volumes, Unprocessed, Conjurer, Textures, Vower, Allt, Avralize, Karmanjakah, Revnoir, Every Hell, Cold Night For Alligators and Brightshade, plus a European exclusive comeback show from The Algorithm.
Two very different festivals, and both are worth watching for the same reason. Sonic Temple has become the biggest annual gathering for this music in North America, and RADAR has quietly turned into the place where the technical and progressive end of the scene gets a proper stage instead of a lunchtime slot. If you are already planning for next summer, our festival outfit guide exists for exactly that reason.
Featured Band: A Block Film It In The Warehouse
A Block are a four piece from Oakland, California, and they describe themselves as a new alt and nu metal band. They came to us through our own submissions form with a music video for “This Is Life”, which is up on their channel now, and the first thing you notice is that they have not tried to dress the thing up. It is four men in black in a warehouse full of pallets, shot low and lit hard, with a Raiders cap doing more scene setting than any budget could.
That matters more than it sounds. Oakland has handed this genre an enormous amount over the years, and the version of it that comes out of that city has always had weight to it rather than polish. A Block are clearly cut from that cloth, and they are at the stage where everything is still being built by hand, which is the most interesting point in any band’s life to find them.
Go and watch “This Is Life”, then go and follow them, because this is the bit where it actually helps. A band at this stage does not need a review, it needs people pressing play and turning up. If you like what you hear, tell somebody else.
A Block reached us through our get featured form, which is the whole reason this column keeps turning up bands you will not read about anywhere else. Press play above and judge it for yourself, which is the only review that counts.
We spend a lot of this column on bands with labels and tour buses, and that is fine, those stories matter. But a group of friends in a warehouse in Oakland making a video because they wanted one to exist is the same impulse that started every band in the paragraphs above this one. Everybody begins here.
Looking Ahead: A Loaded December
The next few weeks are stacked. Caspian release their self titled album on 16 October through Wax Bodega, previewed by “Far Country” and its accompanying short film, and they are on the road across the UK and Ireland co headlining with And So I Watch You From Afar. Amira Elfeky’s It Was Only A Dream lands on 13 November. Then December gets busy.
Parkway Drive’s HOME, Live At The Sydney Opera House is out on 4 December through Epitaph, recorded at their twentieth anniversary show with a full symphony orchestra, with the film premiering at the State Theatre in Sydney on 10 November. We went into that one in yesterday’s edition. A week later, on 11 December, the Razorblade Suitcase deluxe arrives.
Keep an eye on Enter Shikari too. They have said US dates are coming in January and that 2027 carries festival bookings in Europe and North America, which means the dormancy they have flagged for the end of that year is going to be preceded by a very loud twelve months. If you want to see them, next year is the year.
Get Your Band In This Column
If you are in a band and you have a single, a video, an EP, a tour or a show coming up, send it to us. The get featured form takes a couple of minutes, it goes straight to our inbox, and it is how A Block ended up in today’s edition. Include your links, a date we can check, and a photo or some artwork we can run with it.
We read every submission. We cannot run all of them, and we only publish what we can verify against something public, but unsigned and self released bands get the same look as anybody on a major. That is the entire point of doing this daily.
Nu Metal News 8 October 2026, Your Questions
Is “Higher Ground” from a new Enter Shikari album?
No. The band wrote it during the sessions for their eighth album, Lose Your Self, but left it off because it worked better on its own. They finished it across spring and summer 2026 and released it as a standalone single, so treat it as its own thing rather than a taster for a ninth record.
When does the Alien Ant Farm album come out?
No title or date has been announced yet. “Gaslighter” is confirmed for the record, which arrives through Judge and Jury Records, and the band have been releasing singles from it across 2026. The video went online on 7 October after the song itself premiered in September.
Where can I see Alien Ant Farm and Skindred on the same bill?
Two shows. Birmingham O2 Academy on 30 October and Alexandra Palace in London on 31 October, both with Spineshank and Orgy on the bill as well. Skindred also play Rock City in Nottingham on 23 and 24 October with Spineshank, and Alien Ant Farm play Sick New World Texas in Fort Worth on 24 October.
What is on the Razorblade Suitcase deluxe edition?
The original thirteen track album plus eleven extras across two CDs and digital, out 11 December through Craft Recordings. You get the B sides “Old”, “Broken TV”, “Sleeper” and “Bubbles”, sixteen ounce demos of “Greedy Fly” and “Cold Contagious”, the Tricky mix of New Order’s “In A Lonely Place”, and live tracks from Pinkpop, Saturday Night Live and The Forum in London.
How do I get my band covered on Nu-Metal.com?
Use the get featured form on this site. Send your official links, a release or show date we can check against something public, and an image we can publish. Unsigned and self released bands are actively wanted here, and A Block in today’s edition came in exactly that way.
- Kerrang!: Enter Shikari, “Higher Ground”
- NME: Enter Shikari surprise single
- Already Heard: The Daily Drop, 8 October 2026
- MHF Magazine: Alien Ant Farm, “Gaslighter”
- Chaoszine: Alien Ant Farm video
- Theprp: A Perfect Circle at Sonic Temple 2027
- Chaoszine: Skindred, “Big Em Up”
- Blabbermouth: Bush, Razorblade Suitcase deluxe
- Craft Recordings: Razorblade Suitcase deluxe
- Live Metal: Dark Divine, “Rhiannon”
- Lambgoat: Dark Divine cover Fleetwood Mac
- Rock Sound: Amira Elfeky album announcement
- Revolver: Amira Elfeky, It Was Only A Dream
- Metal Injection: Sonic Temple 2027 dates