Nu Metal News 10 October 2026: Silent Civilian Return, Finger Eleven Duet, Mastodon Fossil Vinyl

Nu Metal News 10 October 2026, welcome to Saturday. Today is built around people going back for something they left behind and finding it still works. Jonny Santos is taking the record that got him through life after Spineshank back on the road for its twentieth birthday. Finger Eleven are handing one of their own songs to a stranger. Mastodon are pressing actual fossils into wax. And out of Fort Worth, Empty Shell Casing have quietly put out the best twenty minutes of rap metal you will hear this month.

Silent Civilian Take Rebirth Of The Temple Back Out At Twenty

Jonny Santos has announced a twentieth anniversary run for Rebirth Of The Temple, the album he made after stepping away from Spineshank in 2004. It came out on 2 May 2006 through Mediaskare, and for a lot of people it was the record that proved the voice on Strictly Diesel and The Height Of Callousness had more than one gear in it. The first leg runs fourteen dates through December.

The routing is a proper working tour rather than a victory lap. It opens 1 December at Dante’s in Portland and moves down the coast to the DNA Lounge in San Francisco and the Whisky in Los Angeles, then takes the long way east: the Bisbee Grand in Arizona, the Roxy in Denver, the Bourbon Theatre in Lincoln, the Shrine in Tulsa. Texas gets five nights of it, including Come & Take It in Austin and the Paradox in San Antonio, before the leg closes at 89th Street in Oklahoma City on 20 December.

That is a deliberately unglamorous list of rooms, and it is the right one for this album. Rebirth Of The Temple was never a stadium record. It was close, dry and mean, and it will sound enormous in a four hundred capacity bar. The band have said this is only the first leg and that they intend to cover the rest of the country, so if your city is missing, it is worth holding off on the disappointment for a few weeks.

Santos has had a busy couple of years. He rejoined Spineshank in 2025, and in 2023 he started The Less Dead with Spineshank drummer Tommy Decker. Anniversary tours can feel like filing cabinets being opened, but this one has a man actively working in three bands deciding that one of them deserves a birthday. We covered another reissue anniversary doing the rounds in Thursday’s column, where Bush reopened Razorblade Suitcase at thirty, and the pattern is becoming the healthiest thing in this genre.

Finger Eleven Want Someone Else On Last Night On Earth

A deluxe Last Night On Earth lands on 6 November, and Finger Eleven have done something more interesting than bolt three demos onto the back of it. They are running an open call, tagged #F11LastNightDuet, for anyone in the world to put their own vocal on the title track or remix the instrumental. The band have deliberately left the creative boundaries open rather than fencing it into a genre.

Scott Anderson said the band have “always loved the idea of turning Last Night On Earth into a duet”, and the deluxe makes clear they have been circling it for a while. The eighteen track listing carries a version of Blue Sky Mystery featuring Filter, a second pass at Bones And Joints, acoustic takes of First Time and One Thing recorded live at B Town Sound, a live Living In A Dream, and two demo versions of the title track labelled simply DEMO 3 and DEMO 7.

Those demos are the part worth getting excited about. Hearing a song that became a single in its third and seventh forms tells you more about how a band actually writes than any interview does. Pair that with an instrumental in the tracklist and the open call stops looking like a marketing device and starts looking like the band handing over working parts.

There is a thread running through this column lately of bands letting other people drive their songs. Twiztid rebuilding Papa Roach’s Getting Away With Murder was the same instinct pointed the other way. Finger Eleven are simply skipping the part where they choose who gets to do it.

Mastodon Press Actual Fossils Into Marrow Deep

Mastodon have detailed a Bone Dust edition of Marrow Deep: 170 copies, around 150 dollars, with real mastodon fossil material mixed into the wax. The fossils are reported at roughly ten thousand years old. It is the kind of idea a band only gets to have once, and the fact that it is Mastodon doing it rather than anyone else is the whole joke landing perfectly.

Worth flagging that outlets have described the contents slightly differently. Most reports, including the band’s own detailing of the variant, call it fossil bone dust ground into the pressing compound. At least one write up described it as actual mastodon teeth. Those are not quite the same claim, and at 170 copies nobody is going to be able to check yours against anyone else’s.

Collectible vinyl has spent a decade chasing splatters and glow in the dark gimmicks, and most of it is just plastic with a different dye. This is a genuinely different object. Whether it sounds any good is another question entirely, because grit in the compound is historically not a friend to a stylus, but the people buying 170 numbered copies of a fossil record are not buying it to play every night.

Slipknot’s Clown Takes O’ Day Monster Somewhere Stranger

M. Shawn Crahan has released Let Me Out, the second single from O’ Day Monster, the project he started in July. It is a trip hop record with guest vocals from Liz Anne Hill, and it sits a very long way from anything he has put his name to before. The visuals are AI generated, and Crahan has been open from the start that the project leans on those tools.

“I have entered a time in my life where I wanted to create something I could conduct and drive, with words,” he said of the project. That is a fair description of what the track does. There is no percussion wall, no theatre, no mask. The beat sits low and patient and the vocal carries everything, which is about as far from his day job as a man can get while still making music.

The AI element will split people, and it should be discussed openly rather than waved off. What is not in dispute is that a founding member of the biggest band in this genre has spent his fifties making quiet trip hop under a different name instead of coasting. First single Un Life set the tone in the summer. Let Me Out suggests it is a body of work rather than a whim.

FILTH Book A Very Filthy Christmas With Narcotic Wasteland And Killcrown

Shelby, North Carolina’s FILTH have booked eight December dates with Raleigh technical death metal outfit Narcotic Wasteland and Michigan deathcore crew Killcrown. It runs 11 December at Shenanigans Live in Portage, Indiana through to the twentieth at Empire Underground in Albany, taking in the Music Factory in Battle Creek, X-Ray Arcade in Cudahy, the Magnolia Bar in Louisville and the Radio Room in Greenville on the way.

Three bands who do not sound alike is a better bill than three who do. FILTH are downtempo and deliberately slow enough to feel rude about it, Narcotic Wasteland are technical and precise, and Killcrown bring the slam. A room gets a genuinely different shape three times in a night, which is more than most package tours manage.

FILTH’s latest EP Welcome To Shell Town is out on Crowdkill Records, and they have a run of autumn one offs before the tour: October Obliteration in Loganville on the 17th, Shocktober Fest in Gastonia on the 23rd, Ground Zero’s thirtieth anniversary in Spartanburg on the 30th and Mosh For Tots in Savannah on 7 November. There is also a slam offshoot, SLAM BAND, whose debut lands 30 October via Gutter Music Records.

December is quietly filling up with heavy nights out. Ice Nine Kills already have a Christmas EP on the way, and between that and two separate December runs in this column alone, the seasonal metal show is becoming a fixture rather than a novelty. If you are planning which ones to do, our guide to dressing for a long day on your feet at a metal show applies just as well to a cold December bar.

Featured Band: Empty Shell Casing Go UNLIMITED

Empty Shell Casing are from Fort Worth, and UNLIMITED is their first release since signing to Deep Love Recordings under the Atlantic Recording Group. Six tracks, twenty minutes and thirty eight seconds: MT, ENHANCE, NO REASON, SAPPHIRE, RETINA and LESS THAN NOTHING. It is mixed by Jayson Braffett, mastered by Dale Becker, with artwork by Nicholas Colalella.

What they do is rap metal in the sense that the two halves are actually load bearing. The riffs are low and dry and the flow sits on top of them rather than taking turns with them, which is the part most bands reaching back to 1999 get wrong. NO REASON is the one to start with. It moves, it has a hook, and it does not spend ninety seconds explaining itself first.

There is a small discrepancy worth noting: the band call UNLIMITED a mixtape and date it 9 October, while coverage has run it as an EP on the tenth. Either way it is out. They are on the road almost immediately, supporting SPY from 13 to 29 October starting in Detroit, then Ladrones from 13 November to 4 December starting in Dallas, with a headline night at The Rino in North Kansas City on 23 October.

Looking Ahead: 6 November Is Getting Crowded

Two things in this column alone land on 6 November: the deluxe Last Night On Earth and, announced the same week, a six track EP from British newcomers Greysight. Add the SLAM BAND debut on 30 October and the two December tours above, and the back end of the year is looking a lot healthier than the summer did. Friday’s column had 20 November stacked just as high.

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Nu Metal News 10 October 2026, Your Questions

What is Silent Civilian and how does it relate to Spineshank?

Silent Civilian is Jonny Santos’s band, formed after he left Spineshank in 2004. He sang on Spineshank’s Strictly Diesel and The Height Of Callousness, rejoined them in 2025, and also co-founded The Less Dead with Spineshank drummer Tommy Decker in 2023.

When does the Rebirth Of The Temple anniversary tour start?

The first leg opens 1 December 2026 at Dante’s in Portland, Oregon and runs fourteen dates through 20 December at 89th Street in Oklahoma City. The band have said more of the country will follow.

How do I enter the Finger Eleven duet open call?

Add your own vocal to Last Night On Earth or remix the instrumental, then post it on social media with the hashtag #F11LastNightDuet. It is open worldwide and the band have not fenced it into any one style.

What is actually in the Mastodon Bone Dust vinyl?

It is a 170 copy variant of Marrow Deep with real mastodon fossil material, reported at around ten thousand years old, mixed into the wax. Most reports describe it as fossil bone dust, though at least one described it as teeth.

Where can I hear Empty Shell Casing?

UNLIMITED is on Spotify and the usual services, and there is a video for their earlier single Grasp on their own YouTube channel. Their site at emptyshellcasing.com carries the full tracklist and their tour dates.