Nu Metal News 4 October 2026, welcome to Sunday. The weekend handed us a bass-heavy rebuild of an Atreyu classic, a Swedish four piece finally clearing passport control, a monster truck themed debut EP from the Inland Empire, a new Fear Factory voice talking craft, a Baltimore hardcore festival showing its hand for January, and two heavy bands turning up on live sports television. Plus a Dallas band whose second single is one of the most unusual things Facedown has put out this year. Here is everything worth your time.
Atreyu Send Her Portrait In Black Into New Territory
On Friday 2 October Atreyu put a reworked “Her Portrait In Black” into the world, and on Saturday they followed it with something stranger and more fun: a remix built by Sullivan King and Vastive. The Yorba Linda band have been circling this song for twenty years, ever since it landed on the Underworld: Evolution soundtrack and became the track that introduced a lot of people to them.
What the remix does is simple and smart. Sullivan King is a metal guitarist who happens to make bass music, so he does not bolt a drop onto a metalcore song and call it a crossover. He lets the original vocal carry the weight, hollows out the low end underneath it, and then reassembles the chorus with a sub frequency that a 2006 mix could never have delivered. Vastive sharpens the edges. The result sounds like the song always wanted a bigger room.
There is a second piece of news folded into this one. A B-side from the same sessions has now been given a proper digital release, which means the whole package is finally streamable rather than living on a soundtrack disc. For a band approaching thirty years, treating the back catalogue as living material rather than a museum is a good instinct. If you want the wider picture of why this era keeps coming back around, our guide to the nu metal aesthetic covers the ground.
No video exists for the remix itself. The official visualizer for the reworked “Her Portrait In Black” is below, and it is the closest thing to a moving image for this run of releases.
thrown Share Unwanted And Get Their Passports Back
thrown have put out the title track from Unwanted, the Stockholm band’s second album, due 6 November through Arising Empire. It is eleven songs in roughly twenty one minutes, produced again by drummer Buster Odeholm, and if the title track is the template then the record is going to be even more compressed than Excessive Guilt was. Nothing is allowed to breathe. That is the point.
“unwanted” the song is a masterclass in restraint from a band who could easily just hit harder every bar. The verse sits on a single choked guitar figure while Marcus Lundqvist delivers the vocal almost conversationally, and the payoff only arrives because they held it back. Odeholm producing his own band pays off in moments like that, where the mix knows exactly which frequency to vacate.
Alongside the song came news about the North American headline run. Visa paperwork held the band in Europe, and the reporting here does not fully agree: Lambgoat has the band missing Norwalk and Worcester and rejoining the tour on Tuesday 6 October in Grand Rapids, while Chaoszine frames it as the Allentown and Asbury Park dates moving to 18 and 19 October. Both can be true at once, and all tickets are reported valid for the new dates. Norma Jean, BOLTCUTTER and HALF ME are on the run.
It has been a week of bands drawing up long road maps, including Enter Shikari mapping out fourteen months of shows. There is no official video for “unwanted” yet, so here is “rehearsed” from the same album campaign.
Big Ass Truck I.E. Load Up Found On Road Dead
Big Ass Truck I.E. have announced their debut EP. Found On Road Dead arrives Tuesday 20 October through Nuclear Blast Records, on digital and on a limited 10 inch pressing cut to look like a tire. Five tracks: “Found On Road Dead”, “Dragging Meat”, “Big Ass Gun”, “Forced Through Sludge” and “1 Trillion Pounds”. The lead single and video for “Dragging Meat” is out now.
The Inland Empire band have built the whole thing around vehicular menace, and it works because they commit to it completely rather than winking at the camera. “Dragging Meat” is beatdown hardcore with the suspension shot out, all low tuning and sudden stops, and the video leans into monster truck chaos without ever feeling like a joke at the band’s expense. Zack Perez and Astral Media shot it.
Vocalist Abel Abarca said the band are “super stoked to finally get these tracks out into the world” and called the single one of their favourites they have made. You can hear why. A year on from signing to Nuclear Blast, they have resisted the obvious move of stretching five good songs into a thin album, and a twelve minute EP that never repeats itself is a far better introduction than a padded LP would be.
Fear Factory’s Milo Silvestro On Carrying The Roboticist Voice
Milo Silvestro has been Fear Factory‘s vocalist since 2023, but “Roboticist”, released on 29 August, was the first recorded evidence. In an interview circulating this weekend he explained his approach plainly: he set out to sound as close to the band’s established vocal identity as he could, rather than to redraw it.
That is a harder job than it sounds and a more generous one than it gets credit for. Fear Factory’s clean-and-crushed vocal architecture is not a style you can approximate, it is a precise mechanical system, and a singer who can operate it without making it about himself is doing the band a service. Silvestro has spent three years on stage learning that machine from the inside, and the single is the proof that the time was well spent.
Dino Cazares is tracking the rest of the record on an eight string, which should push the rhythm guitar even further below where Demanufacture sat. The album is the eleventh and the first with this lineup. We saw a version of this story earlier in the week when Alienist introduced their new voice with the Phantom video. Bands that handle a vocalist change with this much care tend to come out the other side stronger.
Disturbin’ The Peace 2027 Opens With Integrity And Madball
The sixth Disturbin’ The Peace lands at Baltimore Soundstage on Saturday 30 January 2027, and Flatspot Records have revealed the first confirmations. Cold World headline. Madball are on. Integrity are playing Humanity Is The Devil in full for its thirtieth anniversary. Division of Mind, Combust, The S.E.T. and Iron Mind fill out the bill, with tickets through Ticketmaster.
That Integrity set is the headline within the headline. Humanity Is The Devil is the record that taught a generation of hardcore bands that you could put Bathory and Cleveland hardcore in the same sentence, and hearing it played start to finish in a thousand capacity room in January is the sort of thing people book flights for. Dwid Hellion has been performing this material with a ferocity that has not dimmed in three decades.
Flatspot have earned trust as curators. The 2026 edition put Hatebreed, End It and Agnostic Front in the same building, and we covered Hatebreed sending up the Carrion Choir only last week. More names are still to be announced. If you are already planning the trip, our festival outfit guide has a section on dressing for a January show where the pit is the only heating.
Heavy Music Keeps Turning Up On Live Television
Two placements landed within a couple of days of each other and together they say something worth noticing. The Callous Daoboys’ “Distracted By The Mona Lisa” is being used on UFC programming, and Ando San’s “March For Me” began airing on ESPN College Football coverage on Thursday 1 October.
The Daoboys one is the funnier of the two. “Distracted By The Mona Lisa” is a love letter to being in a band, a sprawling Atlanta mathcore song with violin in it, and someone at UFC decided that was the right soundtrack for people walking to a cage. They are not wrong. The Daoboys have always been upfront about Korn, Slipknot and Linkin Park sitting in their DNA next to Dillinger, and that is exactly the pedigree a broadcast music supervisor reaches for.
Ando San is the one to watch here. Signed to Sumerian earlier this year, he is a rapper who writes over genuinely heavy production, and “March For Me” hit national television before it hit streaming. The track is out everywhere on Thursday 15 October. He is in the middle of a European run supporting Don Broco through to 14 October, with a sold out headline show at The Lower Third in London on 16 October.
Sync money is not glamorous and nobody writes a song for it, but a placement like this puts a heavy band in front of an audience that will never read a metal site. That is a bigger deal for a developing artist than a week of good reviews.
Featured Band: Scroll Eater Deliver The Word
Scroll Eater are from Dallas, Texas, and they signed to Facedown Records at the start of September. On Friday 2 October they released their second single, “Deliver The Word”, with Jackson Scott of Unbroken Reign guesting and Jonathan Franco directing the video. One note before you go looking for it: the Facedown upload and theprp both have it as “Deliver The Word”, while Lambgoat filed it as “Deliver The World”. The official video title is the one we have gone with.
What makes Scroll Eater worth your attention is how much they leave out. Most new heavy bands announce themselves by filling every bar. Scroll Eater do the opposite. The band describe themselves as “doom-heavy, atmospheric, unafraid of silence or collapse, built to carry a burden rather than perform one”, and for once that is not press release language, it is an accurate description of the records.
“Deliver The Word” moves at a crawl for its first half, a single detuned figure repeating while the drums refuse to resolve, and the space around the riff does as much work as the riff. Then Jackson Scott arrives and the whole thing tips over. Scott has one of the more distinctive throats in modern hardcore, and pairing him with a band this patient was a genuinely inspired call rather than a feature for the algorithm.
The project is openly scripture-driven, which gives the writing a sense of stakes that a lot of doom-adjacent heavy music reaches for and misses. “Revelation made loud, born from divine burden” is how they put it. Whatever you bring to that, the songs carry real weight. They are two singles deep, and both are better than most bands’ debut albums. We had Fail The Enemy in this spot yesterday, and Scroll Eater are cut from similarly serious cloth.
Looking Ahead: Two Release Dates And A Stadium Queue
Two dates to put in the diary. Ando San’s “March For Me” hits streaming on Thursday 15 October, which will be the first chance most people get to hear in full a song they have already heard twenty seconds of during a football broadcast. Big Ass Truck I.E. release Found On Road Dead on Tuesday 20 October, and the tire-shaped 10 inch is limited, so that one will move.
Further out, thrown’s Unwanted arrives on Friday 6 November, and Disturbin’ The Peace runs on Saturday 30 January in Baltimore with more names still to come. Slipknot’s 2027 stadium run is also working through its ticket phases, so if you are chasing those, keep an eye on the on-sale windows rather than assuming general admission will still be there next month.
And if you are kitting yourself out for any of the above, our rundown of the best nu metal clothing brands is a decent place to start.
Get Your Band In This Column
We cover unsigned and small bands here every single day, and the easiest way to get in front of us is to tell us yourself. Send your single, your video, your tour, your EP. Use the Get Featured form, include your links and a photo or some artwork we can run, and we will listen to all of it. No submission fee, no label required, no gatekeeping. Bands who send us something usable get the best version of this column, because we can build the whole section around what they gave us.
Nu Metal News 4 October 2026, Your Questions
Is the Sullivan King and Vastive remix of “Her Portrait In Black” a new Atreyu song?
No. It is a remix of an Atreyu song that first appeared on the Underworld: Evolution soundtrack. Atreyu released a reworked version of the original on Friday 2 October and the Sullivan King and Vastive remix followed on Saturday 3 October, along with a proper digital release for a B-side from the same sessions.
When does thrown’s new album come out and is the tour still happening?
Unwanted is out on Friday 6 November through Arising Empire. The North American headline tour is going ahead. Visa delays affected the opening shows, and the reporting differs on exactly which: Lambgoat has the band rejoining on Tuesday 6 October in Grand Rapids, while Chaoszine reports the Allentown and Asbury Park dates moving to 18 and 19 October. Tickets are reported valid for the rescheduled dates.
What is on the Big Ass Truck I.E. debut EP?
Found On Road Dead is five tracks: “Found On Road Dead”, “Dragging Meat”, “Big Ass Gun”, “Forced Through Sludge” and “1 Trillion Pounds”. It is out Tuesday 20 October on Nuclear Blast, digitally and on a limited 10 inch pressed to resemble a tire.
Who is playing Disturbin’ The Peace 2027?
The first announcement names Cold World as headliners, plus Madball, Integrity performing Humanity Is The Devil in full for its thirtieth anniversary, Division of Mind, Combust, The S.E.T. and Iron Mind. It takes place at Baltimore Soundstage on Saturday 30 January 2027, curated by Flatspot Records, with more names still to be announced.
Where can I hear Scroll Eater?
Scroll Eater are on all the usual streaming services, and their site at scrolleatermusic.com links everything. They have two singles out through Facedown Records so far: “Consume The Scroll” from September and “Deliver The Word” featuring Jackson Scott, released Friday 2 October.
- Theprp.com: Atreyu’s “Her Portrait In Black” gets remix from Sullivan King & Vastive
- Chaoszine: Atreyu share revamped “Her Portrait in Black” digitally
- Chaoszine: thrown release “unwanted” and reschedule North American shows
- Lambgoat: thrown to miss first week of headlining U.S. tour
- Nu Metal Agenda: thrown announce new album “Unwanted”
- Metalshock Finland: Big Ass Truck I.E. announce “Found On Road Dead”
- Chaoszine: Big Ass Truck I.E. announce debut EP
- Blabbermouth: Fear Factory’s Milo Silvestro on “Roboticist”
- Chaoszine: Milo Silvestro comments on his approach to “Roboticist”
- Knotfest: Madball, Cold World, Integrity and more set for Disturbin’ The Peace 2027
- Lambgoat: Disturbin’ The Peace 2027 first lineup announcement
- Nu Metal Agenda: The Callous Daoboys on UFC programming
- Nu Metal Agenda: Ando San’s “March For Me” premieres on ESPN College Football
- Theprp.com: Scroll Eater premiere “Deliver The Word” video
- Lambgoat: Scroll Eater present music video featuring Jackson Scott
- Facedown Records: announcing Scroll Eater