Richard Patrick's New Industrial Project Puts a Spotlight on Ohio's Heavy Underground
There's a particular kind of pride that comes from watching an Ohio native make noise on the national stage while your local scene keeps grinding away in basements and dive bars. This week that pride has a name: Richard Patrick, the Cleveland-connected frontman who built Filter into one of the defining industrial rock acts of the '90s and 2000s. Patrick has teamed up with There Is No Us vocalist and photographer Jim Louvau for a new project called A Place To Kill, and the pair just dropped their new single "Keep My Name Out Of Your Mouth." It's a reminder that industrialized rock never really left — it just went looking for new collaborators.
For longtime followers of Filter, this isn't a surprise so much as a continuation. Patrick has spent three decades restlessly moving between abrasive electronics and radio-ready hooks, and A Place To Kill sounds like another chapter in that restlessness. It's also a good excuse to remind newer fans that Ohio's fingerprints are all over the industrial and alternative metal lineage that eventually fed into everything from nu-metal to modern metalcore. If you're building a mental list of the best heavy metal songs to come out of this state over the last thirty years, Patrick's catalog belongs somewhere near the top, and it's worth keeping an eye on where this new project goes next.
The Old Guard Keeps Looking Backward — and Ohio's NWOTHM Scene Keeps Looking Forward
Nostalgia is having a moment in the wider metal world right now, and honestly, it's been having a moment for a while. Europe's Joey Tempest was asked, yet again, if he's tired of playing "The Final Countdown," and true to form he shrugged it off, calling it simply "a great song" and "fantastic" to perform live. Meanwhile, Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffmann expressed genuine disappointment that former bandmates, including singer Udo Dirkschneider, declined to participate in the band's upcoming 50th-anniversary album. And Helloween's Michael Weikath shut down speculation about a "Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part Four," arguing it would be "very repetitive" to revisit that well one more time.
There's something telling in all three of these stories: the pioneers of classic and power metal are protective of their legacies, sometimes to the point of tension, but they're also aware that endlessly repeating the same formula has diminishing returns. That tension between honoring the past and refusing to just photocopy it is exactly what's fueling the new wave of traditional heavy metal (NWOTHM) bands cropping up across the country — and Ohio has a legitimate claim to that movement.
This is a genre with real depth in our regional index but not nearly enough ink spilled on it yet, so let's fix that. Ohio's Abduction works the same NWOTHM/progressive metal territory that made bands like Accept and Helloween foundational in the first place, filtering those influences through a modern, heavier lens. War Curse and Mistreater are both flying the flag for straightforward, riff-driven heavy metal with an obvious reverence for the 80s metal bands that built the genre's rulebook, while SubtleFeud and Tarantula Downpour round out a scene that's proving heavy metal's traditionalist wing is alive and well well outside of Germany and Scandinavia. When Wolf Hoffmann talks about wanting Accept's 50th-anniversary record to honor the band's history without becoming a museum piece, it's worth remembering that's precisely the balancing act Ohio's own NWOTHM bands attempt every time they load into a van for a regional show.
Legacy Acts Are Leaning Into Discomfort, and So Is the Underground
On the flip side of the nostalgia coin, several major bands are explicitly rejecting the comfort of repeating their most famous eras. Slipknot guitarist Jim Root warned fans not to expect "another 'Iowa' or self-titled record" from the band's upcoming album, describing the new material as "uneasy" and reminiscent of the band's earlier, rawer recording sessions. Anthrax bassist Frank Bello echoed a similar sentiment about the band's new record, "Cursum Perficio," calling its darker sound simply "where we're at" as a band right now — notable given it's Anthrax's first album in a decade. Amon Amarth's Johan Hegg, meanwhile, discussed the band's upcoming "The Allfather Awakens," due October 2 via Metal Blade, insisting the band only commits songs to a record when they genuinely believe in them.
Then there's Voivod, whose guitarist Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain revealed the Canadian progressive sci-fi metal innovators already have eight songs in the works for their next album — a band that has built an entire four-decade career on refusing to sound like anyone else, including their past selves. And Napalm Death's Shane Embury tempered expectations by noting the grindcore pioneers' seventeenth studio album probably won't surface before late 2027, a reminder that even the genre's most prolific bands are willing to let material breathe rather than rush it out.
That willingness to sit in discomfort and let a record be what it needs to be rather than what fans expect is a mindset Ohio's progressive and post-metal underground has practiced for years. Church blends death metal aggression with progressive structure in a way that refuses easy categorization, while Mouth of the Architect and If These Trees Could Talk have spent years proving that heavy music doesn't need vocals or verse-chorus-verse structure to hit like a truck. It's the same spirit Root described when he said Slipknot's new material "reminds me of recording in the earlier days" — a return to instinct over formula.
DIY Still Wins: All Shall Perish and the Crowdfunding Model
Not every headline this week involved a legacy act. Deathcore stalwarts All Shall Perish blew past their $75,000 Kickstarter goal for their first new album since 2011 and celebrated by releasing the new single "Led To Slaughter." It's a genuinely encouraging data point for any band considering the crowdfunding route in 2026, and it's a model that Ohio's DIY scene has quietly understood for years. Grindcore and hardcore acts like 10,000 Rambos have built their reputations the same way All Shall Perish is now scaling up — through relentless touring, community trust, and fans who show up because they believe in the band, not because a label told them to.
That DIY throughline connects to the rest of this week's news in a roundabout way. Australian melodic metal band Vanishing Point announced their new single "Bring Me The Night" ahead of their November album "Eremition," a reminder that patient, deliberate band cycles can still pay off even in an industry obsessed with constant content. Finnish goth rockers The 69 Eyes released an acoustic reimagining of their classic "Brandon Lee," proving catalog-mining doesn't have to feel like a cash grab when it's done with genuine care. And Joe Perry confirmed Hollywood Vampires are already talking about a follow-up album in 2027, while former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson reflected on the "timeless" performances of "Countdown To Extinction" ahead of his December 2026 Bass Warrior tour dates in Europe. Everywhere you look, the metal world is simultaneously mining its past and cautiously building its future — sometimes in the same breath.
What It All Means for Ohio
If there's a throughline connecting Richard Patrick's new industrial project, Accept's uneasy anniversary record, Slipknot's experimental turn, and All Shall Perish's crowdfunded comeback, it's this: the best metal bands, whether they've been at it for fifty years or five, are the ones willing to trust their instincts over their brand. That's exactly the ethos powering Ohio's scene right now, from the traditional metal revivalists carrying the NWOTHM torch to the death metal and grindcore lifers who never needed major-label validation in the first place.
As we look toward metal bands touring 2026 and the new metal bands 2026 will inevitably introduce us to, keep watching this state. Ohio has always punched above its weight — ask anyone who grew up on Mushroomhead or the four-decade reign of Ringworm — and this week's national headlines are just further proof that whether you're chasing the ghost of the best metal albums of all time or writing something nobody's heard before, Ohio bands are doing both at once. Check upcoming shows around the state to catch them in person, and if your band belongs in this conversation, submit your band to get on our radar.