Bruce Dickinson's Teased Surprises and Immortal's Vault Dump Put Ohio's Heavy Metal Lifers in the Spotlight
Some weeks the national metal news cycle feels like a direct message to the Buckeye State, and this is one of them. Between Bruce Dickinson hinting at fresh surprises for Iron Maiden, Immortal packing three decades of black metal into a single box, and California's All Shall Perish finally breaking a fifteen-year studio silence, the themes bouncing around this week are legacy, patience, and the long game — three things Ohio's heavy metal, doom, and death metal lifers understand better than almost anyone.
Bruce Dickinson Teases Iron Maiden's Next Move — And Why NWOTHM Bands Should Be Paying Attention
In a new interview with the Colombian station Radioacktiva, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson was asked point blank about his plans for the next two years, covering both Maiden activity and his solo band. His answer was characteristically coy but unmistakably promising:
"We have a few surprises up our sleeve with Iron Maiden."
That's it. That's the whole quote, and it's enough to set message boards on fire, because Maiden at this stage of their career doesn't tease lightly. For a band that essentially wrote the rulebook for everything the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal revival draws from, any hint of new material or touring plans ripples outward into every corner of the genre's underground, including right here in Ohio.
This state has quietly built a real NWOTHM presence over the last several years, and it's a genre this very site hasn't given enough ink to. Columbus-area heavy metal act Alexander is a clean example of that classic-leaning sound — twin guitar harmonies, soaring vocal lines, and an obvious reverence for the NWOBHM bands Maiden themselves came up alongside in the late '70s. When Dickinson talks about surprises, bands like Alexander are the ones who'll be studying the fallout for clues about where the traditional metal revival is headed next. If 2026 does bring a new Maiden era, expect a fresh wave of young heavy metal bands citing it as the reason they picked up a guitar in the first place.
Immortal's Complete Discography Box Set and What Archival Releases Mean for Black Metal Here
Elsewhere in the legacy column, Immortal have announced pre-orders for "Complete Discography 1992–2023," a box set gathering their entire studio catalog alongside the live record "The Seventh Date of Blashyrkh." It's the kind of release that exists purely because a band's body of work has become undeniable — three-plus decades of frost, blast beats, and Nocturno Culto's guitar tone condensed into one object you can hold.
Ohio's black metal underground is smaller and scrappier than Norway's, obviously, but the instinct to document a catalog this thoroughly says something about how the genre treats its own history. Acts like Wretched Cult, Sorceröt, and Deapscufa are all working in that same lineage of atmosphere and aggression, and if there's a lesson from Immortal's box set, it's that even underground, regional output deserves to be archived properly. That's part of why we built this index in the first place — somebody has to keep track before the demos disappear into dead hard drives.
All Shall Perish Breaks a Fifteen-Year Drought — A Reminder That Death Metal Comebacks Are Never Too Late
Northern California's All Shall Perish dropped the lyric video for "Led to Slaughter," their second new single in fifteen years, following last month's "Be as Kings, Be as Gods." Both tracks were produced by Zack Ohren, the engineer behind Machine Head and Fallujah records, and the fact that a band can disappear for a decade and a half and still come back swinging this hard is a genuine gift to anyone who thought that chapter was closed.
Death metal remains the deepest well in Ohio's scene, and this kind of patient, unhurried return should resonate with bands here who've put in years of grinding without a flashy national push. Gothic-tinged death metal act Eris is one of the more distinctive voices in that lineage locally, blending the brutality with atmosphere in a way that mirrors how All Shall Perish have always balanced technicality with genuine songwriting. The broader death metal bench here is deep too — Thy Demise, Proper Burial, Catastrophic, and Cabal are all grinding away in that same space, proving the genre's staying power doesn't require a major label push, just consistency and an audience willing to wait.
Autumn Tomb Lands in November — Doom Metal's Supergroup Moment
Members of The Sword and Zombi have teamed up for a new doom metal project called Autumn Tomb, with a debut full-length arriving in November and the first single already streaming. It's a pairing that makes sense on paper — Southern-fried riff worship colliding with synth-driven darkness — and it's exactly the kind of cross-pollination that keeps doom metal from calcifying into a single formula.
Ohio's doom scene has its own version of that cross-pollination happening right now. Three blends doom's weight with straightforward heavy metal songwriting in a way that keeps the genre from feeling like a museum piece, while Cult of Sorrow leans into a darker, more traditional doom sound. On the sludgier end, Tunnell, Sweaty Mammoth, and Agnauseam round out a scene that proves slow doesn't mean stagnant. If Autumn Tomb's debut lands as heavy as the pedigree suggests, expect it on a lot of local doom heads' year-end lists come December.
Quick Hits From the Underground
A handful of smaller stories this week are worth a mention even if they don't connect directly back to Ohio. Deathcore outfit Slam Band, featuring members of Filth, announced their debut full-length record simply titled "The Album," a twelve-track slab that's got the extreme metal corners of the internet talking. Technical death metal act Alienist welcomed new guitarist and vocalist Jacob Churchward with a video for "Phantom," a reminder that lineup shifts are just part of how long-running extreme metal bands survive. And Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton clarified his recent comment that it's "weird" no newer bands have flat-out ripped off Lamb of God's sound and songwriting approach, telling Australia's Heavy outlet he finds the lack of imitators genuinely curious.
That last comment is worth sitting with for a second. Groove metal's influence is everywhere in modern metalcore and deathcore, but Morton's right that almost nobody has tried to directly clone the Lamb of God formula the way bands once cloned Pantera or Slayer. Thrash and groove-leaning Ohio bands like Sinister and Psychomancy operate in that same pocket of aggressive, riff-forward metal without being slavish imitators of any one influence, which honestly tracks with what Morton is describing — the sound got absorbed into the broader vocabulary of heavy music rather than becoming its own strict subgenre.
The Takeaway for Ohio
What ties Dickinson's teased surprises, Immortal's archival box set, and All Shall Perish's comeback together is patience rewarded. None of these bands rushed anything. The best metal albums of all time, the ones that end up on every critic's list, tend to come from artists who took their time and trusted the work. Ohio's scene — whether it's the NWOTHM revival carried by acts like Alexander, the death metal depth of Eris and company, the doom weight of Three, or the genre-blurring energy of acts like Bilmuri pulling from djent and pop punk alike — is full of bands playing that same long game without the spotlight the bigger names get.
If you're in one of those bands, or you book one of the venues keeping this state's scene alive, don't let your next show slip through the cracks. Check out upcoming shows around the state, and if you don't see yours listed, submit your band so we can keep this index as complete as the Immortal box set tries to be for black metal. As we look toward metal bands touring 2026 and a fresh crop of new metal bands 2026 keeps bringing into the fold, Ohio's underground deserves to be part of that conversation — not just an afterthought to whatever's happening on the coasts.