Metal & Hard Rock News – December 4, 2025: Tours, Tributes, Cancellations & Chaos in Heavy Music
Today’s heavy-music news cycle is packed: new 2026 tour routes, charity moves from arena giants, a major Australian festival cancellation, tech-death violence, gaming crossovers, and a posthumous honor for one of metal’s founding voices. Here’s your Metal Mantra daily rundown of what’s happening across metal, hard rock, metalcore, and tech-death right now.
Mammoth Announce 23-Date 2026 North American Tour
Mammoth are locking in 2026 early with a 23-date North American tour that hits theaters and casino venues from early March through early April. Wolfgang Van Halen is clearly treating Mammoth as a full-time, road-tested band now, not a side project — and this run solidifies that energy.
The trek brings along Tennessee alt-metal veterans 10 Years plus rising UK rockers James and the Cold Gun, making this a smart mix of modern hard rock and melodic heft. Expect tight rooms, big choruses, and plenty of focus on the Mammoth catalog rather than nostalgia trips. For fans eyeing the Mammoth 2026 tour, this looks like one of the more reliable hard-rock tickets of the early year, especially if you prefer guitars over backing tracks and casinos over crowded festival fields.
The Amity Affliction & August Burns Red Bring the Spring Horizons Tour
On the metalcore side, The Amity Affliction and August Burns Red are teaming up for the co-headline Spring Horizons Tour next spring. The package is pure crowd-killer: support from Boundaries and Heavensgate, plus a key festival stop at Sonic Temple.
Fans can expect Amity’s emotionally charged metalcore stacked against August Burns Red’s technical riff assaults, with Boundaries and Heavensgate pushing the openers into full-on breakdown territory. This is exactly the kind of smart, mid-to-large room routing that keeps the metalcore ecosystem alive — big enough to feel like an event, intimate enough that circle pits still feel personal. Get tix & vip at Soundrink.
Foo Fighters Schedule Birthday Benefit Show for LA’s Unhoused
Foo Fighters are starting 2026 on a different kind of heavy. The band have booked a January 14 benefit show at LA’s Kia Forum — the date doubles as Dave Grohl’s 57th birthday — with proceeds going to Hope The Mission and Los Angeles Mission to support unhoused Angelenos.
The Foo Fighters have a long track record of using their platform for benefit shows, and this “Foo Fighters Kia Forum charity concert” continues that legacy. At a time when arena tours are under fire for VIP bloat and sky-high ticket fees, seeing a major rock act anchor a birthday around fundraising hits differently. Expect this to sell out instantly!
Parkway Drive Cancel Park Waves 2026 Festival Over Rising Costs
In more sobering news, Australian metalcore pillars Parkway Drive have officially cancelled their traveling Park Waves 2026 festival. The band are blaming soaring touring and production costs for shutting down the run before it really started. The festival was set to feature The Amity Affliction, Northlane, and Alpha Wolf, making it one of the strongest Australian heavy packages on paper for next year.
This isn’t just a single event dying off. The Park Waves festival cancellation is another bright red warning sign for mid-to-large scale metal festivals worldwide. When a band as established as Parkway Drive can’t make the math work for a domestic festival tour, you know something’s off in the economics of live heavy music — from freight and fuel to venue overhead and insurance. For fans, it’s a reminder: when a tour or festival you care about pops up, don’t sleep on tickets. The window between “announced” and “cancelled” is getting shorter.
Slipknot’s Clown Launches Vernearth, a Slipknot-Themed Minecraft Realm
From canceled festivals to digital worlds: Slipknot percussionist and visual architect Clown has launched Vernearth, a Slipknot-themed Minecraft realm running in 45-day seasons. The server features custom survival, PvP, creative, and hardcore challenge modes, giving Maggots a new way to live inside the band’s aesthetic instead of just streaming tracks.
This “Slipknot Vernearth Minecraft server” move makes sense: the overlap between heavy music and gaming culture is huge, and younger fans often find bands through Twitch, Discord, and game mods rather than traditional channels. It’s another example of legacy bands evolving beyond albums and tours into full-on multimedia ecosystems — graphic novels, horror experiences, and now, blocky digital chaos curated by Clown himself.
Iron Maiden Mark 50 Years with New Fender Signature Line
On the classic-metal front, Iron Maiden are celebrating 50 years by teaming up with Fender for a new signature line built around three of the band’s core players: Dave Murray, Janick Gers, and Steve Harris. The collection includes high-end Stratocaster models for Murray and Gers, plus a new Precision Bass honoring Harris’s unmistakable galloping low-end.
For guitar and bass nerds this drop is huge. These aren’t random vanity models — they’re built to mirror the battle-tested rigs that powered decades of tours and albums. Expect every YouTube shredder with a Union Jack flag in their background to be demoing these as soon as they land.
The Zenith Passage Drop “Fleshbound Reliquary” and Hit the Road
Technical death metal gets its turn via The Zenith Passage, who’ve unleashed a new single titled “Fleshbound Reliquary”. It’s the band’s first track with drummer Max Sepulveda, and early reactions suggest it doubles down on the intricate, sci-fi-adjacent brutality fans expect.
Alongside the single, The Zenith Passage have announced a run of U.S. dates with Entheos and Fallujah, essentially building a tech-death mini-festival in club form. If you’re into polyrhythms, dissonant chords, and riffs that sound like a collapsing server room, this The Zenith Passage Fleshbound Reliquary tour might be your next pilgrimage.
Alice In Chains Pulled Into PETA’s “Betty in Chains” Elephant Campaign
In one of the stranger crossovers of the week, Alice In Chains have been pulled into a new PETA campaign asking the band to temporarily rename themselves “Betty in Chains”. The move is intended to raise awareness for an elderly circus elephant named Betty, which PETA claims is in urgent need of sanctuary care.
Whether or not the band respond, the “Alice In Chains Betty in Chains” headline is already doing the awareness work PETA wants: putting animal-welfare discussions in front of rock and grunge fans who might not be plugged into circus-related activism.
Ozzy Osbourne Receives Posthumous Lord Mayor’s Award in Birmingham
Finally, a moment of respect: the late Ozzy Osbourne is being posthumously honored with the Lord Mayor’s Award in Birmingham on what would have been his 77th birthday. The recognition salutes his defining role in heavy metal as frontman of Black Sabbath and his decades representing Birmingham on the world stage.
For fans, this Ozzy Osbourne Birmingham Lord Mayor’s Award feels like official acknowledgment of what the community has known for years — that the “Prince of Darkness” is also one of the city’s most important cultural exports. It’s a reminder that without Birmingham’s factories, pubs, and grey skies, there might never have been heavy metal as we know it.
Stay Plugged Into the Noise
From new 2026 tour routes and high-end signature instruments to canceled festivals, charity shows, political activism, and game-world experiments, heavy music isn’t slowing down — it’s just mutating. Keep checking back with Metal Mantra for more metal news, tour announcements, festival updates, and underground heavy releases as they drop.
