Today’s rundown leans less on giant tour rolls and more on the kind of stories that show where heavy music is right now: branding fights, sideways crossover moves, ugly baggage, and one band still trying to keep rock’n’roll mythology loud enough to matter. Tyson’s queue set the tone, and the mix works. If you need the broader context around this week’s churn, start with the Metal News hub and the Rundown archive. Here’s the tight version.
Lamb of God Shrug Off the Logo Backlash
Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton says the band’s old logo simply felt dated, and honestly, he is not wrong. The new look has taken plenty of heat from fans, but Morton framed it as a fresh visual reset for Into Oblivion rather than some permanent burial of the band’s identity. That lines up with where the band already is in our recent Lamb of God coverage: still moving forward, still not interested in acting like a legacy act. If the loudest complaint around a new Lamb of God record is the font, that probably means the music is doing its job.
Billy Corgan Pushes NWA Back Onto Broadcast TV
Billy Corgan landed a new Comet TV deal that puts NWA Powerrr on free over-the-air television beginning May 1, with a second premiere episode landing May 2. That matters because wrestling has spent years walling itself off behind streamers and niche services, while Corgan is pitching this as a return to wider access and old-school personality-driven storytelling. It is not a metal story in the purest sense, but when Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman makes a real media move, it earns rundown space.
Alien Ant Farm Turned Rainbow Into a Weird Little Time Capsule
Alien Ant Farm brought Corey Feldman onstage at the Rainbow Bar & Grill in West Hollywood for “Smooth Criminal,” and the whole thing sounds exactly as surreal as it should. Feldman showed up in full Michael Jackson-coded gear, took lead on the first verse, and leaned hard into the moves while Dryden Mitchell introduced him as a childhood hero. This is the kind of side-door hard rock story that could have been pure gimmick, but it landed because the band knew exactly how strange it was.
Bilmuri Reopen a Story That Was Never Going Away Quietly
Reese Maslen is back in Bilmuri after stepping away in December following abuse allegations from a former partner, and that decision is going to keep drawing heat. Maslen says he has been working on himself and did not expect the invite back before Johnny Franck called him to return for the current Kinda Hard tour. Whether fans accept that or not, Bilmuri just pulled a controversy back into the middle of an active album cycle, and it lands in the same uneasy space as the other scene-drama stories Metal Mantra tracks through the drama archive.
Airbourne Aim a New Album Straight at Lemmy
Airbourne announced their self-titled album for August 28 and rolled it out through a letter to Lemmy, which is a much better move than fake mystery marketing. The first single, “Alive After Death (Last Plane Out),” doubles down on the band’s beer-soaked, no-frills hard rock lane, while Joel O’Keeffe says Lemmy’s advice about staying true to themselves helped shape the record. If Airbourne are serious about making a late-career statement, this is the right way to light the fuse.
