Satanic Planet have signed with Relapse Records, and that pairing makes more sense than it looks on paper. The project, featuring Dave Lombardo alongside Lucien Greaves, Luke Henshaw, and Justin Pearson, is now positioned for a to-be-announced sophomore full-length through Relapse in collaboration with Three One G Records.
This is not a standard supergroup press-cycle move. Satanic Planet sits at the intersection of experimental heavy music, punk agitation, industrial texture, and deliberate provocation. Relapse has spent decades making room for bands that do not fit cleanly inside one lane, so the label match feels less like a surprise and more like a warning flare.
Who Is In Satanic Planet?
The lineup is the headline, but the chemistry is the actual story. Dave Lombardo brings the obvious metal gravity. His history with Slayer alone guarantees attention, and Metal Mantra has covered that legacy directly in pieces like Slayer's Hell Awaits 40th anniversary reissue and Every Slayer Album Ranked. But Satanic Planet is not trying to sound like Slayer with a different vocalist.
Lucien Greaves, co-founder and spokesperson for The Satanic Temple, gives the project its ideological voltage. Luke Henshaw brings production and cross-genre instincts from Planet B and Sonido de la Frontera. Justin Pearson, whose resume runs through The Locust, Dead Cross, Swing Kids, and Deaf Club, brings the kind of abrasive punk intelligence that keeps everything unstable on purpose.
That instability is the point. Satanic Planet's self-titled 2021 debut did not behave like a normal metal record. It moved through spoken-word tension, electronic pressure, punk violence, ritual atmosphere, and rhythmic left turns. Lombardo's role was not just to add name recognition; it was to bring a drummer capable of making chaos feel physically organized.
Why Relapse Is The Right Fit
Relapse Records is not a safe-house label. Its catalog has long made room for extreme metal, grind, noise, death metal, sludge, experimental rock, and records that refuse the clean marketing category they are supposed to occupy. Satanic Planet needs that kind of oxygen.
The label announced the signing as the beginning of the band's next chapter, with a sophomore album still to be detailed. Greaves framed the coming music as tied to The Satanic Temple's activist edge and broader ethical framework, while Pearson called the project an "undefinable piece of offensive art." That is not radio-rollout language. That is a mission statement for a record meant to irritate the right people.
For readers who follow Lombardo mainly through the classic thrash canon, Satanic Planet is a reminder that his post-Slayer career has rarely been about staying comfortable. Even with Slayer's catalog back in the live conversation through events like the Reign in Blood 2026 shows, Lombardo's own path keeps pushing sideways. He has moved through Misfits, Mr. Bungle, Dead Cross, Fantomas-adjacent weirdness, and other corners where precision drumming gets pushed into stranger architecture. This project belongs in that lineage more than it belongs beside the clean nostalgia market.
The Live Dates Are Small But Telling
Satanic Planet also have a short run of live activity around the announcement: April 28 at Casbah in San Diego, April 30 at TV Eye in Ridgewood, New York, and May 2 at The Satanic Revival in Baltimore. Those are not giant-room victory laps. They are targeted shows for an audience that already understands the language.
That scale fits the project. Satanic Planet works best when it feels like something happening slightly outside the approved industry frame. Relapse gives the band infrastructure without sanding down the edges. Three One G keeps the connection to Pearson's long-running underground world intact. Lombardo gives it metal weight. Greaves makes sure the provocation is not just aesthetic wallpaper.
If you are catching one of the dates, start with Ticketmaster's Satanic Planet search and check the venues directly if listings are limited. For the recorded side, the debut is also worth revisiting through Satanic Planet on Amazon before the next album cycle starts moving.
What To Watch Next
The next real signal will be the album details: title, track list, release date, first single, and whether Relapse pushes Satanic Planet as an extreme-music project, an art-punk provocation, or something deliberately harder to file. The smarter bet is that the band keeps refusing the file cabinet altogether.
That refusal is what makes the signing interesting. Plenty of veteran-heavy projects use famous names to dress up safe music. Satanic Planet does not read that way. It reads like four people with enough history, credibility, and chaos tolerance to make something uncomfortable on purpose.
For Lombardo fans, the draw is obvious. For Relapse lifers, the label context should be enough to pay attention. For everyone else, Satanic Planet signing to Relapse is the kind of story that tells you where the weird end of heavy music is moving before the safer outlets catch up.
