{"id":202392,"date":"2025-12-24T23:55:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T23:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/202392\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T23:55:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T23:55:14","slug":"triviums-matt-heafy-names-five-metal-bands-to-watch-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/202392\/","title":{"rendered":"Trivium\u2019s Matt Heafy names five metal bands to watch in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Heafy<\/a> is at a transitional point. With his band, Trivium<\/a>, he\u2019s recently released the EP Struck Dead and is in the process of bringing aboard new drummer Alex R\u00fcdinger while writing album number 11. Things are also changing behind-the-scenes. Revered for years as the busiest man in metal<\/a>, Heafy is trying to scale things back.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Last year] I was doing 15 to 20 to 30 projects at the same time,\u201d the singer\/guitarist says, talking to Guitar.com during a down day on Trivium\u2019s North American tour. \u201cI was producing bands, I was managing bands; I was making all these different products and trying all these different things, like scoring video games and scoring a movie and starting a pop-up restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plates that Heafy was spinning all smashed on the ground when he had a self-described \u201cmetal breakdowns\/mid-life crisis\u201d in 2024. Burnt out more than he realised, his bandmates and loved ones staged an intervention, and he began to attend counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we determined through therapy is that I\u2019m naturally very low on serotonin,\u201d says Heafy, explaining why he had to stay so busy for so long. \u201cI have to be on SSRIs to help my very low serotonin. Once I corrected that, we realised that I\u2019ve got intense ADHD, anxiety and OCD. I wanted to figure out what makes me tick. Why do I think this way? How can I stop going to such an extreme point every single time?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MattImage: Mike Dunn<\/p>\n

By any other person\u2019s standards, Heafy is still a wildly busy man, balancing Trivium with fatherhood, a regular Twitch presence and his passion for Jiu-Jitsu. However, he\u2019s zeroed in on being a musician and a dad, and the lyrics on the three songs that make up Struck Dead are him interrogating his own thought process.<\/p>\n

Opener Bury Me with My Screams is about the spiral that led up to his breakdown, centrepiece Struck Dead (Pain Is Easier to Remember) quotes something that bassist Paolo Gregoletto told him at his intervention, and widescreen finale Six Walls is about trying to break free from mental health struggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI buried myself in my own coffin,\u201d Heafy says, \u201cand the six walls of this wooden coffin are what I pictured. I\u2019m finally trying to break free. It took, like, a year. It was in January [2025] when I started coming to. On the first tour after treatment \u2013 after 38, 39 years of living the same way \u2013 I was like, \u2018Holy shit! I\u2019m having so much fun!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MattImage: Mike Dunn<\/p>\n

Musically, Trivium looked backwards while making Struck Dead: the writing coincided with their rehearsals for a co-headline tour with Bullet for My Valentine<\/a>, where they played 2005 breakthrough Ascendancy in full. However, the EP is just as forward-thinking as it is nostalgic. Bury Me\u2026 closes with a torrent of breakdowns heavy enough to murder a newborn elephant, and the intro of Six Walls brings the shamisen, a Japanese stringed instrument, into Trivium\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

Ascendancy\u2019s lyrics were just as bare as Struck Dead\u2019s, with a 19-year-old Heafy opening up about depression and social anxiety. The album catapulted Trivium into metal\u2019s stratosphere, but it was a mixed blessing. As great as all the magazine covers and blockbuster tours were, the band found themselves being bullied by jealous peers and gatekeeping fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was rough being bullied by our favourite bands, and by their fans,\u201d Heafy reflects today. \u201cWe got bottles thrown at us [while onstage]. People tried to accost us by our van. We were on tour with Lamb of God<\/a>, Machine Head<\/a> and Gojira<\/a> in 2006, and we had our sound guy walk out on us. I was going to our bus and some guy said [sarcastically], \u2018Good show,\u2019 and flipped me off and walked off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having been through that and come out the other side, Heafy\u2019s now a staunch advocate for new metal bands, not wanting them to be hazed the way he was. Trivium frequently pick young artists to open for them, and Heafy has a radio show dedicated to spotlighting rising talent. So, for the second half of our interview, we asked him to pick five up-and-coming metal acts who are truly impressing him right now. This is who he thinks will take over in 2026:<\/p>\n

Fit for an Autopsy<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was Corey [Beaulieu<\/a>, Trivium lead guitarist] who first got me into them. I think he sent me Heads Will Hang first. I was like, \u2018Holy shit, this is incredibly heavy!\u2019, because it\u2019s that mixture of stuff that I love. It feels a little bit like they would have been in the Gothenburg sound, a little bit like they\u2019re into hardcore, and a little bit like they\u2019re into modern metal. And then I heard Hydra, and I was like, \u2018This is one of the best usages of a breakdown essentially being a song that I\u2019ve heard since a band like Pantera<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe brought them out on the Trivium, Arch Enemy<\/a>, While She Sleeps<\/a>, Fit for an Autopsy North American tour, and they were just such lovely, wonderful guys. I spent hours or days playing games with Joe Bad [frontman Joseph Badolato] while we both streamed. Love him. I love all the guys: I had them all at my house, basically, when my kids were maybe a year old. We got them all Cuban food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re so freaking good live. They\u2019re just perfect. The stuff that Joe can do, from his super low screams to his high screams and then his singing range, it\u2019s just marvellous. The songs that Will Putney [guitarist\/producer] writes\u2026 I think Putney is a wonderful songwriter and a great producer. When you hear a Putney record, you know instantly it\u2019s one of his records. There\u2019s this live energy to it while also being perfect. It sounds so well put together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orbit Culture<\/p>\n

\u201cI love them so much. I\u2019d say, if someone hasn\u2019t heard them before, I don\u2019t want to pigeonhole them but they\u2019re for fans of Gojira, Machine Head, Fear Factory \u2013 the glory days of each of these bands. It reminds me of melodic death metal in a way, but it\u2019s not. It\u2019s got moments of the 2000s vibe of the Gothenburg sound. The songs are awesome, the production is awesome. But, it\u2019s done very differently. I think it\u2019s really cool that, at times, the drums will really just groove. It\u2019ll give almost a Chaos A.D. kind of simplicity, drum-wise [referring to Sepultura<\/a>\u2019s influential 1993 groove metal album].<\/p>\n

\u201cVocally, Niklas [Karlsson, vocals\/guitars] is a powerhouse. Just like Joe, he\u2019s able to do very low screams to very high screams. He has such a great grit scream. His gritty singing reminds me of [classic Metallica<\/a> album] Ride the Lightning. It doesn\u2019t sound like James Hetfield<\/a>, but it makes you think of Hetfield from \u201984, \u201985, \u201986.<\/p>\n

\u201cNiklas was one of the people who influenced me to get my grit scream back. The first time we toured with them, I was still doing my safe screaming that I\u2019d done for 10 years [Matt adopted a new screaming technique after blowing out his voice in 2014]. I remember hearing Niklas\u2019 voice and I was like, \u2018Goddamn!\u2019 He was definitely one of my inspirations to get that back. The fact that a band that\u2019s relatively new can inspire a band that\u2019s been doing it for 27 years, that\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burner<\/p>\n

\u201cBurner\u2019s album [2023\u2019s It All Returns to Nothing] is that perfect fusing of these different sounds and styles and worlds while being its own thing, which is really cool. It so seamlessly blends things together. I think before, maybe in the 2000s, you could really feel the black and white combination of styles. But, I think the way Burner have done it, it\u2019s their own palette they\u2019ve created. It\u2019s hard to say, \u2018Hey, did they get this from Mastodon<\/a>-era bands? From sludgier bands? From hardcore? From extreme metal?\u2019, but you have all those tonalities within it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a really amazing recording quality, already. Straight out of the gate, hearing the guitar sound and the vocal sound, you know right away that it is Burner. I think that that\u2019s a really important thing. When you can hear that individualism that quickly, that\u2019s a rare thing, because there are a lot of bands today that are kind of chasing the same sound. There are five bands where I\u2019ll hear five singles and go, \u2018This all sounds like the same band.\u2019 When you hear a band like Burner, you know right away that this is their sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were to give Burner any advice, it would be the advice I gave to bands when I helped produce their records. I would say, imagine yourself playing at 1pm at Wacken or Summer Breeze or something, to 20,000 or 30,000 people who\u2019ve never heard of you before. What is a guitar riff or a beat or a vocal line or a hook that by 2am, when they\u2019re done watching the headliner, they can still remember you for? What\u2019s your Roots Bloody Roots chorus, your Du Hast chorus? Let\u2019s hear Burner\u2019s version of these.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heriot<\/p>\n

\u201cOur manager\u2019s just like us: he\u2019ll tell us, \u2018Hey, check this band out,\u2019 and we\u2019ll check them out. [When I first heard Heriot<\/a>] I was like, \u2018Holy shit, this is pulverisingly heavy.\u2019 There are these kind of moody vibes in between. When I was dropping my kids off at school, another one of the dads was wearing a Heriot shirt. I was like, \u2018Oh, man, we\u2019re touring with them [in North America this autumn]!\u2019 He was more excited about Heriot than us.<\/p>\n

\u201cDebbie [Gough<\/a>, singer\/guitarist] is fucking awesome and she looks so badass, too. With that Jackson<\/a> old-school style guitar that she wears, it reminds me of Andreas [Kisser] from Sepultura. The music hearkens back sometimes to old 90s industrial, which is something that is near and dear to my heart: originally, Trivium was meant to be an industrial band. Sometimes I get vibes of Godflesh when I hear them, or if you stripped back and made heavier Napalm Death<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just love the visceral heaviness that goes on. I remember watching them a lot on this tour and people being very just, like, \u2018Holy shit! This is so heavy! This is so good!\u2019 They\u2019re wonderful people. Rudy [Alex R\u00fcdinger] actually just gave haircuts to a couple of the band members. I love the vibes of people who are just nice, good people, who can play incredibly heavy music. There\u2019s something extra heavy about that!\u201d<\/p>\n

Paledusk<\/p>\n

\u201cHUGs is the opening song of Gachiakuta, which is a really wild anime. It\u2019s a show where bad people are sent to this trash pit. I don\u2019t want to give too much else away, but it reminds me of Borderlands and Dune and Fallout all in one. Musically, it starts off with this cool singing pattern that has a really heavy scream underneath. It almost reminds me of the screams that I do. And then it just gets really, really wild, like this kind of a new-school, super heavy, Bring Me the Horizons<\/a> wildness mixed with Mick Gordon<\/a> [composer of the recent Doom games]. Imagine the Doom score and Bring Me The Horizon when they\u2019re really going heavy and nutty, using digital chops and stutters inside the song. It makes it seem like the music is glitching.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vocalist [Kaito Nagai], sometimes he\u2019ll be singing pretty freaking high, and then he\u2019ll go into this ultra-high, really strange, heavy, kind of Architects<\/a>-three-or-four-records-ago stuff. Really, really cool, really bizarre. That\u2019s what\u2019s happening in the Japanese scene: it\u2019s really weird. Being half-Japanese, I can say, us Japanese folk are pretty strange. It\u2019s really cool that Paledusk are exemplifying that in a new way, with these no-holds-barred song structures. The hook structures don\u2019t always make sense. They really don\u2019t repeat like you\u2019d expect them to. It\u2019s very cool, very weird.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Heafy is at a transitional point. With his band, Trivium, he\u2019s recently released the EP Struck Dead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3257,146,85,46,6158,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-202392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-artist","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-metal","13":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}