Greetings and welcome back, readers and friends. We know you’re still recovering from about 10 tons of 2025 year-end lists, but there truly is no rest for the wicked, and we’re hopping right into 2026 action despite our very recent exhaustion.
With that in mind, we assembled some of our most anticipated albums that will hopefully come out in 2026, and we’ll be discussing our hopes for these records throughout the week. Please to be enjoying, and as always, chime in with your most eagerly anticipated records for the year. Onward we go!
MISERERE LUMINIS – SIDERA
French Canadian sorrow slingers Miserere Luminis are set to unveil their third full-length Sidera on March 6. Atmospheric black metal as a tag seems as if it is becoming a turn-off, largely, amongst the genpop. Fear not! Miserere Luminis have an elegance to their oeuvre that manages to transcend the genre’s misty ceiling. Lead single “De cris & de cendres” (“Of Screams & Ashes”, proclaims the Googster) elongates the melancholic grandeur of their previous album into something like a stream-of-consciousness eulogy, expanding on Ordalie‘s instrumentation and letting the composition flow like coursing magma.
Miserere Luminis are not brutal, nor violent. I wouldn’t even describe them as particularly riff-centric, which in 90% of other cases would be quite the quibble. Ordalie, however, was lovely, and an excellent instance of atmospheric black metal achieving much more than the sum of its parts. I expect Sidera to be, at minimum, another example of such an achievement, and at maximum a captivating expansion of a proven formula. [ISAAC HAMS]
Quality Confidence Factor: 90%
WORM – NECROPALACE
From changing their logo on nearly every release to lineup shifts and subtle (or not) changes in their sound, Florida’s Worm is clearly not a band that sits still. Now consisting solely of founder Phantom Slaughter and shredmaster Philippe “Wroth Septentrion” Tougas, the band will release their first full length album in five years in February.
Now please take a moment to look at that cover art for the upcoming Necropalace. Now click here and look at the art for Odium’s 1998 album The Sad Realm of the Stars. If you see some similarities, well, of course you see some similarities. Necropalace is gearing up to be Worm’s full shift into symphonic black metal terrain, and based on that cover art (and the advance songs), they don’t appear shy about it at all. Not that this wasn’t to be expected – both their 2022 EP Bluenothing and their 2023 Starpath split with Dream Unending largely telegraphed this move – but executing it over a full record will be something else. After all, much of Worm’s past music is in the doom/death or near funereal terrain, so a total shift to symphonic black metal will take a deft touch.
But if there’s one thing that Phantom Slaughter and his various collaborators have shown over the years it’s pliability, that ability to succeed in whatever realm they choose to reside. Extremely on-the-nose/plagiaristic cover art notwithstanding, odds are in Worm’s favor that this will be yet another successful move in what is rapidly becoming a deep and extremely fun catalog for these symphonic swampasses. [ZACH DUVALL]
Quality Confidence Factor: 85%
POWER PALADIN –
BEYOND THE REACH OF ENCHANTMENT
Power Paladin’s debut, With the Magic of Windfyre Steel, struck an encouragingly widespread chord in 2022 — the band’s near equal mix of heavy and Euro-inspired power metal the likely cause. That they gave that notably heavier sound a more traditional power metal look in art, theme, and lyrics gave it all a strange allure. While I would have preferred an earlier follow-up, 2026 (finally) sees the release of Beyond the Reach of Enchantment. And if the first single, “Sword Vigor,” is any indication, we are in for another heavy/power treat. [CHRIS C]
Quality Confidence Factor: 90%
NOOR – TBA
Noor’s brand of metal feels weirdly alien in the modern age. Sure, it covers bases that include thrash, power and trad in an uncommonly progressive way that would make them seem like a shoo-in for piles of trad-obsessed hair farmers constantly trolling ebay for retro puffy high-tops, but even within that realm Noor is a flat-out anomaly because of the way they incorporate those elements into their agenda. The closest comparisons are equally as eccentric and overlooked: like some sort of intersection point between Mekong Delta, Lethal (1990’s Programmed) and Sieges Even (1988’s Lifecycle), but with the added benefit of modern production techniques and a touch of whatever sort of sophistication lends itself to feathered caps being totally okay for promo shoots.
2023’s Mother’s Guilty Pleasure, Pt. 1 was the band’s first evidence of life—an album that, with all due respect to Noor, begs the listener to not judge the book by its confusing cover, because the story that unfolds behind it is bigger than Shannon Doherty taking a knife in some weird fever dream episode of 90210. Bottom line, MGP1 was an album tailor-made for throw-back adventurists interested in progressive thrashing power that underscored WAILING vocals and WAILING leads with equal measure, and if the new song the band tromped out in 2025—“Follow the Light”—is any indication of where they’re going next for 2026, we are in for… well, more of the same! That’s good news! That’s great news! Maybe more people will latch on this time around. [CAPTAIN]
Quality Confidence Factor: 90%
NO/MÁS – NO PEACE
It’s been nearly four years since Consume / Deny / Repent — a year-ender for me and many back then, oh so very long ago — and here we are now, facing down the follow-up, No Peace, coming March 13. A sharp-edged blend of grindcore, death metal, and hardcore, No/Mas’ brand of brutality ticks almost all of the proper boxes to tickle my fancy earholes. No/Mas is equal parts furious blasting and pit-swirling energy, and Consume / Deny / Repent was a perfect example of that, shifting from carving metallic riff to swaggering crush with ease.
So what do I want from No Peace? The same thing, kinda, but maybe bigger, better, louder, faster, nastier…? Based on No Peace‘s advance track “Manic,” that’s not all that far off from what we’re getting. Listening here, the underlying foundation remains true, of course: This is still death / grind, with notable thrash moments, and plenty of beatdown potential. The production sounds a little punchier, more up-front. The guitars sport more buzzraw midrange bite; Roger’s vocals are drier, more in-your-face. There are plenty of blasts for the blastfreaks, and just enough chug to keep everything moving both forward and in circles. This is No/Mas. It smashes, it bashes, it grooves, it screams, it riffs… What more could you want from it, really?
So yes, please. Yes, mas. Mas mas. Mas mas mas and more mas, por favor. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
Quality Confidence Factor: 90%
STABBING – EON OF OBSCENITY
Three-ish years ago, these Texas tormentors tore out of the brutal death metal underground with Extirpated Mortal Process, an instant smash — in the skull-smashing sense — that took Disgorge and gave it the TXBDM treatment. Disgorge Tex? Sure, why not. Anyway, needless to say, Stabbing put all of the degenerate death metal blogs in a tizzy. Following the fête, the four-piece hit the road, opening for Defeated Sanity and then sharing an undercard with Suffocation on a tour headlined by Incantation. (Frankly, that tour’s booker should be charged with elder abuse considering the heavy hitters Incantation had to follow.) Pretty good company to keep. Stabbing delivered on the opportunity, slaying audiences with a practiced control that belied its short, albeit busy, time on this planet. It also provided singer Bridget Lynch with early-career highlights, such as filling in for Suffo when the inheritor of the Frank Mullen throne, Ricky Myers, hit the DL.
So, after rubbing shoulders with legends, the band’s rise was undeniable: Stabbing soaked up the spotlight and shone right back. That light must’ve illuminated the right places because here’s the forthcoming Eon of Obscenity, released on…am I reading this right…Century Media? Weird. Furthermore, the band has been refreshed with a new rhythm section. (Newish. Matt Day probably holds the team record for hours logged on bass at this point.) Will Century Media try to mold the band into Sangriaboobbog or ask it to roast coffee beans with Imperial Triumphant? Will the new members sand down Stabbing’s pleasantly piercing edges? [soap opera theme plays] Next time on, When the Stabbing Slams. Probably not, though. [SETH BUTTNAM]
Odds It’ll Actually Come Out: It has a release date. Then again, so did GTA 6.
Quality Confidence Factor: 75%
