Manson's Fort Lauderdale Roots, Sepultura's Goodbye, and What Florida's Underground Owes the Prolific Bands
Every so often the national metal news cycle throws up a week that reads like a random grab bag — a farewell tour announcement here, a divisive new album there, a hardcore EP dedicated to a fallen friend somewhere else. But scratch the surface and there's almost always a Florida thread running through it. This week that thread runs straight back to Fort Lauderdale, through Tampa's death metal bloodline, and into the DIY hardcore rooms where the next wave of Florida metal is still being built one show at a time.
Marilyn Manson's New Chapter and a Complicated Florida Legacy
Say what you want about him — and plenty of people have plenty to say — but Marilyn Manson is, at his origin point, a Florida band. Formed in Fort Lauderdale in the late '80s before becoming a national lightning rod, Manson's project has always cast a long shadow over the state's industrial and alternative metal scene, for better or worse. The newly released "One Assassination Under God — Chapter 2" arrives as the sequel to last year's opening chapter, and the critical reception has been what you'd expect from a project that, as more than one reviewer has now pointed out, is long past the point of shocking anyone — it simply has to stand on the music itself.
That's a strange position for a band whose entire early career was built on provocation, and it's worth noting for context here: Florida's alternative and industrial metal lineage is bigger than any one controversial figure. The state's scene has produced everything from nu metal chart-toppers to sludge innovators, and Manson's continued presence in the news cycle is a reminder that Florida's musical exports don't always age the way anyone expects them to.
Sepultura's Long Goodbye Has a Florida Underground Parallel
Elsewhere, SEPULTURA vocalist Derrick Green used a Bloodstock Open Air interview to reveal that the idea for the band's farewell tour — more than four decades after the band's formation — actually originated with guitarist Andreas Kisser. Green told TotalRock's Neil Jones that once Kisser floated the concept, "it just seemed to really make sense." It's a low-key, almost businesslike way to describe the end of one of death/thrash's most influential careers, but it fits a band that's always operated with more discipline than spectacle.
"It just seemed to really make sense."
Florida's own death metal scene knows a thing or two about longevity and reinvention. The state helped write the genre's rulebook in the late '80s and early '90s, and that DNA is still visible in the current underground — from technical acts like Crusade to brutal outfits like Coprophagia and Apostle, all carrying forward a sound Sepultura helped globalize decades ago. Farewell tours like Sepultura's aren't just nostalgia plays — they're a chance for younger bands sharing bills or influence to remind audiences where the genre actually came from, and Florida has as strong a claim to that lineage as anywhere on the map.
Nunslaughter's 200-Release Marathon and the Florida Split-Culture Ethic
If you want a masterclass in DIY persistence, look at Cleveland's NUNSLAUGHTER, who just dropped "Satanic Chaos Legions" and, remarkably, now sit north of 200 releases since forming in 1987 — the vast majority of them splits, EPs, and live records rather than proper studio albums. It's an unglamorous, unrelenting release philosophy that mirrors a lot of what happens in Florida's death metal underground, where bands like Emporos, Nefarion, and Shadows Carnage grind out splits, demos, and one-off tracks between full-lengths rather than waiting years for a perfect studio statement.
That prolific, no-frills work ethic is arguably more important to a healthy regional scene than any single flagship release. It keeps promoters booking undercards, keeps zines and blogs (yes, including this one) with something new to cover every month, and keeps the tape-trading, Bandcamp-scrolling culture of extreme metal alive. If you're chasing the best metal bands in any given scene, the prolific and unglamorous ones are usually the load-bearing walls.
God's Hate's Tribute EP and the Hardcore Backbone
On the hardcore side, GOD'S HATE returned with a three-song EP that includes a tribute to the late Bo Lueders, alongside a guest-filled cover of a Harm's Way track featuring members of Earth Crisis, Youth Of Today, and Floorpunch. It's the kind of release that reminds you hardcore operates on a different currency than the rest of metal — community, memorial, and collaboration matter as much as riffs. Florida's hardcore-adjacent scene has plenty of its own examples of that ethic, from the crossover thrash aggression of Cold Steel to the metalcore lineage carried by veterans like A Day To Remember, both of whom emerged from the same tight-knit basement-show culture that produces tribute EPs like God's Hate's.
It's a good moment to point Florida bands and promoters toward upcoming shows around the state — hardcore and metalcore bills especially thrive on exactly this kind of communal, in-person support, and there's no substitute for showing up.
Mastodon, Geezer Butler, and Why NWOTHM Deserves More Ink
MASTODON bassist Troy Sanders recently gushed about getting BLACK SABBATH's Geezer Butler to record the bass intro on "The Vanishing" from "Marrow Deep," calling it "a cool moment" in a fresh interview. It's a nice reminder that the traditional heavy metal lineage Sabbath built is still directly feeding into modern progressive and sludge-adjacent metal — the connective tissue between Birmingham 1970 and Atlanta today runs through exactly the kind of riff-worship that Florida's own heavy metal and NWOTHM-leaning acts traffic in. Bands like Netherwalker and Clockwork Revolution are doing their part to keep that traditional-heavy-metal flame lit in the Florida underground, a corner of the scene that doesn't get nearly as much coverage as the death metal or metalcore sides of the state. On the post-metal and atmospheric end of that same Sabbath-to-Mastodon lineage, Florida's own Lybica deserve a mention too — proof that heavy, riff-driven songwriting doesn't have to stay locked into one subgenre box.
The Rest of the Wire: Memoirs, Legal Fights, and Reunion Tours
A few other stories worth flagging for Florida readers scanning the wire this week: POISON drummer Rikki Rockett finally confirmed his memoir "Ghost Notes: My Life In Poison" for a September 2026 release, telling interviewer Erin Greatrix he held off publishing while his parents were alive so he "didn't wanna embarrass" them — a small, human detail that says a lot about how differently rock stars process their own history once enough time has passed. SLIPKNOT drummer Jay Weinberg, meanwhile, revealed he was legally restricted from making music for a stretch, describing it as a period where "a part of my creative self was dying" — a stark reminder of how much unseen legal machinery can shape an artist's creative output. And THE GATHERING's Anneke van Giersbergen spoke about the surprisingly strong response to the 30th-anniversary "Mandylion" reunion shows, admitting "we hoped it, but we didn't expect it."
None of these stories are Florida stories on their face, but they all point to the same underlying truth the state's scene lives out every weekend: careers are long, legacies are complicated, and the work of actually building a band — touring, releasing, showing up for each other — rarely looks glamorous in the moment.
Keeping an Eye on What's Next
With 2026 already generating farewell tours, memoirs, and deluxe reissues from the genre's elder statesmen, it's worth remembering that the most interesting new metal bands 2026 has to offer are often the ones without a Blabbermouth headline yet. Florida's alternative metal scene continues to churn out acts like Tock, blending power metal ambition with thrash aggression in a way that doesn't fit neatly into any one box — exactly the kind of band worth tracking as the state's underground keeps evolving. If your band is doing something worth covering, don't wait for a wire story to do it for you — submit your band and let the Florida metal scene hear what you're building.