Cronos Is Gone, Chad Gilbert's Guitar Takes the Stage: A Heavy Week for Florida's Metal Family
Some weeks in metal news hit like a gut punch and a gut punch's follow-up jab. This is one of those weeks. Venom frontman Conrad "Cronos" Lant has died at 63, and in Coral Springs, Florida, New Found Glory played their first show since losing guitarist Chad Gilbert — with his guitar displayed onstage the entire set. Two very different corners of heavy music, both reminding us that the riffs outlive the people who write them, but the loss never gets smaller.
Cronos: The Man Who Named the Genre
It's hard to overstate what Venom's Cronos meant to extreme metal. There is no black metal, no death metal, arguably no thrash as we know it, without the sneering, filthy, gloriously unpolished blueprint Venom laid down in Newcastle in the late '70s and early '80s. Every band in the Florida Metal Index's death metal and black metal columns — from the raw black metal of Hollentor to the melodic darkness of Deimos — owes something, directly or indirectly, to the chaos Cronos unleashed on wax. Florida's own death metal lineage, built by bands like Diabolic and Massacre, doesn't exist in the form it does without Venom proving extremity could be a genre unto itself rather than a footnote to NWOBHM.
Cronos's passing was confirmed by Venom's camp in a statement that read, in part:
"IN MEMORIAM — CONRAD 'CRONOS' LANT. It is with profound sadness and broken hearts that we share the news that Conrad..."
Expect tribute sets, patch-covered battle vests, and a lot of "Black Metal" t-shirts at Florida DIY shows in the coming months. If you're booking a bill this winter, now is the time to let a local black or death metal act open with a Venom cover — it won't be the first time, and it shouldn't be the last.
New Found Glory Honors Chad Gilbert the Only Way They Know How
Closer to home, Coral Springs pop punk and easycore institution New Found Glory played their first live show since the death of founding guitarist Chad Gilbert, and by all accounts it was exactly as emotional as you'd expect. Gilbert's guitar was displayed onstage for the entire performance — a quiet, constant presence rather than a dramatic gesture, which feels right for a band that's always worn its heart on its sleeve.
Anyone who followed Gilbert's career knows the man loved Disney parks almost as much as he loved his Les Paul, and that duality — theme-park joy and pop punk intensity — is part of what made New Found Glory's catalog so enduring. Florida produced a lot of extreme metal in the '90s, but it also quietly produced one of pop punk's most influential bands, and this week is a reminder that the state's "heavy music" family tree has more branches than most people give it credit for. If you're in South Florida and get a chance to catch one of these shows, go. Tributes like this don't happen twice.
The Heavy Metal and NWOTHM Underground Deserves Its Flowers
While the big national stories this week skew extreme and emo, there's a quieter trend worth noting: heritage acts are doubling down on their legacies. IMMORTAL just announced a complete discography box set spanning 1992 to 2023, Mötley Crüe's "Kickstart My Heart" just crossed a billion Spotify streams, and even William Shatner — yes, that William Shatner — is explaining his "reinterpretation" of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" ahead of his long-gestating heavy metal album. It's a good moment to be reminded that traditional heavy metal, in all its forms, never actually went anywhere.
That matters here because Florida's traditional heavy metal and NWOTHM scene remains one of the most underserved corners of the state's index, despite no shortage of bands flying that flag with real conviction. Argus have built a reputation on proper NWOTHM songwriting — twin leads, real hooks, no gimmicks. Loupgarou work the power metal end of that same tradition, and Hollentor split time between raw black metal and straight-up heavy metal, proof that the genre lines in this state are more porous than the labels suggest. If you're hunting for new metal bands in 2026 that honor the genre's roots without sounding like a museum piece, start with Florida's heavy metal underground before you look anywhere else.
Legacy Acts Keep Moving the Goalposts
Elsewhere, the biggest names in metal and punk-adjacent heavy music are proving that "legacy act" doesn't have to mean "nostalgia act." Enter Shikari announced plans for an indefinite hiatus, with the band stating they'll go dormant as a recording and performing entity as of December 31, 2027 — a long runway that gives fans years to see them before the lights go dim, rather than a sudden breakup announcement. It's a strange, almost businesslike way to end an era, but it's also refreshingly honest compared to the usual cycle of "farewell tours" that never actually end.
Dave Lombardo, meanwhile, continues his decades-long habit of refusing to sit still, with his latest project "The Pulse Of Atoms" extending a résumé that's long outgrown his Slayer drum stool. And on the proggier end of things, the "Guitar Hero" successor "Stage Tour" just added Dream Theater to its soundtrack roster, which should be good news for Florida's progressive metal contingent — bands like Seven Thirteen and Hardwired build on exactly the kind of technical, neoclassical-leaning songwriting that made Dream Theater a gateway band for a generation of players who picked up a seven-string because of a video game controller shaped like a guitar.
Quick Hits From the International Scene
A few more items worth a mention for anyone tracking the broader metal landscape this week. Amon Amarth, long considered the AC/DC or Motörhead of melodic death metal depending who you ask, surprised fans with an all-acoustic track called "Upphaf" — a genuine departure for a band that's built an empire on Viking-themed hammer-swinging. Flint, Michigan's King 810 dropped a new single, "I Know You Heard Of Me," ahead of their fourth full-length in eighteen months, "La Grande Mort Or Silence Of God," due November 27. Lord Of The Lost's Chris Harms announced a second solo album, "Aporia," timed to drop on his birthday in January 2027. And German veterans Die Apokalyptischen Reiter signed with Napalm Records, with a thirteenth studio album already in the works.
None of these are Florida stories directly, but they're all part of the same current running through heavy music right now: established artists are either pushing hard into new territory (Amon Amarth, King 810) or consolidating decades of work into something permanent (Immortal's box set, Harms's solo catalog). That same instinct shows up locally too — bands here are either experimenting outside their core genre or digging in and perfecting what they already do well, and both approaches are valid paths forward for the Florida metal scene.
What This Means For the 904, the 813, and Everywhere Between
It's tempting to treat national headlines as background noise to the local scene, but weeks like this one tend to ripple outward. A Venom tribute set at a DIY show in Jacksonville. A New Found Glory singalong at a pop punk night in Fort Lauderdale. A local promoter booking a heavier, Dream Theater-adjacent bill because "Stage Tour" just put prog back in the cultural conversation. Florida's underground doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the best metal bands working the state's club circuit right now — whether it's the noise rock chaos of Wrong, the groove-and-thrash hybrid of Must Not Kill, or the post-metal sprawl of Lybica — are all feeding off the same global current as Venom, New Found Glory, and everyone in between.
If your band has news, a release, or a show worth covering, submit your band and let us know what you're working on. And if you want to see who's actually playing in your area this month, our upcoming shows listings are updated constantly — go support a local band instead of just doom-scrolling obituaries and hiatus announcements. Metalcore outfits like Wage War and Contention are proof that Florida's heavy music export game is far from over, no matter how many legends we lose along the way.
Rest in power, Cronos. And to the New Found Glory faithful holding it down in Coral Springs this week — that guitar on stage said everything that needed saying.