Diamond Records, Vegas Spheres, and a Drummer's Exit: What Metal's Business Week Means for Florida's Underground

Every so often the news cycle hands you a split screen: on one side, the genre's biggest names are racking up certifications, selling out arenas built inside a giant orb, and getting license deals for video games. On the other, working musicians are quietly walking away from bands, lineups are shifting, and grief is still being processed on stages up and down the East Coast. This week was one of those weeks, and if you squint, almost every headline circles back to something Florida's metal scene already understands in its bones — that the business of heavy music and the soul of it rarely move at the same speed.