Image: Trivium [Official Press Photo, Mike Dunn]
2026 has only just begun and there are already plenty of updates from bands in the studio, new releases, and other announcements. This week brings us new studio albums and fresh song highlights from Lionheart, Distant, Touché Amoré, and more…
Release Highlights of the Day
Lionheart – Valley Of Death Pt. II
Beyond The Black – Break The Silence
Trivium back in the studio in 2026
Trivium are working on new music. According to singer and guitarist Matt Heafy, the band is already in the studio. The news was shared via Instagram, but no further details have been revealed for fans yet. Their latest release was the EP Struck Dead in fall 2025, with the last full-length studio album In The Court Of The Dragon released in 2021 – so this could very well be leading up to a new album.
Twenty One Pilots: New concert film announced
Since 2024, Twenty One Pilots have definitely been busy, releasing two albums since 2024 along with the accompanying tours. One of these live shows has been turned into a concert film for 2026, which will also be shown in IMAX. More Than We Ever Imagined captures the band at their headlining show on The Clancy World Tour in Mexico City. Limited IMAX previews will begin on February 25, followed by a worldwide cinema release on February 26. Tickets go on sale January 15 at twentyonepilots.film.
Distant: Listen to the new single “Nothing Left To Hate”
Distant released their new song “Nothing Left To Hate” on Wednesday, joining recent tracks like “Desolation” as well as collaborations such as “leech” with Dagger Threat and Nasty.
Check out the heavy hitter here:
Distant will be on stage at our Impericon Festival 2026 this summer – be there live and grab your tickets now!
Touché Amoré: New song version for the new year
Touché Amoré also kicked off the new year with a (somewhat) new song: “Diamond Keys” is an alternative version of “Finalist”. It’s not available on YouTube or Spotify, but can be downloaded for free on Bandcamp, as the band shared a message of thanks to their fans:
“Happy New Year!
As a thank you for all the support you’ve given us in 2025 and beyond, we wanted to gift this song directly as a small token of appreciation. It will live exclusively on Bandcamp with the option to download for free.”
They also shared more background on the song itself:
“There’s this thing that can happen when writing lyrics for an album, and that thing is having an outlier. A song that thematically feels strange. The arc of a record often reveals itself over time, and here you have this song that felt so damn good to write because it just fell out of you, but now doesn’t make much sense within the context of the album. So you can either decide to put it on the shelf or rewrite it. I chose the second option, and thankfully ended up in a place I was happy with. That song is called Finalist. How we got this version is all thanks to Ross Robinson’s methods. He famously will make the singer record scratch vocals while just getting the drum tracks. At the time of drum tracking, I only had these original words.
We held onto those scratch tracks from when the song was originally titled Diamond Keys. Ross was so enthusiastic about this take that he demanded we keep the track for use later. That’s what you’re hearing now.
I wrote it out of the repulsion I feel when it comes to dealing with algorithms, paywalls, merch cuts, streaming platforms, and more.”
Head straight to the song on Bandcamp here.
