Friday, November 6, 2026

nu metal

Case CockrellLive MusicReview

Live music review: Toxicity at the Track – Sick New World Texas Debut

The inaugural Sick New World Texas heavy metal music festival hit Fort Worth on Saturday, October 24, packing a sold-out crowd of 80,000 into Texas Motor Speedway. Produced by the management behind headliners Deftones and System of a Down, the festival marked SOAD’s first Texas show since 2005. A year of hype came down to a bill that put Slayer’s 40th anniversary of Reign in Blood on the same grounds as Knocked Loose. Four stages, constant set overlap, and a crowd you had to wade through to get anywhere: SNW was a twelve-hour endurance test that didn’t let up until midnight.

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Case CockrellLive MusicReview

Live music review: Chat Pile played like demolition crew at Radio East

Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile named themselves after the gray hills of mine tailings that still sit over northeast Oklahoma. The Picher field supplied more than half the lead and zinc used in World War I, and the waste, called chat, was left in the open for decades. Families picnicked on it. Kids sledded down it. Nobody tied the piles to the lead in those kids’ blood until much later, and by then Picher was on its way to becoming a ghost town. The OKC quartet sounds like that debt being collected. At Radio/East on a Thursday night, they played like demolition crew, and Austin, a city that has always made room for bands willing to inflict pain, took every hit. Who Loves the Sun is the latest in a catalog that keeps getting heavier and angrier, and nothing about this set suggested they plan to let up.

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