Written By Caine Blackthorn
Three bands occupying very different corners of heavy music are about to spend five weeks sharing the same stages.
The Mastodon 2026 tour launches September 16 at Hard Rock Live in Orlando, Florida, with Deafheaven and Alcest joining the Atlanta progressive-metal veterans for an extensive North American run stretching into late October. The tour travels through the United States and Canada before concluding October 22 at The Eastern in Mastodon’s hometown of Atlanta.
And as tour packages go, this one is unusually well assembled.
Mastodon bring the progressive sludge and colossal riffs. Deafheaven arrive with their volatile collision of black metal, shoegaze and post-rock. Alcest bring the atmospheric French sound that helped lay important groundwork for the blackgaze movement itself.
Three different musical languages. All of them loud.
Mastodon 2026 Tour Opens in Florida
The Mastodon 2026 tour begins September 16 at Hard Rock Live Orlando, where all three bands are confirmed for the opening night. From Florida, the tour heads north through Asheville and Pittsburgh before reaching major markets including Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn, Washington, Montreal and Toronto.
The routing then swings west through Detroit, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Idaho before reaching California for shows in Oakland, Los Angeles and Del Mar.
From there, Mastodon, Deafheaven and Alcest turn east again for the final stretch through Denver, Des Moines, St. Louis, Memphis, Cleveland and Greensboro before the October 22 finale in Atlanta.
It’s a substantial run, but the real attraction isn’t simply the number of cities. It’s the combination of bands.
Mastodon, Deafheaven and Alcest Make for a Hell of a Bill
Mastodon have spent more than two decades making heaviness increasingly difficult to categorize.
The Atlanta band emerged from sludge metal but steadily expanded outward, folding progressive rock, psychedelia, conceptual storytelling and enormous melodic hooks into a sound that remained unmistakably their own.
Put them next to Deafheaven and the evening immediately becomes stranger.
Deafheaven have spent their career detonating the boundaries surrounding black metal. Their combination of extreme-metal intensity, shoegaze atmosphere and post-rock dynamics turned them into one of the most discussed heavy bands of their generation.
Then there is Alcest. The French band led by Neige have long occupied the dreamier edge of heavy music, weaving black-metal roots together with shoegaze, post-metal and ethereal melody.
That makes the Mastodon 2026 tour something more interesting than three heavy bands conveniently sharing transportation.
Each has spent years dismantling assumptions about what metal is supposed to sound like. Nobody here stayed inside the lines.
A Major Fall Run for Mastodon
The tour also arrives during an emotionally significant period in Mastodon’s history following the 2025 death of founding guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds.
The band has continued forward while acknowledging the enormous role Hinds played in Mastodon’s sound and history. In 2026, Mastodon also unveiled new music, including “Your Ghost Again,” as the group entered the next chapter of a career that began more than a quarter century ago.
Against that backdrop, a sprawling North American tour feels less like business as usual. It is Mastodon moving forward and they have chosen two particularly compelling bands to accompany them.
The currently announced Mastodon 2026 tour dates featuring Deafheaven and Alcest include:
09/16 – Orlando, FL – Hard Rock Live
09/18 – Asheville, NC – Asheville Yards
09/19 – Pittsburgh, PA – Stage AE
09/20 – Louisville, KY – Louder Than Life*
*Mastodon festival appearance
09/22 – Philadelphia, PA – Franklin Music Hall
09/23 – Boston, MA – House of Blues
09/24 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
09/25 – Washington, DC – The Anthem
09/27 – Montreal, QC – MTELUS
09/28 – Toronto, ON – Rebel
09/29 – Buffalo, NY – Buffalo RiverWorks
10/01 – Detroit, MI – The Fillmore
10/02 – Chicago, IL – The Riviera Theatre
10/03 – Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN – Palace Theatre
10/04 – Omaha, NE – FILL
10/06 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex
10/07 – Garden City, ID – Revolution Concert House
10/09 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater
10/10 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium
10/11 – Del Mar, CA – The Sound
10/12 – Las Vegas, NV – FILL
10/14 – Denver, CO – Fillmore Auditorium
10/16 – Des Moines, IA – Val Air Ballroom
10/17 – St. Louis, MO – The Pageant
10/18 – Memphis, TN – Satellite Music Hall
10/20 – Cleveland, OH – The Agora
10/21 – Greensboro, NC – Piedmont Hall
10/22 – Atlanta, GA – The Eastern
Mastodon also have an October 24 appearance at Sick New World in Texas listed after the headlining run, but Alcest is not part of that date.
For anyone who likes heavy music at its most atmospheric, progressive and difficult to stuff into tidy genre boxes, this package is ridiculous.
Mastodon. Deafheaven. Alcest. The Mastodon 2026 tour starts September 16 in Orlando.
MASTODON RELEASE NEW ALBUM MARROW DEEP
The upcoming tour isn’t the only reason Mastodon are making noise right now.
Today, August 28, the band officially released their ninth studio album, Marrow Deep, via Loma Vista Recordings, ending the five-year wait since 2021’s sprawling double album Hushed and Grim.
And this isn’t simply another Mastodon record arriving on schedule.
Marrow Deep represents one of the most significant transitions in the band’s history.
It is Mastodon’s first studio album without founding guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds, who parted ways with the band in early 2025 and died in a motorcycle accident five months later. His absence inevitably hangs over the record, but Marrow Deep is not built solely around looking backward.
Instead, Mastodon have described this period as the beginning of a new era.
The album features founding members Brann Dailor, Troy Sanders and Bill Kelliher alongside guitarist Nick Johnston and keyboardist João Nogueira, whose expanded role gives the current incarnation of Mastodon a different set of colors to work with.
For a band that has spent more than 25 years mutating without ever quite shedding its skin, standing still was apparently never going to be an option.
Marrow Deep Turns Grief Into Forward Motion
The emotional architecture behind Marrow Deep reaches beyond the loss of Hinds.
The album draws inspiration from the Three Fates of Greek mythology, the figures traditionally imagined as spinning, measuring and ultimately cutting the thread of human life. Against that backdrop, Mastodon explore loss, destiny, grief and the connections that remain after someone is gone.
Those themes aren’t exactly foreign territory for this band.
Mastodon have repeatedly turned periods of personal devastation into music, perhaps most notably on Hushed and Grim, which emerged following the death of longtime manager Nick John.
This time, however, the grief accumulated. Drummer and vocalist Brann Dailor lost his mother, Michele, in February 2025. Hinds left the band the following month and died that August.
Rather than allowing those events to end Mastodon, the remaining members went back to work.
Bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders has described the current band as hungry and united, comparing the feeling of making the album to Mastodon’s earliest days.
That renewed energy can be heard throughout Marrow Deep, which frequently reaches back toward the more aggressive side of the band’s history while retaining the progressive, psychedelic and melodic instincts developed over the decades since.
This isn’t Mastodon attempting to pretend nothing changed. Everything changed.
The interesting part is hearing what they decided to build from the wreckage.
Marrow Deep Brings Some Ridiculous Guests Along
Mastodon didn’t enter this new chapter alone. The guest list on Marrow Deep borders on absurd.
Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age appears on “Snakes For Dinner,” marking his first appearance on a Mastodon recording since contributing to “Colony of Birchmen” on Blood Mountain two decades ago.
Then there’s Geezer Butler. Yes. That Geezer Butler.
The Black Sabbath legend contributes bass to “The Vanishing,” including an opening bass passage that Sanders himself has enthusiastically identified as one of the album’s highlights.
The record also includes appearances from Joe Duplantier of Gojira, Randy Blythe of Lamb of God, Neil Fallon of Clutch, Nate Newton and Ben Koller of Converge.
That’s less a guest list and more somebody emptying an extremely well-stocked metal Rolodex onto the studio floor.
Fallon appears on the album-closing “The Three Fates,” bringing another familiar face back into Mastodon’s orbit after his memorable contribution to “Blood and Thunder” more than two decades ago.
Mastodon Begin Again Without Erasing What Came Before
There was never going to be a clean way for Mastodon to enter this phase of their career.
Hinds wasn’t merely someone who played guitar in the band. His voice, personality, songwriting and wildly distinctive playing helped shape Mastodon from its formation onward.
The circumstances surrounding his departure were complicated. His death made them permanent.
Mastodon have since openly acknowledged that complexity while making something else equally clear: Brent Hinds will remain part of the band’s history.
Marrow Deep doesn’t need to rewrite that history in order for Mastodon to continue creating one.
Johnston isn’t being asked to become Hinds. Nogueira isn’t there to reconstruct some previous version of the group. The current five-piece configuration instead gives Mastodon an opportunity to discover what the band sounds like after an enormous piece of its original chemistry has disappeared.
That makes Marrow Deep more than simply Mastodon album number nine. It’s the first document of whatever Mastodon becomes next.
The production details are solid too: Mastodon co-produced it at West End Sound in Atlanta with Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou, with Andrew Scheps mixing. The released credits confirm Josh Homme, Geezer Butler, Joe Duplantier, Randy Blythe, Nate Newton, Ben Koller and Neil Fallon among the guests.
Beginning September 16 in Orlando, fans will get to hear that new chapter collide with the old one when the Mastodon 2026 tour takes Marrow Deep onto the road with Deafheaven and Alcest.
Mastodon – Marrow Deep is out now via Loma Vista Recordings.
Track Listing:
1.Barbarians Blood
2.Poisonous Weapons
3.Ghost Again
4.Snakes for Dinner
5.Out Like a Lamb
6.In the Ruins
7.They’re Coming for You
8.Golden Spires
9.Moth and Bone
10.A Vampire’s Demeanor
11.The Vanishing
12.The Three Fates”
Line-up:
Troy Sanders – Bass and vocals Bill Kelliher – Rhythm guitar and backing vocals
Brann Dailor – Drums and vocals Nick Johnston – Lead guitar and backing vocals
João Nogueira – Keyboards
About The Author
Caine Blackthorn writes music news, trending topics, commentary, and feature pieces for Metal Lair with a focus on the shifting culture surrounding rock and heavy metal. From rising ticket prices and touring collapse to legacy artists, industry absurdity, and the changing soul of live music, his work blends sharp observation with the grit, humor, and frustration of the scene itself. Whether covering modern chaos or metal history, Caine approaches heavy music as something lived through, not simply reported on.
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