At this year’s Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky, HATEBREED drummer Matt Byrne spoke to The Kevin Powell Podcast about the Connecticut hardcore/metal veterans’ next studio album, which is tentatively due in early 2026. Matt said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I think this new material is way thrashier. There’s always a tinge of metal to HATEBREED. I think a lot of people try to kind of pigeonhole us as a hardcore band, but I think over the years we’ve just gone way more metal. There is still the hardcore punk vibe to us, but I think the new stuff is way more metal, thrashy, fast, SLAYER-esque, if I may use that term. That’s kind of the direction we’re going in right now, but there’s still a lot of groove to it. It’s definitely the heaviest stuff that we’ve written to date. I know that can be a cliché thing with bands — ‘Watch out, everybody. It’s the coolest stuff,’ or whatever they say — but it’s true. It’s true. It really is. So I’m excited for everyone to hear the other stuff too.”

Regarding what fans can expect from HATEBREED in 2026, Matt said:  ”New record, new music. It’s a new era of the band. We’ve had some lineup changes. We dealt with some curve balls this summer, some health stuff. So we’re coming out on top, we’re grinding through, we’re coming out on top. And, yeah — new production. We’re just stepping up the show 100% and just forging onward.”

Earlier this month, Byrne told Baby Huey of the San Francisco radio station 107.7 The Bone about HATEBREED‘s new music: “We just released a single [‘Make The Demons Obey’] over the summer. We have a new record that’ll be coming out next year — not sure when, but it’s about 90 percent, 85 percent done. [We’re] still tweaking some stuff, but next year’s our target [release]. We released a single, ‘Make The Demons Obey’. We’ve been playing it live. We’re playing it tonight. It’s very fast. It’s heavy. It’s HATEBREED. It has HATEBREED all over it. So, it’s a lot of fun to play. It’s always fun playing the new stuff. We’ve been playing ‘I Will Be Heard’ since 2002, so as much as you love that song, it’s fun to play newer stuff.”

Released in July, “Make The Demons Obey” marked the first taste of new HATEBREED material after the group’s “Weight Of The False Self” album which came out in 2020.

“Make the Demons Obey” is everything you know, love, want, and expect from HATEBREED. PMA lyrics, sick riffs, singalongs that will make you bumrush to the front of the stage, and some of the deadliest, most ignorant (in the best possible way!) breakdowns known to man.

“Lots of bands say that their newest release will be their heaviest and I guess we are no different,” HATEBREED singer Jamey Jasta stated at the time of the song’s release. “We’ve managed to push the envelope and surpass our expectations. We’ve become tighter, harder and more vicious than ever. This is the most excited I’ve been for any HATEBREED release.”

“Very exciting things are happening in the HATEBREED camp,” added Byrne. “It’s time to unleash this beast — new music is here! This is the fastest, most vicious, and most aggressive music we have ever created and I’m pumped for the world to hear it.”

When “Make the Demons Obey” was made available, HATEBREED was independent and was still deciding what direction it would like to go regarding a record label. But HATEBREED remained open to all options and ideas. In the interim, they will be releasing singles to keep fans satisfied and will self-fund the upcoming album.

HATEBREED guitarist Wayne Lozinak returned to the live stage at the Aftershock festival in Sacramento, California in early October. He was diagnosed with a meningioma in the brain while on tour in Europe but thankfully, it was benign. He underwent a craniotomy — a surgical procedure that involves opening the skull to access the brain — on August 4.

Lozinak has been a key part of HATEBREED‘s sound since rejoining the band in 2009.

While Lozinak was away, HATEBREED continued its European and American tours, with touring bassist Matt Bachand stepping in on guitar, and Carl Schwartz of FIRST BLOOD and TERROR joining the group on bass duties.

This past April, HATEBREED announced it was resurrecting the beloved and annual “Summer Slaughter” tour for 2025, which kicked off on July 8 in St. Petersburg, Florida and ran through July 28 in Grand Rapids. Support for this year’s run included FUGITIVE, GRIDIRON, INCITE, ESCUELA GRIND and SNUFFED ON SIGHT on select dates.

HATEBREED celebrated its 30th anniversary with a North American tour last fall. Support on the trek came from CARCASS, HARMS WAY and CRYPTA.

HATEBREED has released eight studio albums and has consistently sold out shows the world over. Over the course of its career, the band has gone from playing basements and backyards to being a featured attraction on countless festivals like Graspop Metal Meeting, Ozzfest, Warped and Download.

To date, HATEBREED has sold over 1.5 million albums in North America alone.

This past May, Jasta spoke to Into The Necrosphere about the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for the follow-up to “Weight Of The False Self” album. He said: “Yeah, I think creatively the ideas are all there, the lyrics are all there, the music’s all there. I’ve been going around taking different meetings with labels.”

He continued: “It was kind of funny and cool — I just mentioned in passing that we were free agents, and then that went kind of semi viral or something, because then we got hit up by every label under the sun. And that was really nice to see that there was interest there from all these labels. ‘Cause I am one of those people that I really believe that your next biggest, best song is always in you. You just have to get to that point where you can channel it or you can grab it out of the ether. Anybody can do it. You just have to get there, and you have to figure out the path there. And now that ‘Weight Of The False Self’ is finding fans, I thought, ‘Yeah, I could expand on a lot of these topics. But then there was also new topics that I had never touched on before that I had been writing about and riffing out about.”

Jasta added: “The real sort of mother lode of riffs that I wrote that I got inspired was right after Milwaukee [Metal Fest], because you get this post-festival sort of slump where you’re, like, ‘Damn, now what am I gonna do?’ And I had to go to Europe right away. But TESTAMENT had given me a guitar — they did a deal with Dean, and they gave me this beautiful guitar. And so I just started riffing out on that guitar as soon as I got back. And I don’t know if it just had good energy from the festival in it or if it had a different feel of the neck, but I started messing around with different frets and different placements… But just having that experience and then listening back to ‘Weight Of The False Self’ and going, ‘All right, yeah, I’m ready. I’ve got enough.’ I had 24 topics kind of written on a vision board, and I thought, ‘All right, I’ve gotta narrow those down to 14. Can I combine?’ And then I kept going, kept going, and yeah, now it’s… I mean, we’ll probably have a single any day now, or maybe even two singles.”