Photos: MILWAUKEE METAL FEST – Day 1 @ The Rave/Eagles Club (Milwaukee, WI) – 2026/06/05
The Milwaukee Metal Festival returns for it’s fourth installment since being resurrected in 2023 by Hatebreed vocalist Jamey Jasta, after a 19-year hiatus. The festival takes place at the most wonderful The Rave/Eagles Club. The historical entertainment complex was built in 1927 and holds at least four stages and has a (now emptied) swimming pool in the basement.
For MKE Metal Fest, there are three stages: the Rave Hall which holds 1,800 souls, the Rave Bar is the more intimate setting reminiscent of a small dive bar, and the highlight venue is the 3,500-capacity Eagles Ballroom on the upper floor.
There was an area dedicated to getting tattoos, an entire floor of band merchandise and memorabilia slingers, and several bars, including one on the rooftop with a balcony offering views of the city. Unfortunately, the best beer available was Modelo, with not much support for local Cream City breweries. Several food trucks occupied some of the outdoor area offering pizza, tacos, cheese curds, nachos, grilled cheese sandos, and vegan options.
Lineup for Day 1:
Dirt, Misery, Eyes of the Living, Thanatotic Desire, Cardiac Arrest, Frog Mallet, Blood Vulture, Dawn Of Ouroboros, Dusk, Flesh Parade, Incite, Morta Skuld, Creeping Death, Polkadot Cadaver, Nunslaughter, Monstrosity, Hirax, Pallbearer, Vio-lence, Incantation, Death Angel (Act III Set), Agalloch (Retrospective Set), Obituary, and Acid Bath.
Photographs by @bananamasher.
Former Mushroomhead vocalist Jeffrey Nothing was supposed to debut his solo project but canceled his tour prior to the festival for uncertain reasons. Absolutely no worries, FROG MALLET, who is scheduled to play Sunday on the Rave Bar stage, is chilling and trilling all weekend, so they jumped in to fill the pad. Who the fuck is FROG MALLET? They are your new favorite slam band. Especially if you like frogs. It’s kind of their thing. Hands down, one of the best logos in the game. The band drops their sophomore album, Consumed by Frogs, later this year via Reality Fade Records.
FROG MALLET:
Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Goth-sludge newcomers featuring Jordan Olds (best known as Gwarsenio Hall from Two Minutes to Late Night), BLOOD VULTURE came to delight and rapture. Combining elements of alternative rock, doom metal, and gothic atmosphere, the band will enthrall you with dreary riffs, cinematic storytelling, and vampire worship. Their debut offering, Die Close, was released in 2025 through Pure Noise Records.
BLOOD VULTURE:
Bandcamp | Instagram
Since forming in the late 1990s in the suburbs of Chicago, the long-running death (metal) squad CARDIAC ARREST have become an underground final boss of old-school death metal. They released their eighth full-length album, The Stench of Eternity, through Hells Headbangers Records in 2024. The band’s discography consists mostly of full albums, with number of splits with Mutant Supremacy, Radiation Sickness, Coffins, and Cadaveric Incubator. If you fancy your death metal riddled with gore, violence, zombies, and horror, then dig the dirt out of your ears and turn the volume up.
CARDIAC ARREST:
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Crossover speed metal titans HIRAX stirred a frenzy by playing some crowd favorites such as “Blind Faith” and “Black Smoke.” Known as Kaos in the early 1980s, HIRAX would come to be in 1984 – releasing their debut album, Raging Violence, via Metal Blade Records the following year. The band is known for their punk-influenced riffs and high-range vocals from founding member Katon W. de Pena. The band was short-lived, only lasting about five years. That was until an underground buzz started happening at the end of the 1990s, which did encourage the original lineup to reunite in 2000. Currently, Katon is the only original member in the lineup.
HIRAX:
Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
Thrash powerhouse VIO-LENCE caved the roof in on the small stage. Bodies shoved in the room like sardines with people crawling on top of one another just to get to the stage… Then to jump off it. It’s getting to that point in the first day that the excitement level has risen much higher, requiring necessary energy to control the crowd. VIO-LENCE only added gasoline to the fire with an explosive set.
VIO-LENCE:
Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
The heaviest single cheese ever made in Wisconsin was a massive 17-ton cheddar block. DUSK is heavier than that. Since forming in Green Bay in 1993, the death-doom ensemble has only released two albums but has left a legacy. I like to think the band ages like a fine cheese, only performing or releasing music in due time, when ready, when premium.
DUSK:
Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
PALLBEARER have become a name in rock’n’roll with their hefty riffs, soaring vocals, and sorrowful overtones of despair and hopelessness, beautifully delivered. They have been recently touring, performing their 2014 album Foundations of Burden (Profound Lore Records) in its entirety [see here for their Massachusetts date]. Being a festival with a condensed set for a doom band, they got off four songs, those being “Foundations,” “Thorns,” “The Ghost I Used to Be,” and “Foreigner” before having to exit the stage.
PALLBEARER:
Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
See a theme of infamous thrash bands forming? It’s no striking occurrence; it simply escalates. DEATH ANGEL is celebrating the 35th anniversary of their third album, Act III (1990 – Geffen Records) by performing most, if not all, of the album in its entirety [again, festival time restrictions]. Their current tour with VIO-LENCE and INCITE collides with the Milwaukee Metal Festival with the Bay-Area titans ending their set with “The Ultra-Violence” from their 1987 debut record of the same name.
DEATH ANGEL:
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Forming in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1990, death metal juggernauts MONSTROSITY are hot off the heels of their latest album, Screams from Beneath the Surface (2026 – Metal Blade Records), marking the band’s seventh studio album and first in eight years. The group has undergone multiple lineup changes, with drummer Lee Harrison being the only constant member. George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher was a founding member up until 1995 when he joined Cannibal Corpse.
MONSTROSITY:
Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Portland, OR atmospheric black metal band AGALLOCH making a rare appearance and performing a highly anticipated, career-spanning “Retrospective Set” on day one on the Eagles Ballroom stage. The band will perform in full ‘Ashes Against the Grain‘ tomorrow night on the more intimate Rave stage. The setlist, in order: “As Embers Dress the Sky,” “Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires,” “Hallways of Enchanted Ebony,” “The Wilderness,” “Dark Matter Gods,” “Odal,” and “Into the Painted Grey.”
AGALLOCH:
Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
One of the most blasphemous, vile, despicable death metal bands to ever appear on stage, NUNSLAUGHTER has risen from the depths of Hell to sacrifice anyone who dares enter the venue. The heathens are about to release Satanic Chaos Legions in a couple of weeks, which will be released worldwide via BLKIIBLK Records, shockingly, it’s only their sixth full-length in a quite vast discography. The only new song they performed was “Unsacrament”; also on the setlist were classics “Satanic Slut“, “I Am Death,” “I Saw Your God Die,” and “Smell the Burning Churches.“
NUNSLAUGHTER:
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Keeping the satanic death metal theme going, INCANTATION, though not the top headliner, would have the honor of providing closing sermons of the first night of the Milwaukee Metal Festival – which they also performed in 2024. Ultra-fast death metal combined with the darkest of doom atmospheres, with lyrical themes of blasphemy, occultism, and Satanism. Spooky stuff. The legendary band has released twelve full-length albums since forming in 1989; their latest, Unholy Deification, came in 2023 through Relapse Records.
INCANTATION:
Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
If you were not dead yet, OBITUARY should surely put the last nails in the coffin for you. Known for their groovy melody, thick riffs, and inhuman growls, the pioneering Floridian quintet has become one of the most successful death metal bands since forming in the mid-to-late 1980s. Performing on the Eagles Ballroom stage, the crowd compacted and swelled as the moshpit morphed and grew, opening with “Redneck Stomp” always gets the audience all riled up. The bands played “Body Bag,” “Chopped in Half,” “Dying,” and “Infected” from 1990’s Cause of Death, slipped in a Celtic Frost cover of “Circle of the Tyrants,” and ended with “Slowly We Rot.”
OBITUARY:
Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
Formed in Houma, Louisiana, in 1991, ACID BATH was a pioneering force in sludge and doom metal genres. The band forged a distinctive sound by blending down-tuned Black Sabbath-inspired doom and sludge riffs with death metal aggression, gothic rock atmosphere, blues, folk, and bursts of hardcore punk intensity. Their music seamlessly shifted between haunting acoustic passages, eerie melodies, and ferocious growls, creating a style that was both brutal and deeply atmospheric.
After releasing two critically acclaimed albums, When the Kite String Pops (1994 – Rotten Records) and Paegan Terrorism Tactics (1996 – Rotten Records), tragedy brought the band to an abrupt end. In 1997, bassist Audie Pitre and his parents were killed by a drunk driver who had run a stop sign. Out of respect for their fallen bandmate, the remaining members chose not to continue under the ACID BATH name, ensuring the group’s legacy would remain that of one of heavy music’s most revered and tragic underground legends.
Dax Riggs and Mike Sanchez went on to perform in Agents of Oblivion, while Sammy Duet formed the band Goatwhore the same year and then joined Crowbar in 1998. The band announced their return in 2024, with former Crowbar bassist Shane Wesley and Goatwhore drummer Zack Simmons filling out the lineup.
ACID BATH:
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