Reed Mullin's Legacy, Death's Bloody Gore Debut, and the Touring Grind Shaping Texas Metal in 2026

Every so often the national metal news cycle lines up in a way that says less about individual bands and more about the health of the scene as a whole. This week's headlines — Pepper Keenan's raw reflection on Reed Mullin's final days, Rick Rozz revisiting the birth of death metal, a Swedish band getting bounced from a North American run over visa paperwork, and two different frontmen dealing with the physical and mental toll of decades on the road — all point to the same underlying truth: this is a hard way to make a living, and the bands that survive it do so because a community holds them up. That's a story Texas knows intimately, whether it's playing out in a Deep Ellum green room or a VFW hall in the Metroplex.