Who Owns the Riff? Mastodon's Lawsuit and the Quiet Legal Wars Reshaping Metal's Business Side
Every so often the metal world gets a reminder that behind the riffs, the merch tables, and the festival bills sits a thicket of contracts, publishing splits, and estate lawyers. This week that reminder came loud and clear, and it's worth pausing on before we get to the new music, because the business of being in a band is just as much a part of the US metal scene as any blast beat.
Mastodon Faces a Lawsuit From Brent Hinds' Estate
Mastodon are in the news for reasons no band wants to be in the news for. According to reporting this week, the estate of the late Brent Hinds has filed a new lawsuit against the band, alleging that Hinds retained ownership shares in various business ventures tied to Mastodon at the time of his passing. The details are still shaking out, but the core of it is familiar territory in rock and metal history: what happens to a founding member's stake in a band's name, its trademarks, its touring entity, once that member is gone.
These disputes rarely make for pleasant reading, but they matter. Bands are businesses as much as they are creative units, and the paperwork behind who owns what percentage of a name, a logo, or a publishing catalog often outlives the friendships that built the band in the first place. Mastodon's legacy as one of the most acclaimed heavy bands of the last quarter century isn't in question here — but the fight over what belongs to whom, and to whose estate, is a stark illustration of how messy the back end of a long career can get.
Mustaine on Ellefson: "It Was My Band"
In a similar vein, Dave Mustaine offered some unusually candid comments this week about David Ellefson's 2021 ousting from Megadeth. Mustaine didn't mince words about the power dynamics that defined one of thrash's most enduring lineups.
"David and I were never on equal footing when it came to Megadeth; it was my band and mostly my songs, and that was always a source of friction."
Mustaine went on to suggest that the scandal surrounding Ellefson's departure didn't create the rupture so much as accelerate something that was "likely near" regardless. It's a blunt admission, and one that echoes the Mastodon situation in an odd way: bands built around a singular creative vision often carry unresolved tension about ownership, credit, and control that eventually surfaces, whether through a scandal, a lawsuit, or a slow-motion falling out that fans only see the aftermath of.
For younger bands watching from the underground, there's a lesson buried in both stories — get the paperwork right early, because the music is the easy part.
New Blood: Exist Immortal, Acres, and the EP Grind
Thankfully, not everything this week was courtroom drama. Exist Immortal premiered the music video for "Something, Somewhere" ahead of their new EP Afterglow, which drops this Friday. It's the kind of rollout that's become standard for bands building an audience track by track rather than waiting on a label machine to do it for them — a strategy that dovetails with something Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick touched on in a recent interview about the state of social media in metal.
"Social media, it's been around a while now... every fan can express their opinion, but some of them are just trolls."
Skolnick's larger point was that social platforms have made it possible for bands to build an audience without a record deal at all, for better and worse. Acres are a good example of that DIY momentum in action: the band streamed a cover of HIM's "Buried Alive By Love" this week alongside the announcement of a deluxe edition of their album The Host, which is apparently accumulating bonus tracks the way a moving truck accumulates boxes nobody remembers packing. Deluxe reissues stacked with covers and extras have become a reliable way for post-hardcore and metalcore-adjacent bands to keep a record's momentum alive well past its initial release window.
Meanwhile, Initiate had to change the cover art for their EP With Love // With Rage, released back in early August, due to a copyright issue. It's a small story, but it fits neatly alongside the Mastodon and Ellefson news this week — even at the indie level, the legal side of metal has a way of catching up with bands when they least expect it.
Deathcore Pays Its Respects to Slayer
On the heavier end of the spectrum, deathcore outfit Ov Sulfur dropped a cover of Slayer's "Disciple" ahead of the 25th anniversary of God Hates Us All. The band heads out on tour with Mental Cruelty this fall, and the cover is a fitting tribute to an album that, twenty-five years on, still sounds like it's daring you to turn it off. For fans of brutal, uncompromising death metal and deathcore in this region, bands like Ohio's own death metal and deathcore act Psycho-Frame carry that same lineage of extremity forward, and it's a reminder that Slayer's fingerprints are still all over the genre's DNA a quarter century later.
Jane Doe Turns 25
Speaking of anniversaries that reshaped genres, Converge's Jane Doe also hits the 25-year mark this week, and it's hard to overstate how thoroughly that record rewired hardcore and metalcore alike. Few albums land on lists of best metal albums of all time with as much unanimous agreement across hardcore, metalcore, and extreme metal circles. Its fingerprints show up in everything from mathy breakdowns to the emotional rawness bands still chase today, and it's a useful reminder for anyone building a set list of best heavy metal songs that some of the genre's most influential material didn't come from the expected corners of metal at all.
Steve Von Till's Quiet Statement
Away from the anniversaries and lawsuits, Neurosis' Steve Von Till released "iiyiikǎakimǎan" today, a collaboration with Indigenous public school students timed to World Suicide Prevention Day. It's a small, quiet piece of news compared to the rest of the week's headlines, but it's exactly the kind of story that reminds you metal's heaviest voices can also be its most compassionate. Mental health awareness has become a recurring thread in extreme music circles over the last several years, and gestures like this one carry weight precisely because they don't come with a press cycle attached.
The Traditional Metal Revival Keeps Rolling
On the more melodic end of things, Greek power metal outfit Firewind announced a new album, Gods, Myths & Titans, due out via BLKIIBLK, and shared the first single "The Legend Of Achilles." Gus G's band remains one of the more consistent forces keeping traditional, riff-forward power metal alive for a new generation of listeners. That same appetite for classic songwriting and twin-guitar heroics runs through the American NWOTHM underground, where regional acts like heavy metal and NWOTHM band Flyleaf and power and progressive metal band Stentorian are carrying the torch for fans who want their metal delivered with soaring vocals and no apologies.
Shane Embury's ABSOLUTE POWER also shared "Needs Must When The Devil Drives," featuring Tim "Ripper" Owens, ahead of the album's November 2026 release — another example of veteran musicians finding new creative outlets outside their flagship bands. And on the legacy front, Bruce Dickinson announced a remixed version of his 1997 solo album Accident Of Birth, Mötley Crüe unveiled a deluxe 45th anniversary edition of Too Fast For Love, and Robert Plant's Saving Grace project confirmed a digital release of their All That Glitters... EP for October. Add in Ian Gillan's warm reflections on Ritchie Blackmore's surprise Deep Purple reunion at Jones Beach, and it's clear that among the 80s metal bands still active today, catalog stewardship and reunion nostalgia remain as strong a business as ever.
Where This Leaves the Underground
Between lawsuits, ownership disputes, and deluxe reissues, this week's headlines are a reminder that metal's business side rarely gets the spotlight it deserves. For bands actually grinding through the DIY circuit — whether they're playing house shows or opening slots — the lessons from Mastodon's legal fight and Mustaine's candor about Megadeth's internal power structure are worth heeding early. If you're building a band from the ground up in 2026, get your paperwork straight before you need it. In the meantime, check upcoming shows across the region to catch some of these acts live, and if you're in a band that deserves coverage, submit your band for consideration.
