Week in Review
November 1–7, 2026: a 20-year-old record tops the Billboard 200, Rush head for the Sphere, Ozzfest comes back, and the autumn's heavy albums keep landing.
An album from 2006 is the No. 1 record in America this week. The Black Parade took the top of the Billboard 200 twenty years after it came out, and the rest of the week had the same backward-looking pull: a Rush residency built around two classic albums, the return of Ozzfest, a Pink Floyd box set. The newest sound came from the heavy end, where a post-metal epic and a hardcore record landed on the same Friday.
Rock
1. Lead story: a parade twenty years late
My Chemical Romance have never had a No. 1 album, until now. The Black Parade leapt from No. 139 to the top of the chart dated November 7 with roughly 78,000 units, pushed there by a 20th-anniversary reissue: twenty physical variants and six bonus tracks, with vinyl and CD sales doing the work. It is the longest wait any album has needed to reach the summit, and it nudged Olivia Rodrigo down to No. 2 after three weeks in front. The lesson is practical. A fanbase that still buys objects can beat a new release, and a well-made reissue with real collector appeal is now a legitimate way to chart.
2. Rush book five nights at the Sphere
Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson will play five dates at the Las Vegas Sphere in May 2027 (the 21st, 23rd, 26th, 28th and 30th) under the title "Elevate From the Norm." Each night is built around two complete albums, 2112 and Moving Pictures, and the band is rounded out by Anika Nilles on drums and Loren Gold on keys. Presale opens November 11, general sale November 13. A fixed room, a fixed setlist and a fixed run of dates suits a band with a famously exacting audience, and it avoids the grind of a full tour.
3. Ozzfest comes back
Sharon Osbourne is curating a revival with three dates in 2027: Milton Keynes on July 10, San Bernardino on September 11 and Mexico City on September 18. No acts are named yet. The festival will lean heavily on Ozzy's memory, so the interesting question is whether the first lineup announcement honours the original mix of metal and punk-adjacent heavy music or plays safe with legacy names.
4. Deep Purple stop the tour
Singer Ian Gillan needed urgent hospital treatment in Leipzig on October 31. The shows in Leipzig and Hamburg were cancelled, and on November 2 the band put the remaining 21 dates, across Europe, the UK and Latin America, on hold indefinitely. No details of the illness have been shared. For a band of this vintage the sensible thing is to wait, and the dates will tell us more than any statement.
5. Cage the Elephant name their seventh album
Dying in Reverse is due February 5, 2027 on Big Loud Rock, with "Make It Easy" as the first single and a leaner, guitar-first sound. Dates are booked in the UK, Europe and South America; North America is still to come.
6. Pearl Jam are still without a drummer
More than a year after Matt Cameron left, Jeff Ament says the band has no permanent replacement and no hurry to name one, though they want to play live next year. Abe Laboriel Jr. sat in at a September festival date. It is an unusually patient way to handle the loss of a member who spent 27 years in the band.
7. Animals turns fifty, in a box
Pink Floyd's 50th-anniversary edition of Animals arrives in January as a deluxe set of three LPs and five CDs. The extras are the draw: early takes of "Sheep" and "Dogs," a previously unheard Roger Waters song called "Young Nicholas Jon," and a complete live show from Oakland on May 9, 1977, recorded on the tour for the album.
Metal
8. Cult of Luna deliver their tenth album
In the Shadow of Your Shadow came out on November 6. The Swedish band's latest runs 71 minutes and brings two striking guests: Gojira's Joe Duplantier on "Sadness Will Reign" and David Eugene Edwards, of Wovenhand fame, on "One More Day." The early reaction is that the huge, crushing passages are intact, and that the band is now more interested in the long stretches between them.
9. The thrash scene rallies around Dennis Pepa
Death Angel co-founder Dennis Pepa is being treated for stage 4 cancer, and a benefit night called "Heal As One" will take place at San Francisco's DNA Lounge on January 24, 2027. It opens with P.O.S. (Product of Society), the punk band led by his son Roman, and closes with Pepa's own side project, Big Shrimp. The proceeds go to Pepa and his family.
Punk
10. Comeback Kid release Chosen Hell
The Winnipeg hardcore band's eighth album arrived on November 6 on SharpTone, produced by Will Putney. The standout guest spot is Spiritbox singer Courtney LaPlante on "Shedding Season," a pairing that puts two different corners of heavy music side by side.
11. Alexisonfire and Poison the Well team up
The Canadian post-hardcore band and the Miami metalcore veterans will co-headline a 17-date run across the US, from Dallas on March 25 to Boston on April 17, with Touché Amoré supporting on most nights. It follows Poison the Well's first album in 15 years, released earlier in 2026, and a dollar from every ticket goes to the homelessness charity PLUS1.
The week in one line
Old records and old bands led the news. The freshest sound of the week was the heaviest: post-metal and hardcore, two long-running scenes, each put out a record on the same Friday.
Read our review of the record that spent three weeks at the top before this week's change, Olivia Rodrigo's you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, then browse Rock, Metal and Punk for the year's rankings.
Artists in this piece Olivia Rodrigo, Pink Floyd, Poison the Well, Cage the Elephant, Comeback Kid, Courtney LaPlante, Cult of Luna, Deep Purple, Gojira, My Chemical Romance, Pearl Jam, Roger Waters, Spiritbox, Touché Amoré