Carnifex Announce New Album and 2026 North American Tour Dates
Southern California deathcore titans Carnifex have announced their new album, More Than Misery, set for release on November 6th via Sumerian Records. The announcement comes with the album’s title track and its official music video. Stream “More Than Misery“ here, watch the video here and pre-order the album here.
Survival has always been the live wire running through vocalist Scott Ian Lewis’s lyrics. On earlier Carnifex records, he wrote while still locked inside the experiences he was trying to endure and process. More Than Misery changes that perspective. For the first time, Lewis is writing after the act of surviving.
That perspective gives the album title its deliberate double meaning. Heard one way, “more than misery” suggests something even worse waiting beyond the darkness. Here, it becomes an assertion that a person’s life is larger than the misery it contains.
The title track brings that idea into brutal focus. Its lyrics descend through burning obsession, isolation, and self-loathing, caught in the pull of poison and a cycle of suffering that feels impossible to break. Then the grip loosens. The face fades, the mask tears away, and the song arrives at the album’s hard-won thesis: life will always be more than misery.
Speaking on the album and its title track, Lewis shares: “More Than Misery is about what happens when suffering becomes more than something you endure, it becomes what changes you. This is Carnifex at our most honest and unapologetically brutal.”
Musically, Carnifex approached More Than Misery with the goal of combining their original 2005 musicality with the tools now available in 2026. The album brings together the physical directness of first-wave deathcore, the band’s death-metal foundations, the symphonic atmosphere developed across their later records, and the decision to focus on guitars remaining the primary musical voice, with orchestration used to deepen their impact. Every song was built with the live room in mind, from pit and circle-pit movement to whether the five musicians could carry each part convincingly onstage.
The record was tracked in Tennessee with Zach Householder of Whitechapel and mixed by Jeff Dunne, bringing an entirely new production team into the band’s creative process.
More Than Misery is Carnifex’s first full-length album for Sumerian Records. The partnership was introduced in May with the release of “Roses & Rotting Corpses,” opening a campaign that now reveals its emotional and musical center.
Twenty-one years after helping shape deathcore’s first wave, Carnifex have made a record that turns survival from a recurring subject into a changed point of view. More Than Misery carries the darkness that has always defined the band, now with the clarity of five musicians who know exactly what survived it.
More Than Misery will be released on November 6th via Sumerian Records. Pre-order here.
More Than Misery Tracklist:
1.…and I Held Hands With Death
2. More Than Misery
3. The Process Of Pain (ft. Chaney Crabb)
4. No Gods Only Graves
5. Coffin Crowned King
6. Roses & Rotting Corpses
7. Only The Dead
8. Gothic Serpent
9. Heart Made of Teeth
10. Licking Love From A Knife
Carnifex will spend the months surrounding the album’s release on the road across North America, the UK, and Europe. The band will first join All Shall Perish for The Price of Existence 20th anniversary tour before a run of headline dates, an appearance at Furnace Fest, and a 20-date European co-headline tour with Despised Icon and Suffocation.
Full list of upcoming tour dates below. Tickets are available here.
Carnifex 2026 North American Tour Dates w/ All Shall Perish, Extermination Dismemberment, and Mauled:
9/4/26: Fresno, CA – Strummer’s
9/5/26: Santa Ana, CA – The Observatory
9/6/26: Roseville, CA – Goldfield Trading Post
9/7/26: Reno, NV – The Alpine*
9/8/26: Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge
9/9/26: Denver, CO – Oriental Theater
9/11/26: Des Moines, IA – Wooly’s
9/12/26: Chicago, IL – Reggies Rock Club
9/13/26: Detroit, MI – Saint Andrew’s Hall
9/15/26: Toronto, ON – The Concert Hall
9/16/26: Montréal, QC – Club Soda
9/18/26: Hartford, CT – The Webster
19/9/26: Brooklyn, NY – Saint Vitus
9/20/26: Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Soundstage
9/21/26: Virginia Beach, VA – Elevation 27*
9/22/26: Greensboro, NC – Hangar 1819
9/23/26: Greenville, SC – The Radio Room
9/25/26: West Palm Beach, FL – The Banyan Live
9/26/26: Tampa, FL – The Orpheum
9/27/26: Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade, Heaven
9/28/26: Pensacola, FL – The Handlebar**
9/29/26: Oklahoma City, OK – Farmers Public Market
9/30/26: Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theater
10/1/26: Mesa, AZ – The Nile Theater
10/2/26: San Diego, CA – House of Blue
10/3/26: San Jose, CA – The Ritz
* w/ Extermination Dismemberment and Mauled. No All Shall Perish.
** w/Mauled.
Headline Dates and Furnace Fest:
10/6/26: Farmington, NM – Locke Street Eats – with Mauled
10/7/26: Lubbock, TX – Jake’s Sports Cafe – with Mauled
10/8/26: El Paso, TX – Lowbrow Palace – with Mauled
10/9/26: Austin, TX – Come and Take It Live – with Winds of Plague and Mauled
10/10/26: Haltom City, TX – Haltom Theater – with Winds of Plague and Mauled
10/11/26: Birmingham, AL – Furnace Fest, Sloss Furnaces
About Carnifex:
Formed in Fallbrook, California, in 2005 by vocalist Scott Ian Lewis and drummer Shawn Cameron, Carnifex emerged from the collision of death metal, black metal, metalcore, and the physical energy of Southern California’s all-ages hardcore scene. Their early music helped establish the language of deathcore’s first wave, while nine studio albums and twenty-one years of relentless touring have made them one of the genre’s most durable forces.
Across albums including Dead in My Arms, Hell Chose Me, Die Without Hope, Slow Death, World War X, and Necromanteum, Carnifex have expanded their sound through blackened atmosphere, symphonic scale, and an increasingly prominent melodic and lead-guitar presence. Through deathcore’s initial rise, years of backlash, and its current resurgence, the band have remained committed to the music they helped shape.
That durability is rooted in the way Carnifex operate. Scott Ian Lewis, Shawn Cameron, Cory Arford, Neal Tiemann, and Fred Calderon function as five equal band members with two decades of friendship behind them. Their relationship with listeners has endured just as long, with fans and band members moving through adulthood together and repeatedly showing one another that neither side is alone.
On More Than Misery, Carnifex bring twenty-one years of hard-earned live instinct to a record written from the far side of survival, built to hit with the same force when they step onstage.
Lineup:
Scott Lewis – Vocals
Cory Arford – Guitar
Neal Tiemann – Guitar
Shawn Cameron – Drums
Fred Calderon – Bass
