Obscura Set To Rock Shredfest 2026

September 2026 – Prepare your necks and brace your ears — SHRED FEST 2026 is coming! The renowned travelling metal festival will storm across Australia and New Zealand, delivering an unmatched celebration of technical excellence, intensity, and musical precision. This year’s edition features two of the most acclaimed names in modern extreme metal Obscura (GER) & Fallujah (USA). One of the highlights will be progressive death metal pioneers and masters of technical virtuosity Obscura. Following two successful Australian tours along with a return to NZ OBSCURA are back to present their latest album A Sonication as part of their ongoing world tour. Steffen Kummerer talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

It’s not that long now till you return back to Australia for another tour, are you getting excited?
Indeed, it’s going to be quite an adventure, with more shows than we’ve ever played before in Australia and New Zealand. It’s pretty uncommon for European bands to do that many dates. Since this run is essentially a touring festival, we wanted to make it a bit more special, and after visiting the country twice before, we finally have time to see more than just the venues. We really want to experience more of the cities and the countryside, if possible. We’ve planned a few days off, so that’s definitely something everyone is looking forward to.

With everything that’s happening in the Middle East, is that interrupting any of the tour schedule at the moment, or are you able to work around that?
We’re supposed to play Dubai in May. That’s a pretty big question mark right now, and of course everyone’s watching the news, but so far nothing has been cancelled. North American tour is done played twenty two shows across the United States. Then Asia follows in May and June, so we’ll see how everything ends up being affected. Who knows? The world is a crazy place, but at some point you just have to deal with it.

Touring with Fallujah, and also Ashen and Anoxia that’s quite a line-up.
Yes, indeed. It’s an international line-up. Our band is based in Germany, but we have musicians from the Netherlands, France, and Germany. We have Fallujah from North America, and Ashen and Anoxia being Australian bands, plus local acts everywhere.
In New Zealand, we invited a band called Fukushima to play three shows with us, and on every concert we invited local bands as well. So it’s always five bands every concert. The idea is to have the first until the last band sounding good, looking good, and just having a good time. It’s basically a community effort to bring this Shredfest touring festival down under.

Are these all bands that you know and have crossed paths with, or did you have a hand in picking who comes on tour?
There was a joint venture with our agency. They asked around to see who was interested, and I think there was even some kind of contest to be part of each city’s show. The agency knows all the bands, and together we discussed which ones to choose. So it really was a joint effort. It’s quite diverse, we try to build a show that isn’t just one note. From the first band to the last, you get a line-up that covers a wide range of styles within this small niche we’re talking about. There’s metal, death metal, progressive techy stuff, core, prog, and then Ashen and Anoxia bringing classic orthodox death metal. It’s going to be a great evening for everyone. Our aim is simple: whoever comes to the show should leave the venue with a big smile on their face.

Does it get you excited about music as well, especially seeing the calibre of the bands playing with you?
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Is Australia up there as one of your favourite places in the world to tour?
It’s been quite a while, and we never really had the chance to see much. Last time we played only one festival and a sideshow, and I think we were in the country for less than forty eight hours. At a certain point you don’t even know what day or night it is. With the time difference, it was rough, but worth every second, and worth all the miles collected along the way. We had some great shows before, and we felt very welcomed by the audience, the promoters, the venues, everyone. But this time, it would be great to see a little more.

For this tour, are you focusing more on the new album, or doing a balance of older and newer material?
We have some evergreens we have to play every night, otherwise people get, quite fairly, upset. At the same time, this is still part of the Authentication World Tour, scheduled from 2025 to 2028, so the focus is definitely on the newer records. But we still play a fair share of the whole catalogue. We try to pick at least one song from each album, and with more than two decades’ worth of releases, that’s not easy. Still, we always try to change up the setlist, not night by night, but tour by tour.

I noticed on Facebook it said that you’re wrapping up pre-production, is there already work for a new album?
It was meant to be the pre‑production phase for the upcoming tours. As for a new album… I think we’ll start working on that in maybe 2027, or possibly late next year, but we’re touring so much. We have four tours scheduled this year, with another one being announced soon for October, and next year is completely packed with live shows. We’ve got around six tours on the table already, and I just can’t write music on a plane, or on a bus, or in the backseat of a van. Some people can, they’re comfortable with that, but I really need an environment with fewer people around.

Have you been pretty stoked with how Sonication’s been received by fans?
Absolutely. Sonication opened a lot of doors because it has a slightly more melodic approach. So people who weren’t necessarily familiar with Obscura before, especially fans from the thrash metal or melodic death metal scenes, are discovering us now, even though we’ve been around for more than two decades. On the other hand, of course, there are always people who say the new album is the worst thing we’ve ever done. But that happens with every record. Since the beginning, the first album has always been “the best,” and everything after is supposedly downhill. I think that’s just something every band has to deal with.

Going more melodic, did it just evolve that way, or were you influenced by something in particular? What was the thought process behind that shift?
I think it was simply the path we were already on, the same direction we took with the previous album. There’s a constant evolution. I don’t want to write the same music I did twenty years ago. Every musician wants to create something new, and for me this is just the natural progression of our sound. It’s not a dramatic shift in style; it’s just the next step. We’re still working with the same ingredients we always have, we’ve just rearranged them a little.

The production also isn’t as flat as in the past. We changed our approach. Instead of a traditional wall‑of‑sound, we layered more: doubled guitar parts, added synths, used a vocoder, that alien‑sounding voice, but in a different way. Less like background vocals, more like how you’d mix a synth or even an orchestra. Everything is more layered, and that changes the entire feel of the album. It also highlights the melodic side, because the melodies shine through more clearly.

At the same time, it doesn’t sound overly polished, and that was important to me. I’m tired of those super‑perfect, overproduced albums. If people want to make them, that’s fine, the technology allows it, but I want to hear a band actually playing. I want the real swing of a drummer, not everything edited to the grid. That takes away a musician’s character. And yes, that clashes a bit with the genre, technical death metal is basically show‑off music where everything is supposed to be perfect, but we’re a live band. Every album is slightly different.

Do you think that approach is something you’ll revisit when you start working on the next album?
I think so. We worked with the same producer on the last two records, A Valediction and A Sonication, and we plan to work with him again on the next one, because those three albums are connected, musically, but also in terms of production and aesthetics, including the artwork. So the production will likely follow a similar vein. I’m not entirely sure how the album will sound in the end, because the dynamics, the speed, and the compositions themselves dictate the production. And since I don’t have the songs in front of me yet, I can’t say exactly where it will land. But the production will definitely be shaped by the music we write. We’ll see. I doubt we’re suddenly going to release a doom or jazz record, but maybe something somewhere in between.

Are there any other bands that have you excited at the moment? Anything you think more people need to know about?
There’s so much good music out there. At the moment, I really admire a Swedish band called Lick, traditional, old‑school Swedish death metal in the vein of Dismember meets Iron Maiden twin guitars. Very, very cool music, and I can recommend it to anyone. On the other hand, I’ve been listening to a lot of ’70s and ’80s rock lately. I work with so much live music and spend so much time in the studio that I’m not listening to many blast beats right now, when you deal with that every day, you don’t necessarily want it in your free time. Steppenwolf is fantastic, and classic Van Halen is something everyone should hear.

In the metal scene, I’d say Xenotaph and the latest Fallujah album are fantastic. I just saw Fallujah a week ago in downtown Munich, where I’m based and that ties back to the tours we’re doing, you’re right, we take the bands we love on tour and try to support them. We’ve done that since the very beginning. We were once a band like everyone else, and over the years, as we’ve established ourselves, we’ve tried to give something back by inviting bands we genuinely like and giving them the opportunity to shine. If we bring a band on tour, they should have the chance to sound good and look good, and that’s exactly what we’re doing with Shredfest as well. When you look at the whole picture, that’s how we operate, and I think it’s one of the reasons we’re still around. You show those gestures, and of course, they come back to you, from the audience and from the scene.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Obscura on tour with Shredfest this September, tickets HERE…

Shredfest 2026 Line Up

OBSCURA (GER)
FALLUJAH (USA)^
ASHEN (WA) +
ANOXIA (NSW) #

+ Special Guests

Dates

03/09 AUS Perth – The Rosemount +^ with Allocer

04/09 AUS Adelaide – Lions Art Factory +^ with Tzun Tzu

05/09 AUS Brisbane – Soapbox +^ with Snake Mountain

09/09 AUS Canberra – The Baso #+^ with Blackened Dred

10/09 AUS Sydney – Manning Bar #+^ with Besomora

11/09 AUS Melbourne – The Corner #+^ with Munitions

13/09 AUS Darwin – The Ampitheatre ^+ with TBA

15/09 NZ Auckland – Whammy with TBA

16/09 NZ Wellington – Valhalla with TBA

17/09 NZ Christchurch – Churchills Tavern with TBA

19/09 AUS Hobart – Altar with TBA

# Anoxia Appearing only in Canberra, Sydney & Melbourne

+ Ashen Appearing all shows bar Darwin, NZ and Hobart

^ Fallujah Appearing all shows bar NZ and Hobart