Columbus on Thursday, May 13 sits at the far end of a long stretch for The Black Dahlia Murder. Their 2026 calendar ran a North American leg into mid-November, then a European winter tour fills January and early February 2027, including a show in Tilburg billed as 20 Years of Nocturnal, a nod to their 2007 album. Sonic Temple is the next U.S. date on the books after that.
The band they're bringing is not the one that made Nocturnal. The Black Dahlia Murder formed around Detroit in 2001 and have long been a Metal Blade band, with Trevor Strnad as frontman and co-founder for more than two decades. Strnad died in May 2022 at 41. The remaining members had to decide whether the band could exist without him, and co-founder Brian Eschbach answered by moving off rhythm guitar, the job he'd done since the start, and taking the microphone. Ryan Knight, who'd played lead guitar from 2009 to 2016, came back to cover Eschbach's old spot. The new lineup debuted at a tribute show for Strnad in Detroit in October 2022.
Servitude followed on September 27, 2024: the band's tenth album, Eschbach's first as lead vocalist and lyricist, and the first with Knight since 2015's Abysmal. Having Knight alongside Brandon Ellis gave them proper twin-lead guitar parts for the first time. Bassist Max Lavelle and drummer Alan Cassidy round it out. Lead single "Aftermath" is about survivors of a meteor strike turning on each other; "Mammoth's Hand" owes something to The Beastmaster.