Two years ago, Kurdt Vanderhoof was done. Not on a break, not between albums: done. Metal Church had been shut down, the band told, the door closed. He had other projects, other plans, and apparently no shortage of conviction. “I just let it go to sleep,” he says. “I wasn’t going to announce anything. I shut the band down, told everybody, best of luck, you know — and I wasn’t going to do it.”
Then the calls started coming in.
“All these really good people started expressing interest in being involved, and I couldn’t say no.” That’s how Dead to Rights — Metal Church‘s fourteenth studio album and, depending on who you ask, one of their most vital in decades — came to exist. Not from a grand plan, but from a series of conversations Vanderhoof apparently couldn’t bring himself to turn down.
The result is a lineup that, on paper, reads almost absurdly loaded: drummer Ken Mary, bassist David Ellefson, vocalist Brian Allen, and longtime guitarist Rick Van Zandt, alongside Vanderhoof himself. It is, by his own admission, three-quarters rebuilt. But the bones are still recognizably Metal Church.
A lot of what makes Dead to Rights feel like a genuine return rather than a nostalgia exercise comes down to Allen‘s voice. Vanderhoof is candid about it. “David Wayne was a huge influence on him. Mike Howe as well. But David Wayne was a huge influence on his voice — so it has that sound just by his voice alone.”
That wasn’t an accident, exactly, but it wasn’t entirely calculated either. Vanderhoof describes the writing process as something that quietly bent toward the past once he knew who was going to be singing. “Knowing when I was writing the songs that his voice would sound like that, it kind of subconsciously allowed me to go in that classic direction. It kind of directed it, sort of.”
The album leans into that instinct. Opening tracks hit hard and fast; “F*ck Around and Find Out,” the lead single, has been closing in on half a million YouTube views since its release. But Dead to Rights isn’t content to bludgeon for nine tracks. Songs like “Heaven Knows (Slip Away)” dial back the aggression in favour of melody, something Vanderhoof sees as essential rather than incidental.
“I don’t like making a one-dimensional record if I can avoid it. I think it’s important to have balance.” He traces this impulse back to the Mike Howe era, when Metal Church began drifting further from their thrash origins toward something more melodic, more song-focused. “By today’s standards, we’re a hard rock band, by what’s considered heavy now. And that’s fine — but that’s just not my deal.”
Album opener “Brainwash Game” takes aim at online culture with the bluntness the title implies. Vanderhoof is measured about it in conversation — he’s not ranting, just observing — but it’s clear the subject gets under his skin in a low-level, persistent way. “You’ve got the professional trolls,” he says. “People who spend their day doing nothing but disliking videos and posting stuff anonymously, just insulting. And a lot of them are bots. It’s a really odd world.”
He brings up Rush unprompted, specifically, the online reaction to their recent reunion tour. As someone who counts them among his favourite bands of all time, he watched the pile-on with visible exasperation. “He’s singing great, but he’s singing differently because he learned how to actually sing, as opposed to when he was a kid, screaming. You have to learn how to sing, especially when you get up in our age.”
The broader point matters more to him than any particular band’s defence. “They’re one of the best bands in history,” he says flatly. “You don’t have to like it, but you don’t have to say stuff. Everybody gets that, no matter how good or how great you are.”
It’s a position he extends to his own work. Politics, opinion, provocation — none of it finds a direct home in Metal Church lyrics, deliberately so. “I definitely have my views politically, but I don’t like to mix that into the music because I like music to be an escape. It’s so divisive — the internet, social media, everybody’s got an opinion.” His preference is to observe rather than instruct. “I like to leave a little bit like, I wonder what he’s really saying. It’s more fun that way. And it’s just a little more artistic about it.”
Vanderhoof‘s decision to step back from touring in the late 1980s, at a point when Metal Church were selling records worldwide, is one of the more fascinating threads in the band’s history, and he addresses it without excessive drama. Part of it was financial disillusionment. “The word ‘recoupable’ became extremely — I really finally figured out what that meant,” he says, with the dry delivery of someone who took their time getting to the punchline. “You’re selling a lot of records and touring all over the world, and suddenly you go, I’m broke.”
But the more lasting motivation was craft. Recording The Dark with a proper producer flipped a switch. “The light bulb went on for me. I wanted to learn how to do this.” He knew that meant getting off the road.
“I love the shows — always did love the shows. But there are 21, 22 hours a day where you’re bored out of your mind. And when you’re 21 and immortal, drugs and alcohol certainly become a big part of it.” He pauses, then borrows a line from Rush: “You’re only immortal for a limited time.”
He’s clear-eyed about the cost. “That probably affected the trajectory of the band.” But equally clear about the tradeoff. “I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t do that.”
Metal Church head into 2026 with a tour that takes in the US Northeast, Canadian dates, a run of European festivals, and slots alongside Testament, Black Label Society, Iron Maiden, and Alice Cooper. The setlist will lean on the classics — it has to, with fourteen albums and a singer who can credibly handle the old material — but expect two or three cuts from Dead to Rights to make the cut as well.
What’s most striking about Vanderhoof in conversation isn’t the optimism, exactly; it’s the genuine bewilderment. He tried to end this band. More than once. “Every time I think it’s dead, it’s like, haha — fake you out.” He doesn’t say it with frustration. He says it like a man who has long since stopped fighting the fact that Metal Church, despite everything, still has more to say.
“I still get to do this. I still get to play music. And that’s why you do it for the love of music. I think that’s the most important thing for me.”
Fourteen albums in, and apparently, the band agrees. Dead to Rights is out now. Grab it here.
