DevilDriver Brings the Strike and Kill Tour to The Rave

The Rave 8/26/26 Milwaukee, WI

A warm summer night welcomed metalheads into Milwaukee before the brisk chill of autumn takes over the city. Fans walked into The Rave donning battle jackets, band shirts, and a… banana costume (?) as they waited for the, “Strike and Kill Tour.” This tour brought headliner, DevilDriver along with three special guests, Upon A Burning Body, Ov Sulfur, and Cultus Black. The Rave/Eagles Club remains one of Milwaukee’s most active concert venues, with this show filling on of their 6 stages with fans and heavy riffs.

On Friday, the 26th, The Rave turned its attention toward the heavier side of the genre spectrum as DevilDriver brought its, “Strike and Kill Tour,” to Milwaukee. The California groove metal band headlined a four-band bill featuring Upon A Burning Body, Ov Sulfur and Cultus Black. The Milwaukee date is part of DevilDriver’s 2026 touring run supporting Strike and Kill, the band’s latest studio album and DevilDriver’s first release since Dealing with Demons Vol. II in 2023. 

Opening the night was Cultus Black, a North Carolina-based metal band bringing a dark yet more modern sound to the lineup. The group finds themselves between metalcore and heavier extreme-metal styles; a fitting introduction to a night that becomes progressively heavier (and wild.) With the band’s inclusion on several dates of the Strike and Kill Tour, Milwaukee’s audience got an early look at one of the acts sharing the stage with bands established in the metal scene.

Following Cultus Black, Ov Sulfur brought its blackened deathcore sound to The Rave. Formed in Las Vegas in 2020, the band was founded by vocalist Ricky Hoover after his earlier work with Suffokate. Ov Sulfur released its debut EP, Oblivion, in 2021 before signing with Century Media and releasing The Burden Ov Faith in 2023. The band’s newest album, Endless, arrived in January 2026, giving the Milwaukee show a chance to feature material from its most recent release. 

Ov Sulfur’s place on the bill also added another level of heaviness before the headliner takes the stage. The band’s combination of deathcore, black-metal influence and symphonic elements gives the group a noticeably different sound from both DevilDriver and Upon A Burning Body. Rather than simply following the same groove-metal formula as the headliner, Ov Sulfur provides one of the night’s more extreme sounds and made for a particularly aggressive middle portion of the lineup.

Upon A Burning Body followed as another long-running name in the heavier end of the scene. The San Antonio, Texas band formed in 2005 and built its reputation around a combination of metalcore, groove metal and deathcore. After releasing its debut album, The World Is Ours, in 2010, the group went on to release Red. White. Green., The World Is My Enemy Now and Straight From The Barrio, continuing to develop a sound centered around heavy riffs, breakdowns and aggressive vocals. The band has remained active, continuing to tour and release new material. In 2026, Upon A Burning Body released the deluxe edition of Blood of the Bull and added new material to its catalog while maintaining a busy touring schedule. 

By the time DevilDriver took the stage, the audience has already moved through three distinctly different versions of modern heavy music. But the headliner has its own lengthy history to draw from. Formed in Santa Barbara, California in 2002 by vocalist Dez Fafara following his time with Coal Chamber, DevilDriver quickly established itself through a combination of groove-metal riffs, melodic guitar work and Fafara’s aggressive vocal delivery. Over the following two decades, the band released a steady run of albums and became a consistent presence on both domestic and international metal tours.

DevilDriver’s catalog now spans more than two decades and 10 previous full-length albums. The band’s most recent era began with the two-part Dealing with Demons project, with the first volume arriving in 2020 and the second in 2023. The two albums marked a return to some of the darker and more personal material that has long been associated with Fafara and the band.

The group entered another chapter with Strike and Kill, released July 10, 2026. The album marks the band’s 11th studio release and features a revamped lineup alongside Fafara, including returning bassist Jon Miller, guitarist Alex Lee, guitarist Gabe Mangold and drummer Davier Pérez. Mangold’s arrival followed longtime guitarist Mike Spreitzer’s departure from the band in 2024, making the current tour one of the more significant lineup changes in DevilDriver’s recent history.

For the Milwaukee stop, that new material was mixed with songs that have defined DevilDriver’s career. The night included hits “Clouds Over California,” “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” “I Could Care Less,” “Head on to Heartache,” “Strike and Kill,” “Meet the Wretched,” “Swinging the Dead,” “Dig Your Own Grave,” “Dead in the Water,” “Hold Back the Day,” “Grinfucked,” “Ruthless,” “Cry for Me Sky,” “The Mountain” and “End of the Line.” The set gave the band a chance to move between its older material and the newer Strike and Kill songs while showing how the current lineup handles the band’s established sound. 

For DevilDriver, the Milwaukee date represents another stop in a career that has already stretched across more than 20 years, while the other acts on the bill represent different directions the heavier side of metal has taken since the band first emerged. Cultus Black brings a newer metalcore influence, Ov Sulfur pushes further into blackened deathcore and Upon A Burning Body carries the groove-heavy metalcore sound that has defined much of its career. Together, the four bands give the show a lineup that covers several corners of the modern metal scene without moving too far from the aggressive sound at its center.