On tour
Every date the ticketer lists, worldwide · venue time
TicketsMusic · GBSlam Dunk Festival 2027 - SouthHatfield Park · HertfordshireListen
Top tracks on Spotify · SoundCloud
The profile · researched 18 September 2026
Erra at seventeen: a tenth-birthday tour for Drift, and the darkest record they have made
The Birmingham, Alabama five-piece have spent a decade and a half turning technical metalcore into something that sits still as often as it hits; in 2026 they released their seventh album and are touring it alongside the record that first put them on the Billboard 200.
Five friends and an Akkadian name
Erra came together in Birmingham, Alabama in 2009 out of a circle of high-school friends — Alex Ballew, Jesse Cash, Adam Hicks, Garrison Lee and Alan Rigdon — who took the band's name from Akkadian mythology. Two self-released EPs, a self-titled set in 2009 and Andromeda in 2010, did enough to draw Tragic Hero Records, which signed them in 2011 and put out the debut album Impulse that year. Augment followed in 2013, and in 2014 the band moved to Sumerian Records, where the EP Moments of Clarity topped the Billboard Heatseekers chart and gave them their first national foothold.
What held across those early records was a writing method rather than a sound. Cash, who handles guitar and the clean vocals, has been open about how little the equipment matters to him: he has said he wrote most Erra records on a Line 6 Spider practice amp and is not precious about gear, because the first priority is writing good songs. That attitude explains a catalogue that keeps the eight-string riff architecture of the djent scene the band emerged from while treating melody as the point rather than the relief.
The Cavey reset, and Drift
The line-up that most listeners now think of as Erra arrived in stages. Vocalist Ian Eubanks left in late 2015 over health concerns, and J.T. Cavey — previously of the Texas metalcore band Texas in July — took the harsh-vocal role in 2016. Conor Hesse became the permanent bassist the same year. The first album with Cavey, Drift, was released on 8 April 2016 through Sumerian, produced by Nick Sampson, ten tracks across forty-five minutes, trailed by the singles Luminesce on 5 February, then the title track, Orchid and Hourglass. It reached number 101 on the Billboard 200, number three on Hard Rock Albums and topped Heatseekers.
Neon arrived on 10 August 2018, produced by Beau Burchell and Taylor Larson, with Disarray and Breach as singles in June and July. It was Hesse's first full album with the band and their last for Sumerian, reaching number 152 on the Billboard 200 and another Heatseekers number one. Critical reaction was split — scores clustered between six and eight out of ten — and the record now reads as the hinge between the band's more technical early work and the wider, cleaner writing that followed.
UNFD, a self-title and Cure
Erra parted with Sumerian and signed to the Australian label UNFD in 2020. The self-titled fifth album, released on 19 March 2021 and produced by Carson Slovak and Grant McFarland, was the clearest statement of the balance the band had been working towards: it reached number 20 on the US Hard Rock chart and number 52 on the Australian albums chart, and Loudwire placed it fourteenth on its list of the best rock and metal albums of 2021. A deluxe edition in March 2022 added covers of Muse, Audioslave and Nine Inch Nails.
Guitarist Sean Price left in March 2022; Clint Tustin, who had been filling the position live, became a full member in 2023. Cure, released on 5 April 2024 through UNFD and produced by Daniel Braunstein, was Tustin's first appearance on an album and the first time the band had brought an outside opinion into the writing room. Singles ran from Pale Iris in August 2023 through the title track, Blue Reverie and Crawl Backwards Out of Heaven in the spring of 2024. Kerrang! gave it four out of five, calling it an album that showed the sonic power of metalcore when the genre is executed with due care and craft; Metal Hammer matched the score and argued it should be the record to put them in front of a much larger audience. It reached number 22 on the UK Rock and Metal chart.
Silence Outlives the Earth
The seventh album, silence outlives the earth, was released on 6 March 2026 through UNFD, again produced by Braunstein, and runs to 42 minutes and 44 seconds. The campaign was unusually long: gore of being appeared on 9 July 2025 and echo sonata nine days later, with further eden following on 29 January 2026 and i. the many names of god on 19 February. Tustin has writing credits across several tracks, and the closing three songs form a linked trilogy built around grief and self-reckoning that shifts tone away from the rest of the record.
Cavey summed up the result plainly — the band accidentally wrote a dark album again — and the writing circles mortality, the passage of time and a resistance to automated, frictionless living. Reviews were mostly warm. Distorted Sound's Colin Jones judged that the band had struck the balance between their djent origins and their more accessible instincts; Boolin Tunes called it Erra at their best. Kerrang!'s Emma Wilkes was the dissenting voice, praising the craft but noting that the record is not the easiest to connect with. It charted at number 28 on the UK album downloads chart.
Where they stand in September 2026
The touring year has been built in two halves. From March into April 2026 Erra co-headlined North America with the Connecticut band Currents on The Silence Follows Tour, with Caskets and Aviana opening; the 21 March date at Irving Plaza in New York sold out. The current run, Drift Outlives the Earth, marks the tenth anniversary of the 2016 album with thirteen shows between 8 and 27 September across the east coast, the midwest and Canada, ending in Albany. Vianova, Chamber and Resolve are on the bill throughout, with tickets having gone to general sale on 5 June.
After that the Currents pairing resumes in Europe in November, again with Caskets and Aviana: Utrecht on 2 November, then Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne and Luxembourg, a UK stretch taking in Glasgow on 10 November, Manchester on the 12th, Wolverhampton on the 14th and the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London on the 15th, before Paris's Bataclan on the 17th and a final week through Pratteln, Wiesbaden, Prague, Vienna, Munich and Berlin on 24 November. Those tickets went on general sale on 24 April.
The show as it stands
The anniversary set is the most structured thing the band have toured. It opens on an electronic intro into stelliform, then alternates deliberately between the new album and Drift — further eden and cicada siren against Luminesce, Skyline and Orchid, gore of being and i. the many names of god against Sleeper and Hourglass, with the title track and black cloud in the back half. Nothing from Neon, the self-titled album or Cure has appeared in the early nights of the run, which is the point: the billing promises two records and delivers exactly those two.
That is a change of gear from the spring. As co-headliners with Currents, Erra played roughly an hour and drew across the catalogue — Eye of God, Crawl Backwards Out of Heaven, Vanish Canvas, Cure, Gungrave and Snowblood sat alongside the newest material at Irving Plaza. Reviewers of that tour noted a pit that kept widening and steady crowd-surfing through their set, and described a band whose heavy riffing and melodic writing are treated as the same job rather than two modes bolted together.
The show, now
The current Drift Outlives the Earth headline set runs about seventy minutes — the Asheville show was billed from 8.50pm to 10pm — and draws only on two records, the 2016 album Drift and the 2026 album silence outlives the earth. It begins with an electronic intro into stelliform and then cuts between eras: further eden, cicada siren, gore of being and i. the many names of god set against Luminesce, Skyline, Orchid, Sleeper, Hourglass, the title track Drift and black cloud, with the opening nights of the run keeping close to the same order. Vianova, Chamber and Resolve open, across thirteen dates between 8 and 27 September 2026 in rooms of the Orange Peel, NorVa and Starland Ballroom size. Earlier in 2026 the band played roughly an hour as co-headliners with Currents, a wider fourteen-song set taking in Eye of God, Crawl Backwards Out of Heaven, Vanish Canvas, Cure, Gungrave and Snowblood; the 21 March date at Irving Plaza sold out, and reviewers of that tour described constant crowd-surfing and a pit that grew through the set, with the Sacramento stop in April drawing a similar verdict on a band that tours relentlessly and plays heavy and melodic material as one piece.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · blabbermouth.net · impericon.com
Pictures
The ticketer's photographs
