After more than fourteen years away from the studio, Shadows Fall are on the cusp of a full-blown comeback. Guitarist Jonathan Donais has confirmed that the Massachusetts metal veterans have finished their long-awaited new album, the follow-up to 2012’s Fire From The Sky, with a tentative 2027 release. And by his account, the record very nearly never existed at all.
Speaking with Mike “Radioactive MikeZ” Zara on the 96.7 KCAL-FM show “Wired In The Empire,” Donais confirmed the music is finished and that what’s left is mostly a matter of logistics.
He said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “[The new album is] done, but [we’ve] just gotta go through everything and figure out the right times and people’s schedules and stuff [before we release it].”
The path to that finish line was an unexpected one. When Shadows Fall regrouped for a reunion concert on December 18, 2021 at The Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts, their first live show in six years following a 2015 hiatus, new material wasn’t remotely on the agenda. It was the act of getting back in a room together that changed everything, as Donais explained:
“I didn’t think we were gonna do any new music. I figured we were gonna get together for our reunion show, and that’d be it. Maybe down the line we’d do another show. But when we started rehearsing for it — I play guitar all day. I don’t have any kids. While my wife’s at work, I sit around and play guitar, so I have millions of riffs. So while we’re rehearsing the old stuff, I just start throwing riffs out there, and of course the guys jump in and start jamming. Like, ‘What’s that?’ I’m, like, ‘Ah, something new.’ And then they’re, like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ And then before you know it, we’re just writing songs.”
To decide what the comeback should sound like, Donais went all the way back to the beginning, deliberately steeping himself in the same records that lit the spark when he first started the band as a teenager:
“When I was writing it, I tried to only get influenced by the bands that I was listening to when I started Shadows Fall. So I listened to a lot of thrash, a lot of ’90s death metal, and I was just trying to get that vibe again when I was 17. Like, why did I wanna start Shadows Fall? What was making me wanna do it? And then I’m listening with kind of new ears, ’cause that was a million years ago. So I was listening to these bands with a new perspective. I was, like, ‘Wow, s**t, this stuff’s still really cool.’ And then I was just excited, because we hadn’t done anything in a while, so it was exciting again.”
The band has been steadily rebuilding momentum. Shadows Fall, vocalist Brian Fair, Donais and fellow guitarist Matt Bachand, bassist Paul Romanko and drummer Jason Bittner, broke a 12-year silence with two singles through their new label home, MNRK Heavy: “In The Grey” in December 2024 and “Souls Devoured” in May 2025. The group also earned a hometown honor on July 18, 2025, when Springfield mayor Domenic J. Sarno issued a proclamation declaring the date “Shadows Fall Day,” ahead of the band’s opening slot for Lamb Of God at the city’s MassMutual Center. During the band’s downtime, Donais had kept busy elsewhere, notably as a member of Anthrax.
Shadows Fall emerged in the late ’90s as a key player in the fertile Massachusetts metal and hardcore scene that also gave rise to Killswitch Engage, All That Remains and Unearth. Donais and Bachand joined forces roughly three decades ago and rounded out the original lineup within a year, with vocalist Philip Labonte, now of All That Remains, Romanko, and drummer David Germain. That first incarnation cut the band’s 1997 debut, Somber Eyes To The Sky, on Bachand‘s own Lifeless Records, the only album to feature Labonte before Fair stepped in during 1998; Bittner came aboard ahead of 2002’s The Art Of Balance.
The band’s big break arrived with a slot on Ozzfest‘s second stage in 2003, and the momentum carried straight into 2004’s The War Within, which debuted at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 and moved more than 300,000 copies. The group’s run slowed in August 2014, when the members revealed that financial pressures had made it nearly impossible to keep going as a full-time band, leading to a hiatus and a handful of reunion shows in 2015. Fire From The Sky, released in May 2012 via Razor & Tie, sold around 10,000 copies in its first U.S. week to bow at No. 38, and, until now, stood as the band’s last full-length statement.
