Guitarist Wayne Lozinak made his long-awaited return to the stage with his Hatebreed bandmates during this past weekend’s Welcome To Rockville festival in Daytona Beach, Florida. The metalcore outfit performed on the festival’s closing day yesterday (May 10th), with Lozinak back in the lineup.
Lozinak was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor while on tour last June. He later underwent a successful craniotomy in August to remove the tumor and had been recovering ever since.
Speaking on “The Mike James Rock Show“ earlier in October, Lozinak recounted the frightening health scare, which began with a strange episode at the U.K.’s Download Festival in June.
“My lip got numb, and I was, like, ‘That’s kind of weird.’ But then I couldn’t talk. It was almost like I was having a stroke,” he recalled. At the insistence of his girlfriend, he went to a doctor in France the next day. “I got the scan and they saw a big tumor… then they did the MRI and then they finally said it was benign. [There was] no cancer, which was good, but it was big… And they were, like, ‘It’s not an emergency, but get it done within the next three months.’”
The operation on August 4th was a success, but the immediate aftermath presented a terrifying new challenge as the tumor had been located in his speech center.
“I couldn’t even talk when they first took [the tumor] out,” Lozinak said. “I actually had a mild stroke when they took it out. So I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t write. It was almost like I just forgot how to speak. So I needed speech therapist, all this stuff.”
He described his return to playing guitar as “slow” at first, but said it was “one of the first things I did” after returning home from the hospital. Doctors told him he should be back to “normal things within four to eight weeks,” giving him the green light to return to the road with one simple warning.
“They were just, like, ‘Don’t headbang too crazy,’” he said. “That my one thing. I’m, like, ‘I’ll try not to.’ It’s hard, but, yeah, that was about it.”
“The brain had to relearn after the disruption,” he concluded. “But I’m pretty good now, so I’m happy.”
Hatebreed are officially set to headline the highly anticipated 2026 installment of the “Summer Slaughter” tour.
“Summer Slaughter” 2026 Tour Dates:
- July 02 – Reading, PA – Reverb
- July 03 – Virginia Beach, VA – Elevation 27
- July 05 – Worcester, MA – The Palladium
- July 07 – Cincinnati, OH – Bogart’s
- July 08 – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl
- July 09 – New Orleans, LA – Tipitina’s
- July 10 – Houston, TX – House of Blues
- July 11 – Austin, TX – Emo’s
- July 12 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom
- July 14 – Denver, CO – Summit Music Hall
- July 15 – Omaha, NE – The Admiral
- July 19 – Saginaw, MI – The Vault (featuring Incantation)
- July 21 – St. Louis, MO – Pop’s Nightclub (featuring Incantation)
- July 22 – Fort Wayne, IN – Piere’s Entertainment Center (featuring Incantation)
- July 23 – Toronto, ONT – Phoenix Concert Theatre (featuring Incantation)
- July 24 – Buffalo, NY – Town Ballroom (featuring Incantation)
