Belphegor Praises the Beast in San Antonio!

San Antonio is a massive hub for underground music, especially for those of metal, punk, and hardcore roots. Metalcore and deathcore genres dominate the Rock Box, Inexorable Horde brings the heavy to San Antonio, Paper Tiger is the home for touring hardcore, and smaller clubs like O’Death, The Mix, Fitzgerald’s, and Studio 210 take good care of so many of the local bands and smaller acts. Unfortunately for so many, aside from the occasional local act, there’s not much of a black metal presence in San Antonio. Most of the time, if you want the dark stuff, you gotta go to Houston or Austin – that’s just how it is. The excitement that overcame the whole of San Antonio’s underground black metal scene when Belphegor announced their 2026 Spring tour was stopping at San Antonio’s Paper Tiger was through the roof. Corpse painters, battle jacket warriors, trad goths, they all culminated together on Monday the 2nd of March to witness the depravity of Belphegor, Incantation, Hate, Narcotic Wasteland, and Chaotic End bringing diabolical mischief to South Texas. Oh, and ZRockR was there! Let’s run it back.

Chaotic End opened the floor – literally. The band played in the middle of the pit, opting to get up close and personal with the guests who were early enough to see the show. They absolutely nailed it. With a surprising concoction of black metal and brutal death metal at their disposal, the band’s overall sound and darker textures made for an exciting open to the night.
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Narcotic Wasteland were the coolest dudes to play technical death metal that you’ll ever meet. Fronted by ex-Nile guitarist, Dallas Toler-Wade, Narcotic Wasteland only plays the most punishing, technically impressive metal you’ll ever come across. Hailing from such influences as Gorguts, Immolation, and Suffocation, the nonstop technicalities of their music are mind blowing to witness in person. Especially witnessing bassist Kenji Tsunami go absolutely nuts on his massive bass. His fingers were dancing beautifully. I had the opportunity to tell Kenji he absolutely killed it while I bought the very last patch that they had in their tour inventory (sorry to the fans on the West coast that never stood a chance. That patch was sick and I needed it). If you’re into blistering tech death with a social conscious, check out Narcotic Wasteland. The setlist is below, I recommend every single one of those songs:

1. Morality and the Wasp
2. Faces of Meth
3. Barbarian
4. Delirium Tremens
5. Keeping Up with the Jones
6. We Agnostics
7. Introspective Nightmares
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Hate was my most anticipated band of the night. Hate’s blackened death metal sound is frigid, angry, and chants with primordial voice from atop the Polish landscape. Hate is the kind of band that Americans have to see when they come to town because they’re not from this side of the world – it’s a see em while you can kind of deal. They’ve been a bucket list band for as long as I can remember, and they were perfect. Fierce, dark, aggressive, unapologetically deviant, the band was a machine. San Antonio was in for a black metal treat that night. Check out the set list below:

1. Rugia
2. Sovereign Sanctity
3. Erebos
4. The Wolf Queen
5. Bellum Regiis
6. Iphigenia
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Walking out on stage to audio ripped from Evil Dead, inciting the only moshpits of the night, sounding just as good as they did when they started thirty-five years ago, it could only be the one, the only, the masterful godfathers of death metal themselves: Incantation. The mystical sound of Incantation is linked back to New York, the birth place of death metal, the beast that would consume so many hearts, and to have them in the heart of Texas was an absolute pleasure. They played so much of their best work, absolutely calling for a wall-to-wall pit that ran hard and long for the entirety of their set. An incredible band, and even more incredible set, which you can peep below:

1. Boneyard (Impetigo cover)
2. Golgotha
3. Carrion Prophecy
4. Emaciated Holy Figure
5. Iconoclasm of Catholicism
6. Concordat (The Pact) I
7. Blissful Bloodshower
8. Profanation
9. Vanquish in Vengeance
10. The Ibex Moon
11. Impending Diabolical Conquest
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And then there was Belphegor, the main event. Watching the stage hands decorate the stage with skulls, torches, swords, relics of anti-religious iconography, and props made for violence got the whole crowd giddy with excitement. See, Belphegor’s performance allure is that they no only sound excellent, but also that they’re some of the most genuinely theatrical musicians you’ll see in a hot minute. Pumping the stage with an explicit amount of fog, the band walked through moody backlights and clouds of smoke while the Barry Lyndon film score “Sarabande” played before crashing into their tour-exclusive stage opener, “The Procession”. Opening with “Baphomet”, the band began their impressive conquest against the crowd, strobe light, killer blast beats, gnarly growls, and all. See the impressive set list below!

1. The Procession
2. Baphomet
3. The Devil’s Son
4. Sanctus Diaboli Confidimus
5. The Devils
6. Stigma Diabolicum
7. Pactum in Aeternum
8. Lucifer Incestus
9. Virtus Asinaria – Prayer
10. Scarlet Beast – Leviathan
11. Totentanz – Dance Macabre

Belphegor’s North American Praise the Beast 2026 Tour is now officially over, but check
out every single band that played, and as always, follow ZRockR and Belphegor for more
updates! Rumor has it that Belphegor is dropping a new album soon, so be on the lookout for
more from them.
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PHOTO CREDIT: Live photos by Liam Tennant for ZRockR Magazine – © 2026 – All Rights Reserved.