Note the start time on this one: 4:45 PM. Hatebreed headlines the Summer Slaughter Tour at Empire Live on Thursday, September 10, and with Terror, Incantation, Gates to Hell, Torture, and Creeping Death all sharing the bill, this is not a show you arrive to halfway through. If you are driving in from Syracuse, Saratoga, or anywhere north on the Thruway, you are making an afternoon trip out of it. Six bands. One ticket. Plan accordingly.
About Hatebreed
Hatebreed formed in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1994 and have spent more than three decades making music with no interest in compromise. Eight studio albums and over 1.5 million copies sold across North America later, they are still the same band. Their most recent record, Weight of the False Self, arrived in 2020, but last July they released “Make the Demons Obey” — their first new material in nearly five years. Frontman Jamey Jasta has been direct about where the new record is going: “This is our most ignorant, heavy, caveman-esque record yet. We really just went back to basics.” Drummer Matt Byrne described the new material as “way thrashier” and “definitely the heaviest stuff that we’ve written to date.”
Jasta took over stewardship of the Summer Slaughter Tour in 2025 and is running the 2026 edition himself. The Albany stop is date 17 of 19 on the second leg, which launched August 20 in Albuquerque and closes September 13 in Norwalk, Connecticut — a 19-date sweep across the US and Canada.
The Venue
Empire Live sits at 93 N. Pearl Street in downtown Albany — a 1,000-capacity standing-room floor on the upper level of a two-floor venue that opened in fall 2021. The room is built for touring acts: a full-sized stage, modern sound infrastructure, and enough floor space that a capacity crowd still feels like a show rather than a traffic jam. For a package this size, it is the right room — large enough for a real production, small enough that you are never far from the stage. The Capital District does not see a bill stacked like this very often.
Tickets & Pricing
Tickets are available through Ticketmaster and at the Empire Live box office. Doors open ahead of the 4:45 PM start — if you are coming from out of town, plan your drive for the afternoon, especially on a Thursday.