NASCAR is – in literal terms – the most metal sport there is. Okay, stock cars are made of steel, but you get my point: Auto racing is loud, fast, and dangerous, and what’s more metal than stock cars pushing 180 miles an hour?
NASCAR traditionally has its roots in rock and country music, at least as long as the Pettys and Earnhardts have been around. But while you’re most likely to hear AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Garth Brooks over speedway speakers and on race broadcasts, a new crop of NASCAR drivers are pursuing metal music – sounds more abrasive and more exhilarating, to match the extreme force and amplitude of their sport.
Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney are among several drivers with a fascination for heavy metal, both as avid listeners and hobby musicians themselves.
Wallace obviously stands out the most, given he’s one of the most well-known current NASCAR drivers – one of the most loved as well as the most hated. You wouldn’t expect a black man from Alabama named Bubba to have a taste for heavy metal, but you also wouldn’t expect him to be on the NASCAR circuit (the only black driver in the Cup Series).
Wallace gained notoriety in 2020 for the story of a noose tied on his garage door at Talladega, which an investigation found unintentional. Yet, his haters still won’t let it go – they call him a “race baiter,” “DEI hire,” and “crybaby.” You might see them demean Wallace online by calling him “Bubbles.” But Wallace has stood firm. In the aftermath of the event, he made clear his support for Black Lives Matter in an article for The Players’ Tribune, sharing his passion for metal music with a reference to metalcore band Silent Planet.
“It might seem crazy, but the heavier it sounds, the more calming and soothing it is for me. That’s when it really resonates and makes me feel at peace,” Wallace says. “This song I’m talking about is different. It’s by the band Silent Planet. And it’s called “No Place to Breathe.” The drums, the guitars — everything — just accent the powerful lyrics,” he says.
Wallace is a heart-on-sleeve guy. He’s been open about his struggles with depression. He’s outspoken about social issues – including a push for NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag. All are reasons he’s my favorite driver, and that’s before we get to his taste in music. It’s no surprise that metal speaks to him, given the emotional intensity and lyrical power of bands like Silent Planet, Fit for a King, and August Burns Red – and Wallace has declared himself a fan of all three. (He even introduced August Burns Red a few years ago during their Christmas Burns Red livestream.)
It has been a whirlwind for Wallace lately. On July 27, he earned the biggest accolade of his NASCAR career: a Brickyard 400 victory at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was his first win of a crown jewel race and just the third Cup Series win in his eight full seasons. After the race, he asked how long it had been since his last win (100 races, to be exact). But Wallace already had the answer: “Zero,” he said. The haters can suck it.
The Brickyard 400 was my first-ever NASCAR race, and I saw Wallace’s victory from the stands. He had to overcome a lot along the way: a weather caution, two overtimes, and a car running on fumes. But he came out on top, and it was a major triumph for the driver – a new dad whose fatherhood has brought him to a new level of perspective and maturity.
It’s why I’ve enjoyed following Wallace so closely – not only for his stance on social issues and taste in music, but also his journey as a human being. I can relate to his emotional honesty, in a world where men are afraid to share any semblance of weakness. He made clear the voices of doubt were loud down the stretch at the Brickyard: “Those last 20 laps there were ups and downs, and I was telling myself ‘You won’t be able to do it,'” he said.
Wallace used to drive angry, like the metal songs he’d listen to on his motorcycle late at night. But he’s discovered a way to manage his emotions on the track – just three years ago, he intentionally took out Kyle Larson in a retaliatory act that got him suspended. Now, he’s staved off the negative thoughts, holding off Larson for the biggest win of his career. Fatherhood has made him a winner in more ways than one. “I’m winning at life,” he said after the race.
Metal music is an outlet – an escape from the chaos of everyday life. In Wallace’s case, everyday life involves the pressure of winning races on the track, while dealing with mental health struggles and online vitriol off the track. In this world, metal is the only thing that makes sense.
“I always say the heavier the song, the louder the song, the better it makes me feel,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Something about it elevates me to a better place mentally. It gets you pumped up. And when you’re pumped up, that helps everything, especially when you’re trying to get ready for a race.” He also names The Devil Wears Prada, Miss May I, and The Amity Affliction among his metal bands of choice.
There’s now a control to Wallace’s chaos, the way Silent Planet vocalist Garrett Russell screams in sync with his instrumentalists. Wallace knows the chaos better than anyone, as he likes to play drums in his free time. He even joined Fit for a King on drums for the end of “Backbreaker,” during his second full season in the NASCAR Cup Series.
It’s fitting that Fit for a King’s new album, Lonely God, came out the Friday following the Brickyard 400. I can imagine Wallace listened to it throughout the weekend leading up to his next race at Iowa Speedway.
Fit for a King’s trajectory parallels Wallace’s. Once a rising star in the metalcore scene, they’d reached a point of stagnation following 2018’s Dark Skies. Likewise, Wallace dominated the Craftsman Truck Series in the 2010s but had reached a standstill in the NASCAR Cup Series. Maybe he had peaked. Maybe this was the best it would get. Maybe he had missed his chance. Like Wallace, vocalist Ryan Kirby also struggled with self-doubt as the band confronted the recording process post-pandemic: “We felt defeated in the studio” he said in an interview with Kerrang.
Lonely God is Fit for a King’s triumph in the face of all the noise, with some of the most inspired and head-turning material of their career (“Witness the End,” featuring Motionless in White’s Chris Motionless, veers into deathcore territory). Kirby’s renaissance as a battle-tested frontman is similar to that of Wallace: both men overcoming their demons en route to personal growth. Metal is the connecting force – and a force it is.
Ryan Blaney is another NASCAR driver with a love for metal music. Like Wallace, he’s also into metalcore and has name-dropping bands like Lamb of God, Miss May I, and Slipknot. He even helped Asking Alexandria announce their 2017 single “Into the Fire.” But he goes even heavier with his love for deathcore acts like Thy Art Is Murder and Chelsea Grin.
It’s no surprise Blaney is good friends with Wallace, and the two even have jammed together off the racetrack. They formed a band in 2016, with Wallace on drums and Blaney on vocals. Vocally, it’s a lot closer to Thy Art Is Murder than Fit for a King, but it reflects the two drivers’ respective tastes. Blaney’s taste is a lot more over the place: He’s also a massive country music fan and even has a dog named Sturgill (after country artist Sturgill Simpson). It’s fitting that he won the Cracker Barrel 400 to secure his playoff spot for 2025.
“I have a weird taste in music,” Blaney said in an interview with Heavy. “I like every — almost every — genre there is, and it’s kind of sporadic.”
Blaney’s career has also gone much differently than his buddy Wallace’s. The son of former NASCAR driver Dave Blaney, arguably the best driver to never win a race, he was destined for racing success. Blaney was also a prolific Craftsman Truck Series driver like Wallace in the 2010s. The difference is that he’s had more accolades than Wallace in the Cup Series, with 11 more wins and a championship in 2023. That hasn’t separated the two, who remain best friends and will both be competing in the Cup Series playoffs this season.
A third driver, Alex Bowman, has also expressed interest in heavier music, though more on the rock and punk side. He’s a fan of August Burns Red like Wallace but also enjoys the post-hardcore of Dance Gavin Dance and Pierce the Veil. He’s close with the members of Underoath and is friends with drummer Aaron Gillespie.
Bowman calls his musical journey the “typical middle-school emo kid story.” Just check out this Blink-182-styled helmet he wore during a race in 2016, which caught the attention of the band. “They saw it on social media and somehow we managed to get VIP passes to see them,” he said.
Bowman’s love for pop-punk and emo is a familiar story for NASCAR. Over the years, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has used his platform to spotlight some of his favorite artists, including The Dangerous Summer, The Wonder Years, Taking Back Sunday, Turnstile, and Tiny Moving Parts. He regularly shares playlists on Spotify and posts on X about his favorite artists – just imagine seeing him at a local punk show in Charlotte.
Dale Jr. also was in charge of crafting the soundtrack for the upcoming NASCAR 25 video game, set to release in October for consoles. It’s no surprise that The Dangerous Summer and Have Mercy are among the punk artists getting exposure through the game. While nothing will come close to the nostalgia of Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” on the NASCAR Thunder 2003 soundtrack, rock and punk fans like myself are giddy with excitement.
As one of the most popular drivers in the history of NASCAR, Dale Jr. has been a noble ambassador for the sport. Whether it’s his Dirty Mo Media podcast, serving as commentator during races, or his hilarious IHOP commercials (“Will you sign my pancakes?” is such a good line), he’s been giving back to the sport ever since his retirement in 2017.
It’s been 24 years since his father, Dale Earnhardt, lost his life in the 2001 Daytona 500. You’ll hear fans suggest that this was the day NASCAR died, as many claim in YouTube comments and Reddit threads that they no longer followed the sport after the tragic death of its most famous driver. The recent Earnhardt docuseries has further cemented The Intimidator as not simply a racing legend but an American folk hero. It was a tremendous loss for racing – and NASCAR still hasn’t matched the sense of urgency when he was in the field.
But the numbers say this wasn’t NASCAR’s downfall – not yet, that is. In fact, Daytona 500 viewership kept increasing until it peaked in 2006. In 2014, it fell below 10 million viewers for the first time since 1985, and has stayed below 10 million viewers every year since 2018.
Coincidentally or not, the final Daytona victory for Dale Jr. – a 15-time winner of NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver – came in that 2014 race, and Junior would retire after the 2017 season. Without an Earnhardt name in the driver field, NASCAR has struggled mightily. Gone as well are household names like Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, and Jimmie Johnson.
With so many famous drivers no longer on the circuit, NASCAR hasn’t recovered from its peak popularity in the 2000s. Even though I had a great time at the Brickyard 400, its crowd of 70,000 was a far cry from what it was 20 years ago – you could see entire grandstands closed off on the broadcast.
While I love Wallace and Blaney and their heavy metal personalities, it’s obvious they’re not enough to carry NASCAR at the current moment. They have enormous shoes to fill, and they need more big names to join them, to bring back the gritty rivalries and cultural relevance of yesteryear.
Alas, NASCAR is persisting. The sport has changed the car, the rules, the venues, and the broadcasts. They even had Cookie Monster as the Grand Marshal at this year’s Brickyard 400 (unfortunately I didn’t snag any free cookies). NASCAR is seeking new ways to reach a younger audience. But it’s consistently overshadowed by Formula 1, which has more effectively reached those under 30 with stars like Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. There’s still widespread interest in motorsports, and I have hope NASCAR will rebound.
A big reason I’ve been fascinated with NASCAR in 2025 is the element of thrill and danger – and no other sport delivers the same rush, not even a contact sport like football. It’s both life-affirming and death-risking, a duality of existence that combines man and machine. It’s also similar to the rush offered by metal music, which has helped bands like Bad Omens and Ice Nine Kills sell out venues in recent years. Between big choruses, heavy breakdowns, and mosh calls, no other genre of music offers such an attack on the senses, and people are taking notice.
I had no idea just how loud a NASCAR race would be in person until I attended the Brickyard 400. Even through earplugs, the earth-shaking feeling when the cars raced past was electrifying. I would attend another race just to experience that feeling again. NASCAR may be struggling to fill the footsteps of Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, but it still has a big competitive advantage: It’s the most metal sport of them all.
Experience the “days of thunder” with my NASCAR pump-up playlist, featuring rocking anthems from AC/DC, Metallica, Kiss, Steppenwolf, and more.
The Verbatim 