[Cover portrait art is ASCII created by Tainted / FIRE]

Italy’s Master Boot Record has announced the release of new album Computer Metal on October 30th, 2026, via Metal Blade Records.

Computer Metal is kicks off with the first single, “Dot Matrix”, and wrapping up with “CTRL+ALT+DEL.” The follow-up to 2024’s Hardwarez, Computer Metal was written via MIDI in Cubase, with the computer as the main instrument. The record is built on a hybrid of real guitar layered with synths and pushes production to higher levels than the previous record.

Multi-instrumentalist and project mastermind Vittorio D’Amore explains:

Hardwarez was about the hardware; Computer Metal is more connected to what computers represent in our lives and the memory we have of them. This album is a sort of codex of the genre, since each song expresses a different style of metal, while still being done with the computer.

The record shifts from Hardcore to Progressive Metal, Thrash Metal, Melodic Metal, Death Metal, Symphonic Classical Metal, Industrial Metal, and more. Each song is the expression of one of the different styles of metal that influenced Master Boot Record’s music.

D’Amore says:

These are terms that entered everyday language, and that is the point: this culture is not a niche, it was a generation’s shared experience. Even someone who never opened a computer case knows what it means when a screen asks you to press Ctrl+Alt+Del.

D’Amore says of the lead single, “Dot Matrix”:

Angry printers head slamming characters into your face. Hardcore metal was never in the MASTER BOOT RECORD codebase before. Now it boots first, no warm-up.

Everything you hear on Computer Metal was “written note by note by a human with a keyboard and a mouse controlling a machine.” Additionally, “Everything you see in the artwork was typed character by character. No generated content, no shortcuts.”