TURNSTILE won Best Metal Performance for their track "Birds" at the 68th Grammy Awards ceremony held February 1 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The Baltimore hardcore crossover act also took home Best Rock Album for "Never Enough," capping a dominant showing across multiple rock and metal categories that saw the band nominated in five separate fields — a first for any artist in Grammy history to span rock, alternative, and metal in the same year.
The victory immediately sparked fierce debate among metalheads about genre boundaries. TURNSTILE's sound, rooted in hardcore punk with melodic and shoegaze flourishes, sits at a considerable distance from what most fans consider traditional metal. Critics drew parallels to the infamous 1989 ceremony when JETHRO TULL beat METALLICA for the inaugural Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance award, a decision that remains one of the Recording Academy's most controversial moments nearly four decades later.
Other nominees in the Best Metal Performance category included DREAM THEATER for "Night Terror" from their comeback album, GHOST for the atmospheric "Lachryma," SLEEP TOKEN for the hauntingly heavy "Emergence," and SPIRITBOX for the technically dazzling "Soft Spine." Many fans and pundits had pegged GHOST or SPIRITBOX as frontrunners, making TURNSTILE's win all the more polarizing.
Frontman Brendan Yates and guitarists Pat McCrory and Meg Mills accepted the award during the premiere ceremony, thanking their fans and the hardcore community that raised them. "Never Enough," produced by Mike Elizondo, debuted in the top ten in five countries upon its 2025 release and propelled TURNSTILE into arenas for the first time. The band has announced a massive 2026 world tour kicking off in August, with stadium dates across North America and arena shows throughout Europe and the UK in November.