The Foo Fighters have found their next drummer, as the rock band has tapped Ilan Rubin for the gig, sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter.
Rubin is best known for his work with Nine Inch Nails, where he’s served as the band’s touring drummer since 2009 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 2020, becoming the youngest-ever inductee at the time at 32 years old. He’s also the drummer for Angels & Airwaves and has worked with Danny Elfman as well.
The move comes just over two months after Foo Fighters parted ways with drummer Josh Freese, who joined the group in 2023 as successor to the late Taylor Hawkins, who died in 2022.
Notably, as Rubin joins the Foos, THR has learned that Freese will return to Nine Inch Nails, which a rep for the band has confirmed. The band subsequently shared a picture of Freese and tagged the drummer in an Instagram story, writing “let’s fucking go.”
It’s unclear at press time whether Rubin joins Foo Fighters as a full-time member or as a touring drummer for the band. According to a source, Rubin had committed to Nine Inch Nails through this year and informed band frontman Trent Reznor last week that he had “accepted a job with another band.” A rep for the Foo Fighters declined to comment.
The switch up comes just a week before Nine Inch Nails are slated to start the North American leg of their Peel it Back tour in Oakland at the Oakland Arena on August 6. The band started that tour with a 15-date European leg back in June. The tour is slated to be one of the biggest of the year, with Nails all but selling out most of their two-dozen arena dates months before the tour’s start. Beyond the tour itself, Nine Inch Nails are also behind the soundtrack for the upcoming Tron: Ares, the first time the band is being credited as the composers on a film rather than individual members Reznor and Atticus Ross.
Freese confirmed his split from the Foo Fighters on his Instagram in May, writing that the band had decided “to go in a different direction with their drummer,” adding that ” I’m not angry-just a bit shocked and disappointed.”
It’ll be a reunion for Freese, who was the Nails’ live drummer from 2005 to 2008. In a 2021 podcast interview with Dean Delray, Freese said he’d left Nails because he and his wife had two young boys at home and he “needed to just go home and be a dad for a while.” Rubin went on to succeed Freese in that band and is himself a dad to one with another on the way.
The Foo Fighters will play their first shows in a year starting in Jakarta, Indonesia on October 2, followed by dates in Singapore, Tokyo and Osaka later that month. They’ll play a show in Mexico City on November 14 as well.
The group released “Today’s Song,” their first new music since 2023, earlier this month to celebrate their 30th anniversary, with Grohl sharing an extensive letter with fans recalling the “moments of unbridled joy, and moments of devastating heartbreak” the band has faced over the years. He paid tribute to Hawkins, writing that “you are still in everything we do, everywhere we go, forever,” and he thanked Freese for his service with the band, writing that without “the thunderous wizardry of Josh Freese, this story would be incomplete.”
