First off, let me introduce myself: my name is Oscar Dronjak, and I play guitar in the Swedish heavy metal band HammerFall. But that's not what this blog is going to be about. I've been asked to write a weekly column on my number one favorite passions outside of music: MMA in general and the UFC in particular. That's Mixed Martial Arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship for those not in the ...

Every Friday (or, um, Monday), Waldo the African Grey Parrot, frontbird of thrash-grind immortals Hatebeak, will get you caught up on the week’s latest “extreme” releases. What’s up beak geeks? The new year brings a lot of things, and one of those things is Ulcerate’s The Destroyers of All. These kiwis really know how to bring the death metal hate. Hailing from Auckland, New ...

That's "underworld," not "underpants." Moving on. We got wind of an upcoming National Geographic special called Snake Underworld hosted by Henry Rollins. According to reports, "Rollins spent about a week in Florida swamps exploring the fringe of America's secret snake subculture: snake smugglers, snake breeders, and even those who 'self-envenomate.'" We were kinda hoping for something more ...

To date, Swedish progressive metallers Evergrey haven't had much Decibel 'presence'. Maybe a review here, a review there over the course of our six now-infamous years on this silly planet. Will that change? Only Pontificator-in-Chief Albert Mudrian knows for certain. But that hasn't stopped Evergrey from infiltrating the Deciblog, where, like dreams, all things are possible. Just this week, ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG-RNq7oRUM I had a whole stream of bile directed towards everyone’s favorite load of pre-teen pandering, Attack Attack!, when I realized their latest record actually came out like six months ago. I assumed an album was on the horizon and I typed out all these dire predictions about its quality. And a quick Googling showed that my forecast wasn’t far off. ...

As you may remember, Richard Johnson and his merry band of grindparents, collectively known as Drugs of Faith, are releasing their first macerating full-length, Corroded, and were kind enough to give us first dibs on their debut video (check it out, again, HERE). Pieces of our interview have appeared and will soon appear, but like picking at the juiciest leftover morsels the night after ...

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody's full of shit and said dud is, in fact, The Shit. Today's submission is our first from an actual musician, although ...

Immortal, Decibel and Nuclear Blast are teaming up to make this February's All Shall Fall Tour even more chilling, grim and noctambulant. If you’ve been eagerly concocting corpsepaint for the following exclusive domestic dates... 2/19 - New York, NY – Gramercy Theatre (16 & older) 2/20 - Baltimore, MD – Sonar (all ages) 2/21 - Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Small’s Theatre (all ...

By Pär Olofsson When Charles [Elliott; vocals/guitar] contacted me the only lyrics that was written was Leveling the Plane of Existence. It makes reference to us crawling out from the primordial ooze and is basically about wiping us from the planet so that everything starts from zero again. It had great potential as a cover piece since the concept included fossils and things crawling out from ...

Ukraine has had a tough go of it of late. The glow of the 2004 Orange Revolution has dimmed significantly, one of the nation's most celebrated playwrights, The Pagans author Anna Yablonskaya, was killed in yesterday's Moscow airport suicide bombing, and amidst these woes the international press seems predominantly interested in a human chain of topless women. Thus perhaps it should come as no ...