Month: February 2011

Maybe you’re too old or (nowadays) maybe you’re too young, but there is a teeming, unfortunate mass of us out there who once saw nu-metal as our anthemic genre. While I would love to say my musical history began with Altars of Madness or was somehow nonexistent until the Napalm Death/Coalesce split, Korn and various…

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…

What did you get for Christmas? Most kids our age wanted an iPad. But turns out the Xbox 360 Kinect was pretty popular amongst dudes with belly bulges and retirement accounts.Marko Palmén: The best present I got for Christmas was a tour offer for Evocation, which we received the 23rd of December. The offer was…

It’s kind of ballsy to mimic the Moz with your band name — but I think the Latino-charming crooner would approve of this NYC band’s Smithsy moniker: Meek is Murder. The Moz is never one to keep his mouth shut, and neither are these guys (listen to the first 25 seconds of “Papercups” from their fall…

By Dan Caycedo (Sons of Tonatiuh) The police were in full force. Four days before we left I decided it would be a grand idea to crack my heal bone. So me and the boys went out for a hockey game one night, and jumped off a 5 foot ledge for fun. I went to…

It saddened us to our very boogie-metal core to read about the death of Gary Moore, one of the most dazzling guitar players ever to plug in and rock out. Moore, 58, was found dead in a hotel room in Spain. Best known for his work on Thin Lizzy’s Black Rose, Moore also had a…

England’s Candlelight Records has without doubt made an impact on the genre of extreme metal.  The home to Emperor’s amazing legacy and the early trilogy of recordings from Opeth, the label has introduced the world to some of metal’s most unique and successful artists. In 2001, the label launched an American division that has since…

Every other Friday, Waldo the African Grey Parrot, frontbird of thrash-grind immortals Hatebeak, will get you caught up on the week’s latest “extreme” releases. Howdy Pecking Crew… The masters of murderous mayhem are back. Macabre release Grim Scary Tales. Their first full-length in eight years, Grim is not a huge departure from Chicago’s most gory….

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love, stuff that’s essential listening for students of extreme metal that you may not have ever heard of.  Stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for. Last…

March 22nd is the due date for Woods IV: The Green Album, the Woods of Ypres’ reissue that is more akin to a tectonic plate shift than a record release. And we now have a clip for one of the band’s heart-trampling creations. A combination of piano balladry and unyielding doom, the track has us…

By Ashmedi (Melechesh) The first column for 2011. And it’s number 16. For a person who used to hate writing I find this quite the accomplishment.  2010 was very productive year. It is the year The Epigenesis was recorded and not long ago released, so I felt a sense of accomplishment and relief. We are…

Many of us spend our lives making fun of music. We hate country or deathcore or smooth jazz; we talk shit about Limp Bizkit and Ke$ha and Suicide Silence. But for the most part, we have to admit that these musicians and genres contain a modicum of ability. While people who like the String Cheese…

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…

DOGS:For Sly FaFara and Lord Bacchus FaFara “Ya like DOGS?” Brad Pitt asked in the movie Snatch. Dogs . Yes! I love ‘em. I’m a loner. Don’t do well in crowd. Don’t do the backstage thing. Humans just make me uncomfortable. They all want something from you. But Dogs!?!? When I’m home, it’s me and…

Last week LA Weekly used an article on “identity, music and sexual attraction” from the journal Psychology of Music as a jumping off point for a round-up of various congruous research under the header “Can Bad Taste in Music Ruin a Relationship?” The material is mostly pretty thin gruel. (Not to mention manifestly debunked by our…