Month: March 2011
Exclusive: Agoraphobic Nosebleed- “Miscommunication” and “As Bad As It Is…”
March 31, 2011 Shane Mehling
Now no one is disagreeing that Despise You being back together is fucking awesome. And the chance to hear their first new tracks of drive-by power violence in almost ten years is going to be fucking awesome. But honestly, the real treat for me is the Agoraphobic Nosebleed side. Yes, the And On And On……
Oscar Dronjak’s (HammerFall) MMA Hammer of Justice, Part 9
March 31, 2011 Chris Dick
UFN 24: Quick Thoughts • Antonio Rogerio Nogueira: “I will let Phil choose how he wants to lose this fight.” That has got to be the best quote I’ve heard all year! • There’s only one Mr. Wonderful, and his name is Paul Orndorff (a pro wrestler who is most famous for feuding with Hulk…
The Decibel Study Hall of Fame III: Left Hand Path
March 31, 2011 Kevin Stewart-Panko
Labias and genitals, welcome back to the Deciblog’s Study Hall of Fame wherein albums from our hallowed hall are viewed through the eyes and ears of my eight-year-old son. It’s been a long time since young Sam opined the belief that Sepultura were singing in a made-up language called ‘fuckowackopeas’ and here he offers his…
Justify Your Shitty Taste – Prong’s “Scorpio Rising”
March 31, 2011 Andrew Bonazelli
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—in this case, Thursday, and former invisible orange-man Cosmo Lee would like to offer you a personal apology for the delay—a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to…
Win Batillus Tour Vinyl
March 30, 2011 Shane Mehling
Brooklyn organ twisters Batillus will be releasing their debut album Furnace on Seventh Rule April 19th and there’s no doubt that this fearsome slab of noise-doom will be a favorite around my office (the closet I type in). As the band recently headed to SXSW, they created 55 silk-screened tour copies for ultimate ruling and…
Gurgitators of Grind
March 30, 2011 Kevin Juliff
Just because some bands grind, contorting and torturing their fingers and ligaments for the sake of a tune that has an average running time of 45 seconds, it doesn’t mean they enjoy doing anything else that fast. Actually Finnish grinders Rotten Sound might try and practice the extreme opposite when it comes to daily life….
Not Fade Away
March 29, 2011 Shawn Macomber
Legendary shredder Alex Skolnick may have reunited with his thrash metal brethren in Testament to form some damnation a few years back, but the guitarist’s longtime forward-thinking avant jazz group the Alex Skolnick Trio marches onward nonetheless. The band’s fourth album — the ebullient, beguiling, often-as-not mind-bending Veritas — drops today, and Skolnick was kind…
Maryland Deathfest: The Movie 2 Premiere
March 28, 2011 Chris Dick
Every year — well, the last two for this writer — key parts of team Decibel travel from the City of Brotherly Death (i.e., Philadelphia) to Harm City (i.e., Baltimore) for the exalted festival extremely extreme music, Maryland Deathfest. Every year, Maryland Deathfest is an endurance test. How many kick-ass bands can one — or…
Russian President Meets His Heroes: Deep Purple
March 28, 2011 Jeanne Fury
President Medvedev meets Deep Purple by tvnportal Well now here’s one we didn’t see coming. Apparently, it’s common knowledge that Russian president Dmitry Medvedev is a huge ‘banger who worships at the altar of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. And since the prepubescent age of 12, his numero uno band has been Deep Purple. Medvedev…
Scott Shellhamer & Adamn Norden (American Heritage) interviewed
March 25, 2011 Chris Dick
What’s the difference between American Heritage (MySpace link) and American “Fucking” Heritage?Scott Shellhamer: One has more fucking than the other. Adamn Norden: Regular American Heritage will act like it wants to get to know you first. Your primary influences—if we’re using food ingredient methodology to determine most to least—are “masturbatory fantasies of middle-aged bureaucrats”. Can…
Waldo’s Pecks of the Week
March 25, 2011 Andrew Bonazelli
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. What the squawk? It’s your old pal Waldo and I’m going to challenge myself. Remember Anthrax’s Attack of the Killer B’s? Well, this is my Attack of the Mediocre at Best…
Cry Now, Cry Later Fire Sale
March 25, 2011 J. Bennett
You know that always-entertaining column at the front of the magazine called Cry Now, Cry Later? The one written by that incredibly tall, incredibly handsome genius who also wrote this month’s Pentagram cover story? Fuuuuck, that dude rules so hard it’s amazing that he can even walk down the street without being mobbed by the…
Exclusive: Gates of Slumber- “Coven of Cain”
March 24, 2011 Shane Mehling
As an ex-Hoosier, it’s always nice to highlight bands who are thriving in Indiana. The colossal crew Gates of Slumber are one of those bands dedicated to old school metal that is only concerned with riffs the size of whale bones. Below is “Coven of Cain,” the first eruption from forthcoming album The Wretch, slated…
Oscar Dronjak’s (HammerFall) MMA Hammer of Justice, Part 8
March 24, 2011 Chris Dick
Have we seen the last of Cro Cop in MMA? Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic is a living fighting legend, of that there is no doubt. But 99% of the clips from his fights on the countdown show to UFC 128 were from his days in Pride – not surprising, since he’s been everything but devastating…
Buy Stuff or Get Destroyed
March 23, 2011 Shane Mehling
Do you know Tom Neely? Yes, you do. Not only has he created some incredible artwork for bands like Isis and Wolves in the Throne Room (plus did this fucking killer Moby Dick poster) but he also is the genius behind Henry & Glenn Forever, the beautiful dream of a comic where Danzig brings a…
Justify Your Shitty Taste – Refused’s “Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent”
March 23, 2011 Shawn Macomber
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…
Napalm Death flexi spotlight + Shane Embury interviewed
March 22, 2011 Chris Dick
It’s no secret Decibel and Napalm Death aren’t just Facebook friends but bestest pals. We’re the beat to their blast, so to speak. Decibel editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian’s favorite band is, well, Napalm Death. The Brummies (that’d be folk from Birmingham, England) were well chronicled in Mudrian’s Choosing Death book, were cover stars for dB #53,…
Read Between the Corpses…
March 22, 2011 Shawn Macomber
What with the recent killer Owen Hart and Graf Orlock albums — not to mention those imminent Ghostlimb jams! — Vitriol Records has been on quite a tear of late, but even those crazy bastards have realized the only way to truly put a cherry on top of this nasty buzzsaw sundae is by offering…
STREAMING: Anaal Nathrakh “Paragon Pariah”
March 21, 2011 Chris Dick
Obliterating everyone in attendance at this year’s Scion Rock festival in Pomona, California, British black metallers Anaal Nathrakh appear poised for extreme metal dominance. Though the group’s history takes them back to 1998 (debut album, The Codex Necro, landed in 2001), it’s the recent output, namely 2009’s In the Constellation of the Black Widow, that’s…
Trend Report: Tea Is The New Mead
March 21, 2011 Jeanne Fury
In the canon of manly (or womanly, thank you very much) things, three drinks reign supreme: beer, whiskey, and coffee. Or so we’ve been told. Wanna really and truly send a rush of blood to your bits? Drink some fuckin’ tea. I’ve been saying for years that tea is the most bitchin’ beverage, but it’s…
Dorian Rainwater & Thomas Romero’s (Noisear) Top 5 Influential Grind Songs
March 18, 2011 Chris Dick
Hello All! Dorian Rainwater and Thomas Romero of Noisear here. We have been asked to give a Top 5 feature by the amazing people at Decibel Magazine. We have chosen to give our main influences in the extreme metal/grindcore genre, which have had a huge impact on us and serve as a key element to…
The Lazarus Pit: Hades’ Resisting Success
March 18, 2011 Jeff Treppel
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. Actually,…
Black Metal Book Club
March 17, 2011 Shane Mehling
Our first entry for this darkened covenant is The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge by Matthew Simmons. It’s a fifty-page novella, short enough for even the busiest corpse-painter in the land, and intersperses schizophrenic tales of having fists for fingers and trips to Mars with the author’s imaginings of the lives of black metal musicians…
Oscar Dronjak’s (HammerFall) MMA Hammer of Justice, Part 7
March 16, 2011 Chris Dick
ZUFFA PURCHASES STRIKEFORCE: Drunken Hallucination or Impossible Reality? When I first read the news about this unexpected deal, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I was at an after party here in Göteborg (HammerFall had just had a listening session for our new album with journalists from all over Europe) and I was just checking the…
Not Exclusive: Amebix in the Studio
March 16, 2011 Shane Mehling
We all know Amebix is back and that Sonic Mass, their first album in 24 goddamn years, is dropping 9/20/11. But for those of you who are curious as to how the crust trailblazers have been faring in the studio, here is a taste of the band at Lodge Recording Studios in Northampton, laying down…
Graf Orlock Steadicam Reviews: Battle: Los Angeles
March 16, 2011 Andrew Bonazelli
Opinions are like assholes: everyone IS one. We’ve noticed that they tend to spend a lot of time in Hollywood, chortling while you spend perfectly good alcohol/meth/falafel money on the anal fissures of their “imagination.” Justin Smith of cinema-grind moguls Graf Orlock will occasionally plumb the depths in Graf Orlock Steadicam Reviews. Hollywood has had…
Justify Your Shitty Taste – Carcass’s “Swansong”
March 16, 2011 J. Bennett
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…
Varg Vikernes (Burzum) interviewed
March 15, 2011 Chris Dick
Do you see much similarity—musically, thematically—between Belus and new album Fallen?Varg Vikernes: Yes I do. Musically because it’s still Burzum (…) and thematically because to some degree Fallen deals with the same subject, only it’s not in a mythological context, and on a personal level. I know you didn’t see Belus as black metal. But…
Hades Looks Like It Has Been Taken Over By My Uncle’s Bar Band & The Make-Up Artist From A Shakespeare Festival
March 15, 2011 Shawn Macomber
Lord, maybe it’s because the video is a cross between Shaun of the Dead and Spinal Tap or perhaps because the song is such an awesome, intricate, swirling mass of NWOBHM riffage, but I can’t get enough of the spectacle that is HELL’s new video for “On Earth As It Is In Hell”: HELL has…
Oscar Dronjak’s (HammerFall) MMA Hammer of Justice, Part 6
March 14, 2011 Chris Dick
Quick thoughts on UFC Live 3 Sanchez vs. Kampmann Martin Kampmann got ripped off. He should have won that fight, and not just because Diego Sanchez’s face looked like he had been run over by 14-wheeler, but because Kampmann landed more accurate strikes all evening and defended all of Diego’s relentless take-down attempts save for…