Month: June 2011

1. hol·o·caust [hol-uh-kawst, hoh-luh-]“a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire.” — Immortal’s Abbath Doom Occulta would disagree with this definition, especially the “fire” bit. His definition of “holocaust” is 100 years of winter followed by 100 years of brutal rule by the autocratic dictators of the frost-bitten kingdom of Blashyrkh. 2. tox·ic…

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.  This…

Well, I don’t even know where to start with this one. Licensed pilot Bruce Dickinson has stated that Maiden is unequivocally better than Metallica. He is not in a position to walk the statement back and we doubt Mr. Balls to Picasso would have any intention no matter what. So is he right? Well… Many…

Opinions on Illud Divinum Insanus have gone from applauded to appalling. Mostly appalling. Check out the 35 (and growing) reviews on Amazon. Thus quoteth some Amazon reviewers: “a Spinal Tap level embarrassment”, “Inexcusable”, “An eight year wait for an absolute train wreck”, “How the mighty have fallen!”, and (my favorite) “It’s not completly [sic] terrible……

If you were expecting the same old tidy power rock from Seattle’s Helms Alee, they have a whole lot of mindfuckery in store on their second album Weatherhead. A bold and experimental epic, the trio cracks time signatures in half, wades through indie harmonies and steers in bulldozers full of triumphant, psychedelic riffs. “8/16” is…

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…

Fuck Starbucks! While soccer moms and day traders sip delicately and importantly on iced caramel macchiatos and munch through $40 mini carrot cupcakes, we here at the dB HQ start our uliginous days off with a grisly jigsaw (breakfast) stew of flesh and bone. Munificent amounts of gore topped with good stone ground mustard, actually….

Flipping through the latest issue of the New Yorker this weekend I happened upon something you don’t frequently see in the pages of that august publication: A portrait of a guy in a Trivium T-shirt.

You’re probably familiar with the Grill ‘Em All food truck and Kuma’s Corner, two notorious heavy metal-themed beef huts. But a Decibel writer tipped me to an overlooked den of blazin’ beefitude known as Zippy’s Giant Burgers, and it is arguably the most metal of them all, thanks to the guy above and to the…

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. Get yo perch on, if you know what I mean. Waldo here, and I’m going to be cracking seeds and skulls on some upcoming releases for you. First up is ALESTORM,…

German forward-thinking metallers The Ocean give us Part 2 of their recent trouble-filled trek through the U.S. and Canada. What to expect? A pro-filmed video, a few different accents (British, German, Australian), quick shots of front row boobage, the realization that the Job for A Cowboy dudes pump iron like Stallone, the group’s driver disappearing…

OK, what is the central idea to Amplicon? I read bits of what sounded to be a neat concept.Runhild Gammelsaeter: In a bout of delusions of grandeur, I decided to make a soundtrack of the cycle of the universe, from its birth by the big bang to its collapse, the big crunch, or whatever the…

Noise punk. That’s a term I don’t get to swing around often enough. And 400 Blows are fucking noise punk. It’s been six arduous years since the release of Angel’s Trumpets and Devil’s Trombones but the half-crazed virtuosos are back with Sickness and Health. The band can clearly still flagellate their instruments as Scott Martin…

If you think you can dance, congratulations, but that isn’t getting you shit. Now, if you think you can rock a mean-ass drum kit, you might just be in luck. All of the world’s top names in the drum industry, including Mapex, Zildjian, Remo and Vic Firth, are teaming up to find the next big…

The Rev. Aaron Pepelis is a veritable heavy metal institution in the Northeast. His long-running radio show Return to the Pit — transmitted from WUNH in Durham, New Hampshire and streamed here — is about as solid as tru blackened grind industrial death rock radio gets. He is a consummate and tireless photographer whose work,…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wy_mXuEsP0 Brent Hinds has twirled his Mastodong around by starring in a surprisingly well done commercial for Atlanta bar and restaurant Elmyr. We can only assume that Hinds truly enjoys their food and was happy to do it as I doubt a place that sells two kinds of PBR is flush with marketing cash. But…

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…