Month: November 2012

Sarcófago – “I.N.R.I.”

November 30, 2012

When Sarcófago sacrilegiously congealed in a plastic bowl of hate, frustration, rebellion, fermented sugarcane juice and fuck fluid, Phil Collins’ “Sussudio” and Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” were number one hits on the Billboard chart.

For Those About to Squawk: Waldo’s Pecks of the Week

November 30, 2012

Wow, this birdshit is REALLY drying up at the bottom of the cage this time. There’s not a whole lot coming out, but we’ll get through it somehow, my friends. I’ll just pick some stuff here at random, some things your old boy Waldo may not be too familiar with. OK, this is plain silly….

Rudolph Can Play This Fucking Game: Thrash It or Trash It!

November 30, 2012

While hordes of old people who still use dial-up are swarming to super-sized retail outlets this season to buy their loved ones’ affection, the more tech-savvy among us simply point and click our money away into the bitwise abyss.  Similarly, while the plebes will rely on radio and opinionated journalists to decide which tunes may…

KHOMA, TRYING TO BE SERIOUS IN THE FACE OF MY STUPIDITY

November 29, 2012

Sweden’s Khoma is probably best known on this side of the Atlantic – assuming they’re known at all – for being the side project of Cult of Luna’s Johannes Persson and Fredrik Kihlberg. Au contraire. While they may not have been as on the radar of metalnerds as Cult of Luna, Khoma has existed in…

INTERVIEW: TotorRo

November 29, 2012

Since it’s getting near the end of the year, I figured I’d mix things up a little bit and fill a couple of these posts with some bands that I’ve been lucky enough to discover over the past 11 months or so. And since this quartet made one of the biggest impressions on me, with…

Nocturnal Poisoning: Q&A With the Artist Formerly Known as Xasthur

November 29, 2012

In 2010, one-man black metal outfit Xasthur released its final album, Portal of Sorrow. That it would be Xasthur’s swansong was announced in advance by its creator, Scott Conner, who abandoned his longtime alias “Malefic” and used his real name in the credits for the first time in a career that spanned 15 years and…

Inside The Shredder’s Studio #4: Alex Bouks of Incantation

November 28, 2012

Fall has been kind to the mighty Incantation. They released their boss new album Vanquish In Vengeance (read more about the creation of the album in our new issue). And they charted like a Britney Spears single in our top 100 death metal albums of all time. One of the reasons they are shredding so…

STREAMING: Medusa “Strangulation”

November 28, 2012

Rock and metal’s history is filled with super-success stories. The likes of which have landed Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, KISS, and countless more into the memory banks and culture stream of headbobbers and normal joes everywhere. But there’s an opposite side to mountains of cocaine, private jets, and endless pyro fountains. “Un-success” is…

Deftones: Joy Love Brotherhood Is the New Blood Fire Death

November 28, 2012

We don’t talk about love a whole lot here at Decibel, and we don’t cover a lot of bands that take influence from Duran Duran. But if you’re tuned into the singularly unique world of Sacramento’s Deftones, you’ll understand that songs of love will be surrealistic, open to interpretation, and tempered with an undercurrent of…

This Record Rules: Extreme Beer Version

November 27, 2012

Sorry for the tease, but this post isn’t exactly about Motorhead’s Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers compilation. Bear with us, though, because it does have some relevance to the topic at hand. You may or may not remember a regular part of the Deciblog rotation a couple years ago was a little thing we called…

Dave Grohl Loves Hearing About Heavy Metallers’ First Time

November 27, 2012

The Foo Fighters may be on a hiatus important enough to be noted by the nation’s newspaper of record, but Dave Grohl remains busy, putting the finishing touches on his debut directorial effort Sound City, a documentary about “the truth, the craft and the integrity of Rock and Roll.” And as part of the buzz-building…

Please Don’t Mosh to the Sword, You Disrespectful Sack of Crap

November 27, 2012

In the latest issue of Decibel (#99), I interviewed J.D. Cronise of the Sword about the band’s new album, Apocryphon. All was going in a predictable manner until, toward the end of our chat, Cronise began discussing his distaste for mosh pits and moshing, and how he prefers people to keep their shit together and…

INTERVIEW: Evoken’s Vince Verkay on bringing the doom-death live

November 26, 2012

On January 19th, Decibel will celebrate a century of extremely extreme issues at Philadelphia Union Transfer in exalted company: four-time cover stars Converge; swine-ablating grindhogs Pig Destroyer; crossover champs Municipal Waste; Repulsion (be still, beating heart); 2011’s AOTY artists Tombs; and funerealy epic doom titans Evoken. It’s the perfect Decibel storm, a line-up of bands…

VIDEO PREMIERE: Evocation “Divide and Conquer”

November 26, 2012

We at Decibel get a lot of chances at firsts. We were the first metal magazine to put flexi discs in the Common Era. We were the first magazine to introduce the Hall of Fame. 95 and counting, to be awesomely sure. We were also the first magazine to premiere new Evocation album—in its entirety—Illusions…

Decibel’s Cyber Monday Sale! Get a FREE Issue!

November 26, 2012

Thirteen is generally considered an unlucky number, which is why we’re foisting it upon you, dear reader! Giving is (occasionally) better than receiving, particularly for sadists, i.e., your holly jolly hellraising homeboys at Decibel. So, today only, sign up for a 12-month or 24-month subscription to Decibel and receive one extra issue for FREE. That’s…

Graf Orlock Steadicam Reviews: Red Dawn

November 26, 2012

Opinions are like assholes: everyone IS one. We’ve noticed that Hollywood tends to spend a lot of time 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 occasionally plumbs those depths in Graf Orlock Steadicam Reviews. It seems obvious, yet oft unacknowledged,…

STREAMING: Bastard Sapling’s “Cold Winds Howled Across The Desolation”

November 21, 2012

Since the Decibel faithful are about to enter a restful trance of their own thanks to pounds of turkey, pumpkin pie and stuffing (or tofurkey for all our vegan readers) we thought it was the right time to introduce a new track from Bastard Sapling’s Dragged From Our Restless Trance. Streaming below is “Cold Winds…

CONTEST: Municipal Waste’s Best Contest. Ever.

November 21, 2012

There’s some indication that nuevo thrash gods Municipal Waste are, to put it mildly, a tad nutty. Case in point, the Richmondians’ near-takeover of the Deciblog. Search for Municipal Waste in our handy dandy search mechanism and not one but FIVE pages turn up. Inside those five pages you’ll find the Waste with long dong…

Obscene Extreme Sails To America!

November 21, 2012

For 14 years, extreme hate-thunder has rained down from the blighted Czech sky every July, under the Obscene Extreme banner.  In 2013, the organizers are seriously upping the ante, and we here at Decibel get to formally welcome Obscene Extreme America!  It’s in Mexico!  (Yeah, against the protestations of xenophobes all over the United States,…

GIVEAWAY: Win a Machine Head Epiphone Guitar!

November 20, 2012

Before we get to all the details of this amazing giveaway—a free guitar!—from the generous folks at Roadrunner Records and Epiphone, we want to wish Machine Head mainman Robb Flynn a very speedy recovery from his recent hernia surgery. We know he’s anxious to get back out on the road and resume the tour with…

Great Moments in T-Shirt History: When Pig Met Pug

November 20, 2012

A couple weeks back ANIMAL New York posted a brilliant video entitled PUG DESTROYER featuring pugs taking lead vox on a death metal track. That alone would have been awesome enough, but then along came the actual Pig Destroyer and, as is their wont, the band took things to the next level. The result? A…

EXCLUSIVE ALBUM STREAM: INCANTATION “Vanquish in Vengeance”

November 19, 2012

Incantation need no introduction, surely, so let’s keep this brief and to the point. The Pennsylvanian death metal kingpins release their ninth album, Vanquish in Vengeance, on November 27th through Listenable Records. This is Incantation’s first LP since 2006’s sulfurous Primordial Domination, and considering death metal’s new wave of old-schoolers have grown evermore reliant on…

STREAMING: De Magia Veterum “The Deification”

November 19, 2012

Maurice de Jong (aka ‘M’ or ‘Mories’) must’ve lived a tortured life or have continually horrific dreams, ’cause his musical output is absolutely disconcerting. I would point to his insanely prolific (and celebrated) outfit Gnaw Their Tongues (or Cloak of Altering), but this time it’s his near-decade old project De Magia Veterum, an industrial-powered, chaos-inclined…

For Those About to Squawk: Waldo’s Pecks of the Week

November 16, 2012

You know, it’s that time of year. I can’t do a Thanksgiving-themed blog because I’d get really sick of the turkey references and have to punch myself in the beak. INCANTATION are back after six years with Vanquish in Vengeance. It’s brutal, it’s death metal, it’s heavy, there are picked riffs that go into heavier…

Interview: Wretched on the Road

November 16, 2012

Rabid death crew Wretched are on a rockin’ roll.  In March of this year they released their third full-length record in as many years, and they’ve been burning up the road with some seriously badass acts in the months since.  Right now they’re out with Six Feet Under, and they’ve got mucho dates scheduled for…

CONVERGE to Headline Decibel’s 100th Issue Celebration Show!

November 16, 2012

After much fevered online speculation, we’re finally ready to announce the headliner of Decibel‘s highly-anticipated 100th Issue Celebration Show! Four-time cover stars, Hall of Fame inductees for 2001 classic Jane Doe and constant presence in our Top 40 Albums of the Year feature any time they release an album, the mighty Converge will join Pig…

REGENTS MAY NOT BE METAL, BUT THEY LIKE METAL

November 15, 2012

Regents features current and ex-members of Sleepytime Trio, Maximillian Colby, Frodus, the Exploder, Battery, Combatwoundedveteran, Thursday, United Nations and Decahedron playing the sort of screwy and spazzy post-punk punk rock you’d expect a band featuring current and ex-members of Sleepytime Trio, Maximillian Colby, Frodus, the Exploder, Battery, Combatwoundedveteran, Thursday, United Nations and Decahedron to be…

Decibrity Playlist: Aaron Stainthorp​e (My Dying Bride) (Part 2)

November 15, 2012

To celebrate the release of A Map Of All Our Failures, last week My Dying Bride vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe (that’s him in the middle) went through the first half of My Dying Bride’s discography to tell us about an album that he was listening to while writing/recording each LP. As he told us, “They have…

Full Album Stream: Grand Supreme Blood Court

November 14, 2012

The phrases “Van Drunen” and “side project” will cause more than a little excitement in these parts. The death metal frontman handled vocals on two prestigious entries in Decibel’s Top 100 Death Metal Albums (available here). He also toured with the mighty Bolt Thrower and fronts war-themed badasses Hail Of Bullets. The dude is like…

Chris Naughton (Winterfylleth) interviewed

November 14, 2012

** In most cases, Decibel features “all the metal that’s fit to print”, but there are times when metal’s meta, so when letters are falling out of the margins and don’t have a home, they go to the Deciblog. The following interview is the full transcript for the Winterfylleth feature in Decibel #98 [available HERE]….