Anthrax main-man Scott Ian isn't about to quit metal and hit the after-dinner speaking circuit or anything, at least not just yet. But following a successful one-off spoken word show in London last November he has booked a 16-date spoken word tour of the UK. He's calling it Speaking Words, because a spoken word tour sounds too "fancy pants", and it'll give him a chance to air some of the stories ...

It is time to celebrate the death of 2012 with the Top 5 Funeral Doom Songs (of all time, perhaps). There is no rhyme or reason to this list, actually. Just five songs that always find their way home during the long cold nights of winter. If it's not snowing or cold as a medieval cellar where you live, then move! 5. Esoteric - Beneath This Face The Brits have long been at the business of ...

Well boys and girls, we’ve survived the apocalypse, and there’s not much coming out soon, so I’ll review my best of this year. In case you missed my expertly honed reviews, you should check these out. I will put a caveat that these are in no particular order. Napalm Death, Utilitarian Grind, grind and more grind. This is their strongest outing in some time. Fast and ...

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days) don’t know everything, Decibel brings you Throw Me a ...

Chances are you know about Scion's involvement in the world of extreme music (as well as garage rock and electronic music scenes). Chances are some of you have even gone on online to whine about a huge corporation like Scion/Toyota digging their claws and worming their tentacles into our sacred little world... after picking up your free Wormrot and Revocation EPs and downloading those two new ...

To celebrate the Mayan apocalypse, last week Ancestors shared the first half of its end of the world playlist. Doomsday or not, we automatically scheduled the second half of the Los Angeles quintet's picks to run this morning to help satiate this guy's voracious appetite for the written word. But, in the off-chance we manage to survive, you can not only read about the band's picks, but can also ...

Ah, to be a metalhead on the biggest holiday of the year. We're imagining that you got a new fleece from Eddie Bauer instead of the rare Xasthur LP you hoped would end up under the tree. Your incontinent grandpa is still asleep on the couch. You are now hiding in your room scanning metal blogs. Lucky you. We've teamed up with our good friends at Bazillion Points to give away two copies of We ...

Deep in the heart of east central California---that'd be Mono County or to be more specific Mammoth Lakes---lies one of the most enigmatic black metal outfits this side of France. Although Valdur aren't particularly coy about revealing where they're from, they're pretty tight on who they are. Formed in '03 but fiercely independent---their close affiliation with Bloody Mountain Records is no ...

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors... “We have to raise hell, man,” Jake Hamer chides his wavering rock n’ roll brethren early on in John Skipp and Craig Spector’s 1988 let’s-give-the-fucking-PRMC-something-to-really-fear barnburner The Scream. ...

Vit kill.  Probably not literally, but who knows?  Their brand of grueling harshitude is just about my favorite kind of ear-hate:  a doomy churn filled with motion and eventful anarchy, a corpse-painted wretch that forgoes all amusical mopiness in favor of mounting, forboding horror.  Fans of genre-shunting black mood enhancement take heed.  Vit are shuffling bleakly toward your ...