Year: 2012

Grindcore legends Phobia may not be the most prolific full-length writers—six of ’em in 22 years—but what they lack in Genesis-like concept albums or MacGrubergrind throwback scene points, they make up for in sheer volcanic terror. If that sounds like journalistic exaggeration, well, it kind of is, but what band outside Napalm Death, Rotten Sound,…

In honor of Mother’s Day, Decibel is exclusively premiering the song “Mother” from Lita Ford’s new album Living Like a Runaway

Bathory’s Under the Sign of the Black Mark turns a whopping 25 years old today. To honor the landmark, Swedish Death Metal author Daniel Ekeroth parallels his adolescence with the band’s inimitable path. TO GROW UP WITH BATHORY by Daniel Ekeroth As a young teen, I could probably have been caught up in any kind…

Pick Your Side is a new hardcore band based out of Hamilton, Ontario (and Buffalo, New York) which features ex-and-present members of Haymaker, Fuck the Facts, Psyopus amongst others. They’ve just released their full-length debut, Let Me Show You How Democracy Works courtesy of A389 Records and played a hometown show last weekend and as…

Last week, The Space—a “freely-available digital arts service developed by Arts Council England in partnership with the BBC”—unveiled the first part of its massive John Peel project. Peel, who passed away in 2004 and whom you may know from his legendary Peel Sessions, early support of Napalm Death or writing the introduction to a book…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUi1yf97paw The biggest metal band in Israel, Orphaned Land, is being highlighted as a viable bridge between headbanging Muslims and Jews as their apolitical, peace-promoting power metal seems to only have extreme views when it comes to wearing scarves on stage. While this kind of music is definitely not the thing that blows my gentile…

Firewind guitarist…er, guitar god Gus G. is a bit of a celebrity over in Europe. Here in the states the Greek six-stringer’s exploits are, for all intents and purposes, largely under the proverbial metallic radar. He was in Swedish power metal outfit Dream Evil, but they sold about 4 copies between coasts. He floated for…

Unlike some of our previous “premieres,” this one is timed just perfectly. Chicago trad-metal quartet, Bible of the Devil, will be releasing their sixth full-length album, For The Love Of Thugs And Fools, today, May, 8 via Cruz Del Sur Music. It’s their first full-length, since 2008’s Freedom Metal and it’s just the kind of…

Calling the split “amicable but lamentable to say the least,” Averse Sefira have sadly called it a day. The long-running Austin black metallers are survived by a stellar discography — see Advent Parallax or Tetragrammatical Astygmata for the incontrovertible evidence — as well as a very entertaining, sporadically updated blog that explored the band’s occult…

You’re going to have to wait until June 5 before you can order Watain’s 13th anniversary DVD Opus Diaboli in the States. It has all the blood and fire of the Watain live show, but with none of the controversial aroma associated with having a stage show that’s been ceremonially doused with rancid animal blood….

What do Vinny Appice, Rex Brown, Mark Zavon, and Jason ‘Dewey’ Bragg have in common? Initial thinking is they all own homes in coastal North Carolina. Or, that they’re really big fans of old English slang for sugarcane-based swill. But really the four heavy metallers have hard rocking as a share point. Vinny needs no…

Wow, there’s not a lot that’s good this week, but there CERTAINLY is enough for me to spray my birdshit all over.

Watain’s arrival in the US might be bad news to priggish guardians of Christian morality but it’s good news for butchers who have ordinarily found animal’s blood harder to shift than the flesh. Watain require a lot of blood, and it doesn’t have to be fresh. It’s better if it isn’t. We can only presume…

Here’s my first holy shit column, as documented in the annals of the Deciblog. Check it out to get an idea of what I’m holy shitting about.

In case you haven’t noticed, a third of 2012 has somehow already come and gone. Not only has this year already seen a bunch of great records hit shelves, but there are plenty more on the horizon. And what better way to kick off the remaining 66.7% of 2k12 than with Tuesday’s release of the…

The era surrounding the release of Total Destruction, the 1993 sophomore album by New York City noiseniks Unsane, took Chris Spencer’s life on the craziest of rollercoaster rides.

All it takes is a minute and sixteen seconds for Toronto’s Greys to get your attention by effortlessly sliding a punk rock shiv into your nether regions and then clicking off another song. The Canadian trio releases EP Easy Listening on May 22, and “Post-American” is the lead-off track, a dissonant, malformed anthem that finds…

What’s the meaning behind Alpha Noir and Omega White? Other than beginning/end and black/white or evil/good.Fernando Ribeiro: If we chose to ignore the detail who runs mankind and the world since the dawn of knowledge and conscience, birth and death, solar/lunar, dare to know/ignorance is bliss, the best thing I have to offer is that…

There is no metal on Maui. We looked. The most metal thing we found was the lumbering, acrid smoke-belching Sugar Cane Train that Saxon will no doubt write a song about on their upcoming 57th album, which is going to be a concept record dedicated to various forms of transportation. (Also set for inclusion are…

Just when we thought metal fashion faux pas couldn’t get any worse this year than Varg Vikernes playing a bizarre game of living Stratego in his backyard, here comes the New York Times with an article entitled “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Metal Model” to prove us all wrong. Seems Moscot, a New York-based eyewear…

Honestly, it’s pretty fucking close. Municipal Waste and Toxic Holocaust, two bands that, as Tankcrimes honcho Scotty Heath says, “brought thrash back from the basements to the big stage” join forces on the Toxic Waste 12-inch. Savor that genius for a second. While we’ve only got the art available for you right now, (courtesy of…

Partying, camping by the beach, hiking, fishing, smoking weed in graveyards, jamming King Diamond and Manilla Road: Natur had the sort of gnarly Rhode Island upbringing that all us city-bred shmucks can only envy. But it’s not only a healthy way to spend your adolescence, as Natur’s sticksman and designated spokesman, Tooth, can attest to,…

Of the few rules instructing the Hall of Fame interview process is all members—there’s been one exception in Decibel #16—that appeared on the recording must be interviewed. For a full set of rules, click here, but they’re boring. So, venturing on, there have been numerous and potentially earth-shattering Hall of Fame inductions that never got…

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 that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This week’s entry is proof that the bassist…

Since Natur received a commendation from Fenriz’s Band of the Week approval bunker, the folks waving the searchlight through metal’s underground have been waiting impatiently for signs that the New York quartet could all get themselves into a studio and actually release an album. A four-track demo, released two years ago and featuring signature track…

If you’re reading this and into grindcore, you’re probably already well aware that Discordance Axis’ The Inalienable Dreamless is viewed by grind heads in the same way Master of Puppets get looked at by thrashers. Both are genre-defining albums that no die hard fan of the respective sound is nothing but 100% behind. Both Master…

To celebrate Tuesday’s release of Tragic Idol, we asked Paradise Lost guitarist Greg Mackintosh to a pick a non-PL record that related in some way to each of his band’s thirteen full-length records that he’s played on over nearly a quarter century (i.e. all of them). Last week, Greg’s entries took us from 1990′s Lost…

How has the internet changed metal? That’s like writing a letter that opens with “How has paper changed letter writing?” But to put a finer point on it, Metal Injection has created a just long enough mini-doc on the jaw-dropping paradigm shift in how we headbang now thanks to some nerds years ago who’d probably…

It’s no hard sight to see that today the world we operate in is fucked. Elitist just has a knack at pointing that finger right back at the butchers of modern times. Not only do we execute it with extreme hostility and prejudice for ‘the man’, but have disgust for the belief systems that have…

All of a sudden thrash’s heyday—it’s nascence—has inspired a bunch of books. Bazillion Points of Light’s Murder in the Front Row provided a photographic document of the California scene that started in L.A. with Metallica and Slayer and then blossomed into something amazing in the Bay Area shortly thereafter. Now UK author Neil Daniels offers…