by Scott Evans Ian wrote Part I right after Friday, our setup day. I'm writing this a month or two later, but I'll pick up where he left off. Besides Ian's rig relentlessly shitting the bed during setup, our tracking weekend went pretty smoothly. Since I engineer and play in the band at the same time (not recommended), I set up a laptop in the live room so I could control Pro Tools ...

Hmmm... there are some interesting releases coming up, but the next couple weeks look a little dry. I’ll start with the horribly named BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, who are releasing The Parallax II: Future Sequence. This is a follow-up to the The Parallax: The Hypersleep Dialogues, both in concept and sound. This isn’t my thing, but there’s a reason this stuff is popular. They are very ...

Wednesday's Presidential debate wouldn't have been so boring if Jim Lehrer had asked the candidates whether Onward to Golgotha was a top 20 death metal album of all time, or merely top 40. Alas, he choked, leaving it up to your friends at Decibel to nerd out about Incantation history. And honor it on flexi disc. All you old-schoolers know that axemaster John McEntee ripped for tech-thrashers ...

Manetheren’s Time is about as casual an experience as the sprawling dozen-plus-tome story that gives the band its name.  (Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series became so outrageously complex that now, even five years after Jordan’s death, a secondary author is still finishing the three books needed to complete the tale.)  Don’t belly up to Time expecting a quick blackened snack.  These ...

Usually, when some public relations goomba contacts me, spouting off about how I'm guaranteed to love whatever new band they're promoting, I go out of my way to hate that band. I used to do it subconsciously (probably) and don't mean it as a slight to whatever band is in question, but as I've gotten older, more immature, increasingly agoraphobic, I'm always on the lookout for new ways to ...

Odds are that pretty much anything we cover would be the last thing anybody waking up from a long night of debauchery would want to hear. Just because your head feels like it might explode, however, doesn't mean that comfort cannot be found via some quality tuneage. Just ask bassist/vocalist Jon DeHart of West Deptford, NJ's Fight Amp, who meticulously put together a playlist for such a ...

Of all the bands to crawl back from the metal abyss here's something we never expected. VON is releasing a new album at the end of October and dB got an exclusive stream of "Jesus Stain" from Satanic Blood. The band expects to play a limited run of shows. Take a listen below and then read an interview with mainman Jason "Venien" Ventura (conducted via e-mail) where he talks about the new ...

It ain't often we say, "Hey, check out this black metal band with a great bass player!" Normally, bass players in black metal get the Jason Newsted treatment, but Borre-based Nidingr have two in guitarists Blargh and Teloch. Why have a full-time bass player when you have two guys with enough talent to sound like bass players? Good ones, too. Just listen to new ditty, "Greatest of Deceivers", and ...

The craft beer world is still trying to undo the damage done by shitty pale American lagers to canned beer's reputation. It's a sad fact that most craft beer drinkers think that bottled beer is "better" than canned beer, when the exact opposite is actually the case. If we all agree that craft beer is most importantly about, well, the beer, then cans win hands-down. Here's why: they take care of ...

When we interviewed metal iconoclast Vanessa Nocera back in August for the Women in Metal issue she cited the "poetic atmosphere" of surrealist horror films as an prime influence, so we are extremely pleased and honored the Wooden Stake frontwoman has graciously agreed to help us kick off our Halloween month coverage with a truly inspired/eclectic list of her current essential fright flicks as ...