No, no he didn’t. But some nutcase swears he did.

James Vernon McVay, who rocks my favorite kind of tattoos- all faded and shitty, slashed the throat of a 75-year-old hospice nurse as the first step in his foolproof plan of driving to Washington DC to assassinate President Obama.

And now after being caught he’s explaining that he had to do it, you see — because infamous cult Black Label Society told him to.

He name checked Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as inspirations (natch), but gives most of the credit to Wylde’s demonic clan. On his way to DC, he “Literally pledged my allegiance to Lucifer as I sat under the bridge by Sertoma Park listening to Zak Wild (sic) … waiting for my instructions from on high.”

Per the Gauntlet, Wylde tweeted about the incident with, “Black Label Society is a Rock Band — no further comment.”

So there you go, another group of hard rockers gets the awesome distinction of being a supposed front for a Satanic doomsday cult, when really they’re just a front for awful music, ugly t-shirts and whiskey.

And that guy from Gnaw Their Tongues just sits around waiting for the phone to ring…

It’s not often we bring you a bit of rock swagger. Mostly it’s darkly blasts, noisy grinds, or the brutalest of death that streams to the masses on the Deciblog. Mostly. Today, three days after an old fat dude in a puffy candy cane outfit dropped a deuce or two (socks, no-market cologne, lottery tickets, etc.) under our respective weihnachtsbaums, the Deciblog is bringing the rock. Hard rock in the form of Riotgod, a band formed by Monster Magnet’s Bob Pantella and Jim Baglino. And we’re definitely down with Monster Magnet, as indicated in our awesomely awesome Hall of Fame induction of Dopes to Infinity.

Frontman Mark Sunshine supplied the following quote. Read it, get your groovy pants, on and turn “Firebrand” up to, well, 12. “A set of beings, in an environment, a kind of diorama positioned in between fear and optimism: representations. One looking back while looking forward, resting on whatever laurels it has left. A scene of bounty upset. Another being possessing the energy of dream and desire, watches from his position, having weathered denial and confusion, but overall feeling entirely alien in regard to what he views. Faint reverberations, dying meek echoes from the music of false promises fades as the sun and moon fly so fast in the sky there is no day or night but simple epileptic flashes. Like time lapse film revealing warring anemones.”

Riotgod – Firebrand by Decibel Magazine

** Riotgod’s new album, Invisible Empire, is out January 31, 2012 on Metalville Records. Pre-order it HERE, or rock with your cock out in Carteret, New Jersey. And you don’t want that, trust us.

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, we celebrate another sunny Christmas with the one-man prog jam of Golgotha and their/his 1990 debut, Unmaker of Worlds (Communiqué).

Golgotha are awesome almost by accident.  If this had been performed by a full band, or had decent production, it wouldn’t be nearly so notable.  Fortunately (or unfortunately at the time), they had neither of those things.  Even though the band as an entity had been around since the early 80s, by 1990 it was basically just bandleader Karl Foster, a hired hand drummer, and some heavy-duty synthesizers and samplers.  When you combine that high technology with the bargain-basement recording, courtesy of a guy best known for producing Monty Python albums, you get a pretty bizarre dichotomy.

Really, this thing sounds practically alien, a symphony in the cathedral of the damned.  Foster sounds like Peter Gabriel Beyond Thunderdome, conducting bleeps and whooshes and steampunk guitars and, according to the back cover, the MASSED CHOIR OF THE APOCALYPSE.  It’s an ugly collage of sounds sometimes (especially on the title track’s chaotic dissolution of existence), but everything is underpinned by strong melodies.  Despite all the electronic tricks, this isn’t industrial.  Foster was influenced by classical music, Yes, and Iron Maiden.  Although the shortest of the four songs on here goes for 9 1/2 minutes, each tune is distinct and memorable – even if it’s hard to keep the whole extended suite in mind, pieces certainly jump out.

The title track is the nastiest thing on display here, but the other three offerings balance it out.  The opener, “Counter State Directive” tells a militaristic (and quite timely) tale of revolt against autocracy, using synthesized organ blasts and Third Reich samples to really nail home the message.  “Another Sunny Christmas” is unsettling with its descriptors of a verdant winter before it descends into baroque passages and the narrator talking of how “there’s something down there, something that frightens me.”  And then everything wraps up on a note of melancholy beauty with the descriptive “Raining on Still Waters.”

Pretty easy to figure out why Golgotha never made it – released on a label whose biggest artists were Samson and Girlschool well past their primes, performing a deeply uncool style of metal, and sounding rather cheap at that.  And it still sounds pretty cheap, but bands like Ayreon have gone on to find (relative) success with the same formula and a bigger budget.  It’s a singular vision of a guy without the means to fully realize his dream, but the resulting nightmare is a fascinating one.

Official site

Stream it here

Buy it here!

Jeez, you do tend to reproach yourself when the wheels are set in motion and you’ve gone and booked Sunday evening interview time with a dude who shares his working hours between black metal kingpins Mayhem and the evocatively titled NunFuckRitual. Teloch came with the disclaimer that he has some pretty gritty stories to share. As far as a Sunday activities go, phonetime with Teloch’s not exactly a Cheetos, sofa and Ghostbusters easy time. But hey, we wouldn’t expect anything less.

NunFuckRitual features Dan Lilker (Brutal Truth/etc) on bass, Andreas Jonsson on drums, Espen Tørressen Hangård on vocals. Debut LP In Bondage to the Serpent features additional vocals from Teloch’s comrade in Mayhem, Attila Csihar. It’s a weird trip on black metal, goes easy on the tempo and big on the atmosphere, and is apparently all about asexual reproduction. Of course, the Deciblog needn’t have worried about paling over in horror at Teloch’s testimony given that he was busy getting fucked up and listening to outlaw country when we called. When we did catch him, this is what he had to say for himself.

http://youtu.be/Dy3qylXvyQw

NunFuckRitual has existed for a number of years before you got a album out. How old are these songs, and have they evolved much from when they were first put together?
The first song was made in 2006, I think the whole pre-production, more or less, was made in 2006. I think we managed to keep the vibe we made on the pre-production. Of course, some small elements where added with the addition of new band members.

Indeed, these songs must feel quite lived-in for you: have you been writing since they were recorded?
Hell yeah, I’m sick and tired of that album right now. Haven’t listened to it since we released it. Have to put it to rest for a while, then pick it up later. I did not want to make any new material until we got the album released. I have enough songs on my computer that aren’t released with the other bands I’m doing, and I didn’t wanna do that with NFR as well. I made the sketch for the next album a couple of months ago.

There is a healthy amount of experimentation, in that you tend to avoid the blast-beat and riff approach; was it always so that Nunfuckritual would use slower tempos or was this something that came about accidentally/incidentally from writing the album?
That was actually my whole vision with this thing, to make something atmospheric with slow tempo and slow drums. So we stuck with the idea throughout the whole album, and it worked. Espen was really into it as well. This thing actually started from me being tired of blast-beats.

Do you think that black metal, given its ethos (the anti-, the nihilism and all that) lends itself to experimentation more so than other genres?
I can’t say anything about that since I don’t really give a fuck about it [black metal].

How full-time a concern is NunFuckRitual? Will you be looking to do more tours, more albums and more frequently, or let it fester and come back when the time is right?
Don’t think we will be a touring band, but we will do one-offs and festivals. The next album is already, as I mentioned earlier, it is in the works. We are too busy with our other bands to begin touring.

On a personal level, what interested you in asexual reproduction. The first thing that comes to my mind is Jurassic Park, but where did you got the idea/inspiration for it?
Personally I don’t give a fuck about asexual reproduction; the album needed a theme, and Espen came up with the whole idea. I think he got the idea from thinking around the band name. The short version could be something like this I guess : NunFuckRitual, fucking of nuns, nuns worshipping jesus, virgin born kid = asexual reproduction.

Do you listen to a lot of black metal these days?
Not at all, like I said in a interview earlier today, for me that is like taking work home with me. I want to focus more on making music rather than listening to it. It would be too much for my little mongoloid head to listen to metal when I’m home and trying to relax.

What other styles of music have been influencing you lately? I’ve heard you’ve been blasting outlaw country of late, are there any other styles, outside of BM that are exciting you?
Yeah, mostly I listen to old shit. Old jazz, there is a lot of gold in that genre and it calms me down. I have some periods where I listen to electronic music as well, aggressive break beat etc. As long as its good and not metal I can listen to it. Not sure if I get very influenced by the old things I listen to, at least I haven’t heard it yet. Not sure what I get influenced by this days… I don’t want to think about it either.

Are people, media and fans, too obsessed with the sensational personalities of black metal rather than just taking the music for what it is, or taking what they want from the music? It seems that the cult of personality is still too tempting for magazines/commentators and they’ll simply focus on these personalities, many of whom aren’t really relevant to the development of the genre, or extreme music/art in general (I’m thinking here of Burzum, but there are others).
Of course, that has always been the main focus and I guess it will always be. Its easier to sell music with exciting personalities than selling boring fucks. It’s a shame, but I don’t think there is much to do about it. Then again, musicians are a weird breed of people you know.

You’ve said that Nunfuckritual is maybe visual as well as abstract, does this extend to visuals for live performance, or are you talking more about the aesthetic of band, how your are presented (album art, etc.)?
Yeah, I meant if we are doing this live we have to make it look really nice. I don’t think this could work with only us and our instruments; of course it could have worked, but for us that would be boring. Its already very visual just listening to the CD, so combining visual music with phat visuals must be a winner. At least in my head, but it has to be well thought of.

Do you have any special Christmas message for Decibel readers?
Enjoy your egg nog after fucking a nun!

Hmm…. In Bondage to the Serpent is out now through Debemur Morti Productions

Amsterdam-based KONG has been one of my favourite bands for over twenty years. I remember coming across a half-page story about the band in an issue of Metal Forces like it was yesterday, except it was 1990. The piece was promoting this oddball Dutch instrumental band and their debut album, Mute Poet Vocalizer, claiming it cherry picked influences from the worlds of metal, progressive rock, industrial and electronica. The list of influences/comparisons fired off Voivod, Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Godflesh, amongst others (this was long before this sort of mish-mash was commonplace and metal heads even admitted listening to Floyd or Crimson) and were played by a quartet of dudes who, when they performed live, did so on four separate platforms located at strategic points throughout the venue and made use of a quadraphonic PA system (below, the unobscured image from above, plus another and an old video to give you an idea what this glorious mess looks like).

Welcome to The Five Days of Deciblog Christmas, in which we corral your favorite extreme heroes into revealing embarrassing holiday anecdotes. Consider it free bonus footage as you prepare to give Amazon half your paycheck because you’re too lazy to support local businesses. On day four, after the jump, we stuff your stocking with “My Favorite Xmas Horror Movie.”

My mind has been bothering me a lot lately, and I’ve been trying to erase it or dull it for weeks. I know that marijuana and shoegaze is a good way to lose long spans of time, so I contacted my contact about having sleepwalk-champions True Widow create me a top five to numb my mind. I was thinking I’d get some endlessly building, Spaceman Five-type drone jawns.

I got something else entirely. I have never even heard of any of these bands besides the Blues Explosion. Here are Top 5 Go-To Bands, as presented by D.H. Phillips, guitarist and vocalist of True Widow:

Sometimes I hate music. But I want to listen to it anyway. Nothing on the shelf or on my ipod looks good. But there are a few records that will never get old and always satisfy. In no particular order:

5. Stereolab – Peng, Refried Ectoplasm, Switched On
I love Stereolab so much. Something about the beat, the drone, the melodies, the production, and just about everything on these records is perfect. There might be one song that I skip across these three albums, but that’s it. Perfect for long drives or work. Whenever. Always good.

4. The Oh Sees – 3 + 4
Simple. Acoustic mostly. Low budget recordings. Home style. Cool guitar playing. These two records get played back to back and often get played again right away. I really like most of what these guys do, but these records stand out.

3. Blues Explosion – Now I Got Worry
If you want to tear the place apart and fucking party, put this on. I do.

2. Electrelane – all albums
Rock It To The Moon especially. This is probably one of my most-played/least-sick-of records of all time. Again, great on long drives or at the shop.

1. Broadcast – Tender Buttons, Haha Sound
I am still mourning the loss of the singer of this band. Every time I would go into the record shop I would ask if they knew about a new Broadcast. Then I heard about the singer getting sick and dying. Major bum out. Broadcast have so many cool songs I don’t even know what to say about them.

I don’t know why I am so crazy about all of these bands fronted by ladies but I am. It sounds good to me and I do not see why I should analyze it beyond that. They have much to do with why True Widow exists. It was hard to pick five out of the lot but there they are.

I won’t waste your time describing this video which is pretty self-explanatory and should definitely be watched… but also this is the closest I get to a Christmas vacation so I don’t want to break my back writing all these difficult words when I could spend it explaining to my parents why listening to Brass Knuckle Abortion is far superior to having children.

Happy Holidays!

Welcome to The Five Days of Deciblog Christmas, in which we corral your favorite extreme heroes into revealing embarrassing and hilarious holiday anecdotes. Consider it free bonus footage as you prepare to give Amazon half your paycheck because you’re too lazy to support local businesses. After the jump, day three gets down to business with “The Best Record to Honor the Birth of Baby Jesus.”

Where do you see Heritage of Satan as a single album and as part of Root’s catalog
Big Boss: This album fits perfectly into discography of Root. It is the symbolic ninth album, so this serial number really says something. [Smiles]

I’m not sure how I feel about Heritage of Satan. It feels less complete than, say, The Book, which is, for me at least, the best Root album to date. As the creator of Heritage of Satan, do you feel it measures up to The Book?
Big Boss: Well, I think none of our records could compare with another one. We don’t do these differences. I think it’s like comparing our own children and asking which child we prefer. Of course, they vary from each other by appearance and temperament. Same as our records.

There are a few rocking songs on Heritage of Satan. “Revenge of Hell” and “Legacy of Ancestors”. Where do you see these songs fitting in with the more traditional black metal songs on Heritage of Satan?
Big Boss: You bet, Chris!! They fit there like an ass in trousers. [Smiles] Remember, that I am originally a blues singer, later on hard rock singer and finally a metal singer. All these styles are mixed, either in some of my songs or singing. Mostly in my singing.

You’ve enlisted a few visible black metallers for Heritage of Satan. Erik from Watain, Rune from Ava Inferi, and Adam from Behemoth. I believe they look to you and Root as one of several originators of the black metal sound. What was it like to work with them?
Big Boss: Nergal sang the whole last verse of “In Nomine Satanas” in Czech. His Czech is awesome. He can actually sing other Root songs in Czech. He also sings one verse in English in “Greetings from the Abyss”. Nergal is a great guy and we get along really well. We are great friends with Behemoth. The other guests include Erik of Watain, who also created the album cover and Blasphemer (ex-Mayhem). But the main reason was our friendship. Together we had considered their participation on the album long before the recording actually started. We like their music and we meet together on live shows. But again the main reason is our friendship.

Where do you see your place in black metal? Again, a lot of fans and musicians place you as a senior/important figure within black metal.
[Laughs] senior/important figure within black metal? This is a great honor for me. But I just see my place only in music, in any music. I think that no matter what style of music you do, whether you do it right and with enthusiasm. And I have to do it right, as I’m surrounded by such outstanding musicians as I am in my band. According to the feedback from fans, we are successful, right? [Smiles]

Do you regard yourself as a practicing Satanist?
Big Boss: I already gave away all agenda concerning the Czech branch of Church Of Satan to younger ones. And for eight years I have been somewhere else. Satanism gave a lot to me and I still live my life according to it, but I am now on my own path. And thanks to Satanism, everyone should find his own path.

What is Satanism from your point of view? Any insights you can give on the matter?
Big Boss: I think everything that smells of organization is shit. LaVey understood that and stopped it. He did not even leave a testament. He should have done [it] even earlier. Too late he realized that it became some sort of lonely hearts club behind his back. When you have charisma you can achieve a lot. You only should find the right direction. Thanks to Satan I found it.

I was curious why you think Czech bands, black metal or not, have a different signature from their European counterparts. Is it part of the need to be different or is it something deeper— Bohemian sensibilities—that’s ingrained in Czechs as a people? I’ll cite Master’s Hammer as the obvious example, but there exist many more just as bizarre and original.
Big Boss: It’s a bit different. In the old days dozens of different nations and tribes passed through the territory where Bohemia and Moravia lie. Root is from Moravia. They left their traces of various pagan rituals and customs, and magic here. These people have lived here for a while, leaving followers and departed. And as we live here, we have inherited all from them. And because we are musicians we feel it even more. And that’s what makes our music so different.

Are you an Elvis fan? Had to ask.
Big Boss: Yyyyyeeeeeessssssss! He was a great singer. But he really has not influenced me.

What other vocalists inspire you?
Big Boss: He are the singers I like so much (in no order): Peter Steele (R.I.P.), King Diamond, Chris Farlow, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, etc. I do not know if I am influenced by them, but I like them and listen to them.

The Czech scene was very outward focused from about 1999-2005. Then, it appeared as if the scene went inward. Do you know why this appears to be the case? I wondered if it had anything to do with the RedBlack label folding.
Big Boss: Back then Czech scene was more about barter trade rather than the publishing business. This barter business eventually stopped because the West was overwhelmed by a number of their own bands as well as the decreasing sale, etc. Regarding Redblack, which was focused more on money, has been sold to the company Rockextremum. That’s all.

** Root’s new album, Heritage of Satan, is out now on Agonia Records. Order it HERE, or find yourself wandering the woods of Moravia while THIS plays for infinity from somewhere in the cosmos.