** It's not secret dBHQ gets excited when we hear Swedes Grand Magus have a new album at the ready. So, when the Stockholm-based trio Grand Magus announced Triumph and Power as their new full-length our Malevolent Creation sweat pants bulged a bit. The following is the full conversation between Decibel and Grand Magus beardman/ass-kicker JB Christoffersson. If you're still into reading words on ...

If ever you’ve set up a tour for your band, you know what a logistical nightmare it can be just to make sure your bandmates actually show up to the van, let alone finding venues willing to book you and somehow breaking even each night. Imagine doing that shit. This is the domain of the booking agent, the air traffic controllers of the touring world. I interviewed Nanotear Booking’s Nathan ...

It's hard not to see the irony in drummer Dave Witte—he who has "Play Fast" tattooed across the knuckles of his hands—collaborating with a brewpub called Tired Hands. Witte's hands, which have pounded on quite an array of extreme albums—from Discordance Axis to Municipal Waste—don't ever seem to get tired. But Witte put his hands to work in collaborating on a beer with Tired Hands owner ...

Rather than planting our flag in one fertile corner of the extreme musical universe, Decibel has always enjoyed scrambling back and forth along the continuum, from the dingiest anti-production muckfests (found in our recent Top 100 Black Metal Albums special issue) to the most gorgeous prog explorations (such as Jeff Wagner's super-mellow Cynic piece in the current April issue). This spring, ...

Norway's Barren Womb may have a blue plasticine frog as their mascot, they may have just set themselves up for a lifetime of ribbing by titling their debut album The Sun's Not Yellow, it's Chicken and a good number of their promo photos may have the general public wondering how serious they should be taken, but the duo of Timo Silvola and Tony Gonzahl do deliver musically. Said album is a ...

So many bands give the devil all the glory It's hard to understand, we want to change the story We want to rock one way, on and on... Hard to believe nearly thirty years have passed since Stryper frontman Michael Sweet threw down that gauntlet with a crooning roar on the Yellow and Black Attack anthem "From Wrong to Right." Crazier still, perhaps, that the band's 2013 album No More Hell to ...

Metal musicians quote Nietzsche far too much, almost as much as they quote H.P. Lovecraft. Sometimes it’s for blatant and misdirected political purposes; other times, to add a veneer of intellectual heft to mediocre material. But when you consider the short life of musician Selim Lemouchi, one of the German thinker’s best known quotes resonates: "If you gaze into the abyss too long, the abyss ...

The hard road of Pentagram frontman Bobby Liebling, who has fought the real demons of addiction for decades, was well chronicled in the documentary Last Days Here as well as J. Bennett’s May 2011 cover story. While the film had a happy ending everyone knows that after the credits roll life continues. Hollywood doesn’t like messiness. Real life is about ambiguity. Liebling has struggled ...

Three new albums stand out above the rest this week, and what makes it particularly fun is just how completely different from each other they all are. From happy Germans, to grim Swedes, to avant-garde Brooklynites, this week’s Sucker For Punishment has got you covered. Power metal is the one metal subgenre that’s the most difficult to perfect. You have to create just the right balance of ...

Waldo wasn't a big fan of the new Acheron album, Kult Des Hasses, but he's a parrot – what does he know? They've been doing their death metal thing for 25 years now, and they sound just as putrid as the day they were first spawned. Lots of guest players, lots of Satan, lots of gnarly guitars and charging beats – what more could you ask for? The accompanying video below even helps you ...