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Upon hearing that Deicide’s sixth album In Torment In Hell was a potential selection for Justify Your Shitty Taste, our Editor-in-Chief responded with a simple: “Oooh, that’s bad.” No other words were uttered. But is it really?

Join Decibel in welcoming the second taste of heavy metal staple Jungle Rot’s upcoming album, Order Shall Prevail, out June 30.

A few months ago, French grinders Nolentia and stoner doomers, Drawers were invited to participate in 2015’s edition of the long-running Brutal Fest, an annual tour that brings European bands to Cuba. We got in touch with Nolentia guitarist/vocalist, Ghis and Drawers drummer Olivier Lolmede to get an account of the experience.

Tribulation have psych rock elements, their drummer has a psych rock band. Coincidence?

Oceanic was truly magical, a confluence of songwriting and tone quality and pacing that signaled a new depth for this rapidly evolving musical collective.  Opinions will differ about the quality of what came next, but it’s hard to deny that Oceanic marked an exciting developmental stage for Isis, when burly distortion was still a thematic element rather than an accent piece and contemplative crescendos built themselves into stunning peaks.

Back in 2005, I talked to Starkweather guitarist Todd Forkin about his band’s then new album for issue #16.  It was one of my first freelance pieces for the magazine after leaving the friendly confines of 1032 Arch.  At the time, Croatoan was the band’s third LP and first since 1995’s Into the Wire.  While the Philadelphians have dropped another LP and split in the intervening years, April saw the re-release of their first two records via Translation Loss. So 113 issues later, it’s fitting in some way that vocalist Rennie Resmini closes out this little series after the break. To every one who has contributed to or read even one word of these playlists over the last three plus years — thank you.

Pyrrhon caught our attention last year with their excellent album The Mother Of Virtues, which combined technical yet chaotic death metal with frontman Doug Moore’s staccato prose poems. A lot has happened in the ensuing year. The album made many year-end lists but the band split from Relapse and has since teamed with David Hall and Handshake for a new EP.

If your Tuesday afternoon was missing sheer horror, we have the album for you!

Enjoy a new song by A Light Within, a band that draws favorable comparisons to Junius.

Ever since 2006, each year end issue has included, alongside the customary list of the year’s best albums for you to argue about and call us out on, a collection of Top 5’s ranging from the silly to the (somewhat) serious to the even more silly. 

We at the Deciblog have spoken to Dr. Vivek Venkatesh a few times already, learning about his work and his simultaneously academic and visceral interest in the more extreme forms of metal.  Last October, we had the opportunity to speak with him again, this time in preparation for an article that focuses on the intersecting paths of academic study and metal.

This afternoon, we continue making our own lives that much more difficult with the ongoing practice of ranking the songs that comprise some of the greatest albums of all time

Even though Gruesome “pays homage to death metal’s most celebrated founding American acts, Death” (according to a press release), the band’s tastes in the genre don’t stop and end there.  That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given that the group features members of Exhumed (Deci-fav Matt Harvey), Possessed, Malevolent Creation and Derketa.  So while Savage Land, the quartet’s debut, may sound very Schuldiner-esque, guitarist Dan Gonzalez was kind enough to tell us about some other death metal bands. 

Coffins is a long-time dB favorite and we’re happy to bring you four tracks from the new collection Perpetual Penance. 

You can always depend on Cradle of Filth to deliver controversial videos, and “Right Wing of the Garden Triptych” is no exception. Don’t watch this while your boss is in the room.

Despite what the band photo would lead you to believe, this is not a black metal remake of the “Addicted to Love” video (as awesome as that would be). Still, Total Negation deliver eight minutes of atmospheric black metal goodness here.

In Decibel‘s June issue cover story, we offered several examples of well loved and respected authors of extremity who dig the Noisem sound and overall ethic.  Blake Harrison of Pig Destroyer, Matt Harvey of Exhumed and Gruesome, and Bill Steer of Carcass all sounded off on their enjoyment of the, uh, blossoming band.

Carcass drummer Dan Wilding also had a few things to say about the band, and while we weren’t able to fit them into the article, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear about them anyway.  Here now, for your reading pleasure, are Mr. Wilding’s thoughts on Noisem from the time he spent touring alongside them.

When the promo for UK band William English’s debut full-length, Basic Human Error showed up in my inbox, I made a basic human error and judged a book by its cover. 

It’s been over 20 years since Sigh’s debut album dropped in 1993. Not surprisingly, not only has the extreme music landscape changed since then, but so has the Japanese outfit’s musical output.

One of the reasons Napalm Death has been so successful is their relationship with producer Russ Russell. Russell has worked with the band since 2000 and will probably be with them when they are making albums in their 70s. He joined us from England for a chat on working with the grind legends. 

While maybe not as majestic an image as Wolves in the Throne Room, Pitbulls in the Nursery certainly evokes some specific imagery as well. This French five piece may not be chowing down on babies, but their technical death metal attack is still pretty fierce in its own right. 

I knew from the off that Vancouver’s Witch of the Waste was going to be a band that hung out in extreme music’s left/left-centre field. How? T-shirts, brah!

As usual, we here at Decibel are ahead of the game; we wrote about this lost proto-metal group back in 2011. Now you can hear the glory for yourself thanks to our stream of the brand-new reissue of their two albums.

I’d say Korpiklaani need a haircut and a bath, but maybe, like Samson, that’s the source of their powers. Whatever the secret is, you won’t find anything much more fun than their Finnish folk metal, and we have the video premiere to prove it.

When the idea of running an advance stream of a track from The Architects of Extermination, the forthcoming third album by Chicago’s Kommandant was proposed to me, I was all naively like, “Well, shucks and swell! Sure! Why not?!” Good call, dummy.

While it was a pretty brutal winter here on the East Coast, we have no doubt that our friends in the North Star State had a much rougher go of it weather-wise.  Or, as Tanner Anderson told us last month (more of which you’ll be able to read more about very soon in print), “I haven’t seen my testicles since November of last year.”  Fortunately none of that stopped the Obsequiae frontman from finishing up his band’s excellent second album, Aria of Vernal Tombs, which is set for release next month.

Meet the new ruler of the Planet of the Apes, listen to his music, and enjoy some cocaine-dipped bananas with our exclusive premiere of The Humans Soundtrack Volume II.

Poland’s one-man, one-woman (and thus, probably Church approved) blackened frost-treaders Mornië Utúlië offer one of those perfect blends of intent, image and music.  Calling a black metal record Sny (Polish for “dreams” and, coincidentally – thanks Google Translate – Afrikaans for “cuts”) and draping the cover in a field of stars certainly sets up expectations that this might be a toothless, undistorted bliss-out, but Mornië Utúlië’s adventures into the void turn out to be way more Darkspace roar than Alcest sigh.  Like the subtle merging of Nosferatu and nebula on the cover, Mornië Utúlië throttle up the terror in in their yawning darkness and never settle for mere atmospheric meandering.

We asked Bartosz Brożek, the man behind the music, about his journey and his newest creation, so you can read all about it after the jump while you stab through the cosmos with Sny and a video for the late-album cut “W Nocy Płynie Chłodny Wiatr” featuring gal-vocalist Ewa Kleszcz.  If you dig, be sure to head over to the Mornië Utúlië’s Facebook site or Bandcamp page, where the album lives.

Live long, prosper, eat the weak and fear your dreams! 

While Royal Thunder‘s sophomore effort may be an early contender for album of the year, it’s way too early to tell if Crooked Doors will forever change lives.  Why the hyperbole?  Well, RT guitarist Josh Weaver was kind enough to tell us about some records that changed himforever.  “I’m sure I’ll be kicking myself thinking of other albums after I submit this,” explains the axeman.  “[But] these bands and albums played a huge role in influencing the music that I write and play today. I am forever thankful for these albums and hope they have as big of an impact on you as they did to me!”  In the meantime, we’ll continue to be grateful for the musical stew that this recipe has created in the form of the Atlanta quartet. 

You can pick up a copy of Crooked Doors here (bandcamp) or here (physical) and be sure to catch the band on tour in a city near you in the very near future.

Check out a Royal Thunder song stream, their Decibrity playlist, and upcoming tour dates after the jump. 

Despite some unfortunate hairstyle choices, Valborg play a pretty unique style of doom. Going for clean and bright where a lot of bands go for dark and dirty, the German trio has found a path less traveled into this oldest of metal genres. There’s something to be said for aesthetics. You can check out the…