Interviews

Indianapolis’ Coffinworm are essential listening for those who like their extreme metal to open up wide and drown any extant optimism in a genre non-specific swamp of sunken riffs and black metal noise ‘n’ hiss. 2010’s debut LP When All Became None was a loose-limbed doom record that was too anxious and fidgety to plant…

** When we premiered “The Perennial Link” (HERE) off Morbus Chron’s new album, Sweven, we were pretty bummed. Not about the song–the song is basically untouchable–but that we didn’t get the opportunity to stream more, like the entire album. If you’re wondering why there’s so much chatter about Sweven, well, it’s an incredible entry into…

Tomorrow (Saturday 4/5), the Dillinger Escape Plan are playing a Baltimore show with Retox, Trash Talk, and Norway’s black-jazzers Shining.  I plan to show up and receive a megadose of awesome, and I’m betting the Turkish hardcore oddballs in Chopstick Suicide might feel a little jealous about it. A couple years ago, Chopstick Suicide exploded…

Blistered is a five-piece metallic hardcore outfit who call Tampa home and came to my attention courtesy the good folks at 6131 Records who are releasing their latest offering, and EP called Soul Erosion, which you can stream below. As winter goes on and my stir-craziness hits epic proportions, part of my decision to give…

Kevin Hufnagel is traveling around the country right now blowing minds with Gorguts on the Decibel tour. We thought it was a perfect time to pull him aside and learn about the riffs that shaped his shredding style. Please welcome Kevin Hufnagel to the Inside The Shredder’s Studio. — Here it is: a list of…

This is not an April Fool’s joke, except on the politically correct thought police: We have the first new Meatmen track in two decades! When I was a kid I sat in my room and cranked The Meatmen at ridiculous volumes and memorized Tesco Vee’s banter on the classic Meatmen platters. So to say this…

Gravehill rule for a whole bunch of reasons. The Californian alpha-headbangers just have this anything goes attitude to playing gory ol’ school death metal and would just as soon mix in a little hardcore punk and crust feel as they are to bring it down slow and low and meditate upon a doom riff for…

Why does every baseball fan everywhere look forward to opening day of Major League Baseball more than any other day of the season? For some it’s the only day their team isn’t in the cellar (Houston) or languishing in mediocrity (Chicago Cubs) or headed toward another 100-loss season (Seattle). For others it’s the possibility of…

A little over a week from now, Skogen will release their fourth album in five years, called I Döden, meaning In Death. The three Swedes have compiled an hour of farsighted, contemplative black metal – not quite folk, even though quiet acoustic passages exist; often raucous but with the sharpest edges all filed away by…

Sao Paulo, Brazil thrash brigade, Nervosa had their debut album, Victim of Yourself hit the streets very recently, although the buzz in the patch-jacketed ‘n’ bullet-belted underground has been swirling around this trio for a couple years. Being a trio of staunch and avowed all-tits-no-dicks thrash heads hailing from a faraway, sun-kissed land will always…

Sure, it’s been a year since Iron Reagan dropped its debut full-length. Despite the various other commitments of its members, the band recently began a run of tour dates that will take them through April, all while wrapping up work on their sophomore LP (which, by the way, will be for Relapse). Given how much…

Back in January Philadelphia grind-punk all-stars Die Choking — bassist/vocalist Paul J. Herzog (ex-Total Fucking Destruction), drummer Joshua T. Cohen (Cop Problem), guitarist Jeffrey V. Daniels (Burden) — hit the ground running, unleashing a leveling sonic devastator in the shape of a debut self-titled digital E.P. as infectious as it is unsettling. A few weeks…

Chicago’s Indian are presently hauling their blackhearted nihilism across the tarmac of the UK and Europe in support of the Decibel-approved From all Purity. It’s a sick record from disturbed men, maybe more noisy, more off-the-chain than anything they’ve cut to record before, and if your record collection exists primarily to harsh your mellow (which,…

Last we’d heard from Fight Amp, the trio was just off a red-eye after spending 30 days last fall playing 30 shows across Europe with Black Tusk. Now that the South Jersey natives are set to hit the road yet again–a brief jaunt of seven shows in seven days–guitarist/vocalist Mike McGinnis passed along five current…

Shitfucker caught our attention with their 2013 Hells Headbanger’s release Suck Cocks in Hell, which received an “8” in the pages of our print sibling. The record contains some of the most infectious, rocking songs that have crept from the underground in a dog’s age. Shitfucker took it up another notch with the wonderfully low-fi…

We could introduce “The Ascending Fire” but telling you how it is the closing track on Gravehill’s third full-length, Death Curse. We could chime in and offer our ten cents’ on how the track will give you a real taste for a vulgar doozy of an old-school death metal record that’s unafraid to augment its…

Sometimes the ravenous darkness crashes down to feast on your soul, and sometimes it flinches timidly away from all of your grasping. Last Friday, Aborted callously mounted the Deciblog to bring you a terrifying few minutes of violent death metal; today, we showcase the more ethereal side of shadows with new music from Barren Harvest….

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into your favorite online bookseller… DTV — the excellent rock ’em, sock ’em ode to the heyday of 80s larger-than-life action film excess and its absurdist/dehumanizing aftermath from Decibel Managing Editor & novelist Andrew Bonazelli — is back in a brand new edition, complete with…

Old death metal dudes never go away for good. They just do one (or all) of the following: reform; work on a reissue of their out-of-print material; write new songs or join a new Six Feet Under or Malevolent Creation lineup. For Portland death metal OG’s Dead Conspiracy it’s three out of four. They’ll reissue…

English grind trio Human Cull don’t look to reinvent the wheel each and every time they step into the practice space. They are way more interested in trying to split the atom with bass, drums and throat. Originally formed under the name Gran Toucher, they soon got serious in 2011, became Human Cull, and focused…

** 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…

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…

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,…

So many bands give the devil all the gloryIt’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…

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…

Just a quick listen to Cynic would reveal that Paul Masvidal and company probably have pretty eclectic musical tastes. Given that the band dropped its third full-length, Kindly Bent To Free Us, last month, the guitarist/vocalist was kind enough to pass along a medley of recent (and fairly nostalgic) listens. As he explains, “Playlists have…

Towers come from Portland, Oregon, and have this awesome sound that’s a strange brew concocted of low-end bass hum and psych-stoner doom, post-punk and krautrock. There is a lot more in there, too. Putatively, it’s metal all right, but with a center so dark and heavy it can pull in all manner of outré influences…

Melt-Banana‘s last record Fetch earned a place in our top 10 of 2013. Since Kevin Stewart-Panko already asked the now duo of vocalist Yasuko “Yako” Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata nearly every question imaginable back in October (most importantly about their Geocities website), we weren’t left with much ground that hadn’t already been covered. Onuki…

**Welcome to the inaugural Deciblog Film Club, where each month we’ll poll someone from the extremely extreme community at large on a handful of films that have had an impact on their lives and their art. Think of it as an opportunity for all of us to lay down the blast beats and death growls…

Michael Klassen has never met Daniel Jansson. OK, you’re thinking, why should he? But given that Jansson is the singer in his band, it is kind of weird. Well, unconventional certainly. Klassen plays guitar, bass and provides other instrumentation in Culted, working out of Winnipeg, Canada, with Kevin Stevenson (Drums), Matthew Freisson (guitar/bass/other) and Erik…