Guys in metal bands grow old. We know that. It’s natural and can’t be helped. Sometimes they continue to put out good music, sometimes they lose the fire that drove them back in the day. That’s fine. We aren’t here to talk about the music. We are here to take a look at some of the terrible, terrible album covers these legends of metal have chosen to grace their recent releases with. Your ...

There's a lot of business and entertaining reading for y'all to get down to this week. You don't need me gumming up the gears with my special brand of bullshit. Los Angeles-based servants of evil/slaves of Satan, Seven Sisters of Sleep have a new album at the ready. It's called Opium Morals and it sounds like Ol' Nick himself is under the floorboards, pounding back shots of kerosene and killing ...

I have a pet hamster. His name is Ozzy. He is adorable but terrified of everything. However, over the course of his cohabitation with me, he’s become acclimated to the sounds of heavy metal, probably due to the fact that I play it for 16 hours a day. I’ve discovered that he actually has quite discerning taste, and reacts differently to the different things I play. So, in this column, I’m ...

My blog post this week was supposed to feature an interview with…someone. Someone – well, more like some band – who bailed on my exquisite line of questioning at the last minute. Which is fine when compared to the other ass hats who agreed to take their place and assume their position in internet history before going ahead and bailing at an even more critical time and closer to the last ...

Stepping into a recording studio can be intimidating for the inexperienced musician. Sure it’s always intimidating for the experienced musicians. Of course it is. That’s precisely because bands that have been over the course know that it’ll be costing them money and lots of it. For the green band cutting their first demo, that debut recording experience is a harrowing affair, a journey into ...

Right now, television networks are picking up a bunch of pilots to shove into our eyesockets come September. This year, though, there is a difference – a weirdly large number of metal-themed reality shows. I feel it is my duty to report on some of the more promising entries. Storage War Ensemble In this spinoff of the popular Storage Wars franchise, entrepreneurs raid the storage ...

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… The general outline of the rock bio is by now well established -- young, innocent spitfire achieves dream against all odds only to find fame, riches, and rock n' roll excess does not quench the deep thirst for someone to ...

Have you heard?  Decibel Magazine just launched its 100th issue!  We've kinda kept it quiet, only hyping it every other day or so for only the past several months.  Turns out we're hosting a celebration show in Philly this weekend!  Who knew?  I wonder who will headline... As this extremely extreme monument edged closer to becoming reality, dB think tank Nick Green came down with a ...

Opinions are like assholes: everyone IS one. We've noticed that Hollywood tends to spend a lot of time chortling while you spend perfectly good alcohol/meth/falafel money on the anal fissures of their "imagination." Justin Smith of cinema-grind moguls Graf Orlock occasionally plumbs those depths in Graf Orlock Steadicam Reviews. It seems obvious, yet oft unacknowledged, that film is a direct ...

Metallica were wise to wait several years before making their first promotional music video. Having experienced it first hand—waiting patiently for a metal video to pop up so we could capture it on our VHS recorder—we can attest to the fact that the dawn of music videos in the early '80s was the worst. Especially the metal ones, which were frequently done on indie-label budgets and generally ...