When I heard Jani Lane of Warrant passed away last Thursday night, I immediately texted my attorney Juan Perez and recent Decibel cover artist Tom Neely, both of whom—like myself—are avid cock rock enthusiasts. Neely’s cogent response? "Too much cherry pie!” The details of Lane’s death hadn’t been revealed yet, but Tom was right, of course: the singer’s body was found at a Comfort ...

You'd think that a band with 40 years under its belt would have figured out the whole commercialism part of the music business by now. Some of the more enterprising elder statesmen have given up on marketing their music -- Marky Ramone has his own brand of pasta sauce, and Stephen Pearcy is hawking hot sauce, for chrissakes. So it was with a giant "Seriously?" that we discovered Pentagram didn't ...

It will be a cold rest of the week in Boston as one of its sons is gone. Eric Stevenson, former drummer of the legendarily underrated band Only Living Witness, passed after a five-month battle with melanoma. He was 46. Stevenson was the father of a six-year old son and only three years ago had performed a reunion concert with OLW in Cambridge. The loss in the music community, but especially ...

What's it take to walk the working class death metal mile? Immolation stalwarts Ross Dolan and Robert Vigna school Scion A/V on death metal's majesty and decay in this exclusive follow-up to the Decibel premiere of the slick video for "A Glorious Epoch" last month. As a bonus, here is high quality footage of Immolation grinding and growling through "The ...

In a just world Swiss actor Bruno Ganz would be better known for his work in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, Herzog's Nosferatu or, yes, his chillingly-authentic turn in Downfall than he is for a four-minute-performance-cum-fodder for a seemingly endless series of YouTube parodies -- "The Hitler Meme," as the New York Times dubbed it a few years back. Have there been occasional flashes of ...

Known for its cheese, beer, and baseball team the Brewers, Milwaukee is also home (rather was home) to some of America's finest death metal. Yeah, Tampa had its rightful place on the throne in the late '80s/early '90s, but the former French Canadian trading post had Dr. Shrinker, Phantasm, Accidental Suicide, and the mighty Morta Skuld. Perhaps the most visible of all Wisconsin death metal acts ...

Well-spoken, Morbid Angel's David Vincent has labeled the group in 2011 as "spearheaders", which is fine when you look at albums like Hall of Fame album Altars of Madness, Blessed Are the Sick, Covenant, Domination. etc. Morbid Angel were the creme de la creme. However, time marches on and it's rarely kind. Certainly, Vincent is of the opinion Morbid Angel (cover stars yet again on dB #81) ...

Finnish "heavy metallers" Lordi have gone 3-times Platinum (90,000 copies sold) in their native Finland, Gold (30,000 copies sold) in Sweden, Gold in Germany (100,000 copies sold) and have probably earned sales medals throughout Europe. Pretty neat considering Lordi are nothing but a bunch of fakers. Check out this clip from 2006. The horror-masked Finns are rambling through one of their ...

German forward-thinking metallers The Ocean give us Part 2 of their recent trouble-filled trek through the U.S. and Canada. What to expect? A pro-filmed video, a few different accents (British, German, Australian), quick shots of front row boobage, the realization that the Job for A Cowboy dudes pump iron like Stallone, the group’s driver disappearing in a Girls Gone Wild bus, and tour bus ...

The Rev. Aaron Pepelis is a veritable heavy metal institution in the Northeast. His long-running radio show Return to the Pit -- transmitted from WUNH in Durham, New Hampshire and streamed here -- is about as solid as tru blackened grind industrial death rock radio gets. He is a consummate and tireless photographer whose work, cataloged at Return to the Pit, has appeared in publications ranging ...