Over But Just Beginning: Exclusive UnWed Album Stream!

Oh, man. Brooklyn’s UnWed get shit right, dropping a heartbeat-quickening melodic post-hardcore bomb dead center on the very best of swaggering, churning 90s rock. Hum meets Killing Joke meets Slint featuring members of Hot Water Music, Small Brown Bike, and Gay for Johnny Depp — how the fuck can you beat that? We’ve got the exclusive stream of…

The Healing Monsters Benefit Anthology Releases its Cover

Something very radical has been brewing for a while to help someone in need and preserve another’s memory. Horror author/metalhead Dustin LaValley has been suffering from life-threatening Crohn’s/IBD issues while Metal Maniacs cofounder/former editor Katherine Ludwig lost her battle with non-hodgkin’s lymphoma earlier this year, leaving an irreplaceable void in the community. This inspired the…

Frank Allain (Fen) interviewed

** UK black metallers Fen have plied the marshes of greatness since debut album, The Malediction Fields. But on new album, Carrion Skies, Fen are out of the swamps they’ve called home and they’re into the wild (dark) urban streets. They’ve gone above and beyond on Carrion Skies, reducing their ethereal qualities to bone-breaking effectiveness….

Pre-Order the Revised and Expanded CHOOSING DEATH!

Originally released in 2004, Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore is widely recognized as the definitive history of its titular extreme music subgenres. Eleven years later, author Albert Mudrian, editor-in-chief of Decibel Magazine, has chosen life after death in the form of a revised and expanded Choosing Death, which boasts a…

Decibrity Playlist: Melechesh

Ashmedi is no stranger to this blog, having authored a 17-part “biographical column and chaotic metaphysical thoughts” series that ended in 2011. Now that his band Melechesh has returned with its first album since 2010, we’re happy to welcome his voice back in the form of a playlist. There’s no theme per se, but it’s…

Win A Copy Of Season Of The Witch

At the beginning of the year we published an interview with author Peter Bebergal about his excellent new book Season Of The Witch: How The Occult Saved Rock and Roll. Among the topics discussed: why metal has picked up (again) on the occult approach and themes so popular in the 70s: “There’s just something about…

Vocation of Unhappiness: The Deciblog Interview with Mark SaFranko

Let’s clear away any confusion at the outset: Mark SaFranko is not someone’s father who has decided to moonlight in a metal band or one of the few remaining music talent scouts. SaFranko is an American author based in New Jersey who, for more than three decades, has lived a writer’s life and all it…

KILLING IS MY BUSINESS: 4 Music Biz Stories to Watch in 2015

2014 was a year of major tumult for the music biz. CD and download sales took a beating as streaming continued to skyrocket; at the same time, streaming services took a beating from many quarters of the industry, and not a single one of them has proven profitable. U2 apologized for the biggest album release in history, and…

Season Of The Witch: The Ideas Behind Metal’s Occult Revival

Any astute follower of metal in the past five years has likely noticed a huge uptick in the number of bands with a proto-70s sound and occult themes: The Devil’s Blood, Sabbath Assembly, Blood Ceremony and The Oath. A few of these bands have been on Decibel’s cover: In Solitude and Ghost B.C. (twice). While…

Inside The Shredder’s Studio #15: Jeremy Wagner (Take 2)

Broken Hope’s Jeremy Wagner sat down with us beginning last week for his four-part shredder’s studio. Here is the second installment from the death metal veteran turned author. We’ll be running the final two takes at a time to be revealed in 2015. — Savatage: Sirens (title track) (1983) The guitar work of Criss Oliva…

Tales From The Metalnomicon: J.W. Henley, The Reviling Scribe

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a column delving into the vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… Good goddamn can Revilement/Sledge City Slashers vocalist J.W. Henley spin a yarn! The Taipei-based death metal vocalist’s excellent debut novel Sons of the Republic is a fascinating study of the intricacies and tensions of the…

Jump, Carry On, or Both: 2014’s Best Power Metal

Last week on Twitter I asked to no one in particular, if a publication is going to put out a “Best Metal of the Year” list, why do they all focus primarily on the extreme metal side? Hey, I like Dark Descent, Gilead, and Nuclear War Now as much as anyone else, but there’s a…

Tales From the Metalnomicon: Damon Root’s Heavy Metal Justice

Today the Metalnomicon welcomes Reason senior editor Damon Root, one of the most thought-provoking, singular voices writing on the intricacies of American law today. He’s also a metal/hardcore devotee and the original articulator of the Suicidal Tendencies litmus test for federal candidates, which, as we all know, has had a profound effect on our nation…

KILLING IS MY BUSINESS: Chattin’ Charts with Billboard’s Keith Caulfield

Music sales and airplay charts document the most heard and purchased artists, albums and songs in music. Death metal and grindcore never get airplay and barely sell anything compared to less-niche genres. So the logic should be simple: charts are irrelevant to extreme metal bands and fans, right? Not entirely. The fact that almost nothing…

Sucker For Punishment: Housecleaning – I Mean, Gift Guide!

As a Canadian I can’t help but marvel at American Thanksgiving. The sheer brilliance of it: make it a Thursday holiday, which’ll in turn compel people to take Friday off, and just like that you’ve got a four-day weekend. Unless Remembrance Day or the February statutory holiday falls on a Thursday, we don’t exactly have…

Wino Issues Official Statement, Re: Norway Deporatation

At this time, I feel it is necessary to release an official statement of the facts in regard to my recent deportation from the country of Norway. First, I want to apologize to all Saint Vitus fans, and to my band members and crew for my lapse in judgment that ultimately resulted in me missing…

Encrotchment With Eddie Gobbo From Jar’d Loose: Week 9

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gibby Haynes. Slow, Still and Swaggin’ I’ve been a sports fan since 1984, when I came out of Dan Marino’s womb. I’ve been a metal fan since 1994, when I seen Cannibal Corpse in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, staring Dan Marino. One of the first dudes I remember meeting in the…

Decibrity Playlist: Giant Squid (Part 1)

Giant Squid‘s debut LP, Metridium Fields, was re-recorded in the very early days of Decibel and we’ve been following the group’s musical trajectory ever since. Fortunately, the band is still going strong, having released a new album at the end of October. While guitarist/vocalist Aaron John Gregory described the record as a “giant love letter…

Heavy Metal Horror Roundtable: Trap Them Meets Fangoria!

Horror and metal. Metal and horror. One couldn’t quit the other even if it wanted to. Which, as anyone who has attended either a horror con or metal show recently can attest, neither does. Except maybe those djent dudes whose non-role-playing-game media consumption is limited mostly to scouring Nova physics + math specials for potential…

New Child Bite Video with King Buzzo, Primary Colors and Killer Music

Detroit wildmen Child Bite are currently touring the wide United States, playing this Sunday at the Housecore Horror Film Festival and continuing with dates through the Midwest and East Coast (dates/locations below).  Today we get to show you their brand new (read: just finished yesterday) music video for “Ancestral Ooze,” a song from their forthcoming Strange…

Sucker For Punishment: Fight Like It’s 1985

After parting ways with vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza in 2004, Exodus took a huge risk in hiring the unknown Rob Dukes as the band’s new frontman, but it was a risk that paid off well. The confrontational, provocative Dukes injected the band with a level of manic energy not seen since the classic Paul Baloff…

STREAMING: Nightbringer “Ego Dominus Tuus” + Naas Alcameth (Nightbringer) interviewed

** U.S. black metallers Nightbringer are an entity unto themselves. The Colorado-based trio make music unlike any other. The group’s new album, Ego Dominus Tuus, is a haunting reality check of the darkness that is around us and the darkness that consumes us. Claustrophobic, uncompromisingly intense, and yet very musical (think Classical), Ego Dominus Tuus…

Help Katherine Ludwig Annihilate Her Cancer

If there’s a select group of people responsible for Decibel becoming the magazine it is today, one of those people is undoubtedly Katherine Ludwig. Why? Because as the founding editor of Metal Maniacs magazine, she helped spearhead extreme-music journalism. Unlike the more popular Metal Edge, a sort of US Weekly of hair metal bands, Metal…

Getcho’ Nerd On: Deconstructing Sequence

UK time travelers Deconstructing Sequence have recorded a new 2-song EP called Access Code, amounting to more than 16 minutes of new music.  Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like a lot, but the futuristic mech-out violence metes out a very high quality to make up for the relatively low quantity.  They pack as much music…

Tales From the Metalnomicon: The Return of Dustin LaValley

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a column delving into the vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… Some readers may recall Dustin LaValley’s memorable Metalnomicon bow a little over a year ago. We’ve invited the literary extremist back today to give us the lowdown on Swallowed: A Hypersexual Romance, his new novel…

Sounds of the Damned: Chris Alexander Talks Fangoria Musick

To paraphrase the demon that once mauled Albert Brooks in his own car on the side of a darkened road back in ’83: Hey, d’ya you want to hear something really scary? Yeah? You sure? Alright, then, Fangoria Musick — the exquisitely eclectic, ceaselessly unsettling new digital download music label from the legendary flagship magazine…

Sucker For Punishment: Buying Time is Here

When it came to new metal music in the first half of 2014, personally I feel it was mediocre at best, with only one album, Triptykon’s Melana Chasmata, deserving of the adjective “exemplary” a rung or two higher than a small handful of releases that qualify as being “very good”. However, this year’s release schedule…