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…
With the way the metal scene leaps on to musical trends can be hilarious and frustrating, how labels will get a whiff of a fresh sound, whip themselves into a signing frenzy, beat it to death and beyond, and strip the music of all the charm it had in the first place. So it’s understandable…
Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… Today the Metalnomicon offers up introductions to two brand new publications with pounding, bleeding heavy metal hearts… All this time we thought we could only listen to, or play instruments, or scream our metal….
Hello folks, it’s been a while, but I’m back with another installment of ‘Holy Shit.’ If you’re unfamiliar with the concept – and you should be, because until a few days ago, I totally forgot this series existed here and here – basically it boils down to the disciplinary practice of me keeping it in…
As a metal writer you often meet young bands that are so desperately hungry to get out on tour and live the road dog life in their van, going from city to city, crashing wherever they can. Just to live the live of a touring metal band and do what they love to do most…
Review enough metal albums, and the process can be pretty simple, especially when it comes to those bands that stick to the specific characteristics of one particular subgenre. Each style has its own specific requirements and criteria, and as a critic, you’re basically asking yourself a) if it captures the essence of what this subgenre…
Yesterday U.K. death/doom progenitors My Dying Bride announced the departure of longtime guitarist (and current Vallenfyre axeman) Hamish Glencross due to “irreconcilable differences.” Replacing Glencross is the man he originally supplanted back in 1999—founding guitarist Calvin Robertshaw. In his first interview since rejoining band, the author of rifftastic MDB classics like “Your River” and “The…
1992 was an interesting year. On the West Coast, the dichotomy between the intensity of Seattle’s grunge scene and Los Angeles’ growing racial tension (thanks to the highly publicized beating of Rodney King and the following riot) made for some interesting times. White kids were rebelling against conformity and black folks were rebelling in the…
If you’re a metal fan, you have to know your history, know where the music you like comes from. It’s funny, though, when you find yourself digging through the lesser-knowns of “proto-metal” if you will, the Sir Lord Baltimores, the Buffaloes, the Pentagrams, you can lose sight of the forest for all those darn trees….
I remember chatting on the phone with Mike Williams about Eyehategod’s follow-up to 2000’s Confederacy of Ruined Lives, how it was going slowly as he was dealing with his incarceration issues, his health, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the difficulty of getting all five members in the same room together. There was no firm…
Last month at the 2014 Inferno Music Conference (which runs concurrently to the much louder Inferno Metal Festival), I was lucky enough to squeeze into a short presentation led by filmmaker Christian Falch. He was there to introduce his latest project, and from the looks of things, it’ll be a doozy. ‘Blackhearts’ follows three black…
I’m not exactly sure where Jason Netherton finds the time and energy to do everything he does, but he does. Most of you are probably familiar with him via Misery Index, a band he formed after his departure from Dying Fetus. However, it doesn’t stop there. Presently, he’s kinda-sorta uprooted from his Maryland home and…
Hours before the final date of the third annual Decibel Magazine Tour, your editors sit down with three members of Carcass and special guest Blake Harrison of Pig Destroyer for a predictably contentious and uncomfortable podcast! We never got around to reading our favorite Liverpudlians Waldo the Parrot’s review of Surgical Steel—thank Christ. Featuring:Carcass “Mount…
Melodic death metal, crust, d-beat, black metal, doom, post-metal . . . It doesn’t really matter how you label Nux Vomica because it’s pretty much impossible to adequately describe their wayfaring sound in terms of genre alone. Yeah we went for crust in this headline, but that was more of a convenient adjective, headline shorthand,…
Baton Rouge doom/sludge prolific over-achievers, Thou has returned from an almost unheard of (for them, anyway) two years of silence as far as releases are concerned with their latest and greatest full-length, Heathen. We recently sent guitarist Andy Gibbs and vocalist Bryan Funck a bunch of questions to respond to via email. It would appear…
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,…
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…
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…
Hot on the heels of At the Gates announcing their long-anticipated comeback album, Andrew and Albert talk to the prolific vocalist Tomas Lindberg about his storied past, present and future in extreme metal. Featuring:Lock Up “Infinite in its Nothingness”The Great Deceiver “The Living End”Disfear “Get it Off”The Crown “Drugged Unholy”At the Gates “Kingdom Gone”
Few people have a professional circle that includes Chris Barnes and Alex Webster, sexy pop starlet Terri Nunn and global film star Jim Carrey. One of them is Decibel Hall Of Fame inductee Paul Masvidal (enshrined with his Cynic bandmates for Focus). When Cynic fell apart in the mid-90s, Masvidal relocated to Los Angeles, where…
T.S.O.L. vocalist, author and provocateur Jack Grisham has visited the land of the extremely extreme several times in the past year or so. He wrote a moving tribute to Jeff Hanneman in our memorial issue last July. In August, he joined the Deciblog for a career-spanning interview where he talked about the classic Dance With…
Not long ago we introduced you to Concordia University professor/extreme music lifer Vivek Venkatesh. Today the man we affectionately call “Professor Death Metal” graciously gives us a sneak peak at “From Pride to Prejudice to Shame: Multiple Facets of the Black Metal Scene within and without Online Environments,” a chapter he co-authored with professor Jeff…
What with a holiday season to service and a ten-year anniversary to celebrate, the good people of Seventh Rule Recordings have doubled down on the good cheer and offered you the chance to win their entire vinyl discography in their 10 Year Glitch Prize Package Says a dispatch from Seventh Rule’s Portland HQ: “Seventh Rule…
Prolific USBM artist Neill Jameson sits down with Albert and Andrew to discuss Krieg’s inclusion in the Top 100 Black Metal Albums of All Time special issue, the tumultuous new Twilight record and his bleak observations about life behind a record store counter in 2013. Featuring:Krieg “Fallen Princess of Sightless Visions…”Twilight “Lungs”Krieg “All Paths to…
If you’re like me, you’re super lazy and wait until the last minute to buy gifts for people. If you have a metalhead in your life, though, it can be difficult to find that perfect present. After all, it just doesn’t seem that clever to get them yet another set of Death reissues. Don’t worry,…
** Alexander von Meilenwald, unlike almost every other solo act in metaldom, is intensely interesting, engaging, and deep with musical prowess. Decibel interviewed von Meilenwald in our December 2013 issue (available HERE), but we figured the German had a lot more to say regarding new album, Blood Vaults, and the creation process of said full-length….
I’m not trying to steal the thunder from next Friday’s announcement of the Decibel Magazine 2014 tour lineup, but there’s another Decibel-related tour that’ll be taking place a little sooner than the new year. OK, this one won’t be as loud or as sweaty as the upcoming Decibel Magazine Tour, and there definitely won’t be…
It’s that time of year again, what my American buds call Thanksgiving, what we Canadians call the other Thanksgiving, and what the rest of the world calls The Weekend Where The Internet Suddenly Feels Abandoned. Seeing that the whole Black Friday gimmick is always the unofficial start of the holiday consumer frenzy in America, it’s…
Despite a pair of albums that will be on my personal year-end list, this week is on the light side, which admittedly is a welcome breather, because it’s a mere ripple compared to the tsunami of new stuff coming out in a week’s time. Seriously, next week looms over me like Ivan Drago. But first…
“The Unwound path crossed a lot of different scenes.” – Justin Trosper “We took our music in a lot of different directions, though always staying very Unwound.” Sara Lund The above quotes from Unwound guitarist/vocalist Trosper and drummer Lund basically explain and justify the appearance of the not-metal band this week on the ol’ Deciblog….