The fact that I know anything about The Golden Grass happened by accident. Last month, I went to see Windhand with every intention of missing both opening bands. Unfortunately, my ability to time arrivals at shows–even when the venue announces set times in advance–is on par with Andy Reid’s clock management skills. So, not surprisingly,…
Tell your average schmoe on the street that you’re doing an interview with Matt Harvey and they’ll probably think the topics of conversation are set to include pitch selection, what it’s like having Andrew Bonazelli as a stalker and season ending surgery. What automatically comes to mind when you mention the name Matt Harvey to…
As some of you may have noticed, there has recently been an explosive, blown-up debate about (the lack of) stage diving on this year’s Summer Slaughter tour between us, Summer Slaughter, and the fans. Apart from all the useless “you better book ‘baby corpse deep throat massacre’ next year, this tour is not metal anymore”…
In 1985, a kid by the name of Tommy Memzercardo released “The Innocent, The Forsaken, The Guilty”, an off-kilter fantasy/epic metal EP featuring Bill Ward on drums. Back then, the former Black Sabbath drummer couldn’t be credited for legal reasons, while Memzercardo was a mystery all of his own, calling himself The Mezmerist and playing…
Neill Jameson is best known to readers as Imperial, frontman of the excellent USBM band Krieg. Along with Blake Judd, Wrest and Thurston Moore (!) he was also part of the black metal project Twilight. I got to know Neill during an interview about three years ago and we’ve kept in touch since. As our…
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… Full disclosure: The Metalnomicon has not surveyed every hardcore fanzine in the history of hardcore fanzines. That is a task ill-suited to a single human lifespan, even one that, say, skipped the…
** Dark Tranquillity have a new album out. It’s called Construct. As one of the many requirements of writing about metal is interviewing bands when they have new albums out. Hence, this feature. Actually, scratch that. I’ve been interviewing Dark Tranquillity for almost 20 years now, since the Skydancer effort, so me and the Gothenburg…
Those who have been following my writings in the pages of the magazine , on here, or on Twitter (@JeffTreppel) will probably have figured out that I’m not the biggest death metal guy. So, for a death metal band to catch my attention, they really have to be something special. Beyond (Germany) fit that criteria….
Demon Lung‘s debut LP, The Hundredth Name, is a doom album constructed around a grand concept. Yes, it is a doom LP that incorporates some of the genre fundamentals and takes its cues from Candlemass and Coven’s ceremonial sense of theater, but lyrically it follows a tantalizing narrative wherein (loosely speaking) Satan’s long-lost kid is…
Sanktuary originally hail from Whitehorse, the capital city of Canada’s Yukon Territory. Look it up on a map and you’ll see why, for that fact alone, we wanted to track them down for a chinwag. To say that the Yukon is a little out of the way is like saying it probably gets a little…
** Sharon Ehman is a Toronto, Canada-based clothing designer and sole proprietor of Toxic Vision, a unique label creating one-of-a-kind designs. New collections, based off her interest in and love for metal as well as the supernatural, are available every month at the Toxic Vision website. Ehman’s work has been seen on members of Watain,…
With a self-released EP on the horizon, a European tour about to kick off in a few weeks and an animated video making the rounds, things are busy for Canadian grind freakazoids, Fuck the Facts. More so when you consider they’re doing this all by themselves now, a fact I wasn’t made aware of until…
I don’t exactly remember how I stumbled across Greenvans, but if Andrew Reitz had been offering the use of 15-passenger vans at affordable rates exclusively to touring bands, it would have made my touring life a fuck of a lot easier. I would have avoided doing month long tours in minivans out of necessity, for…
You started recording in December 2012 and finished in April 2013. That’s a long time to track. Who are you? Metallica? I’m kidding. It was done in pieces, correct?Dez Fafara: [Laughs] Yes it was. The first part was that we had the demos and went on a two month run in the states and I…
***As chronicled by Alia O’Brien, singer/flutist/organist for Canada’s finest occult rockers, from their current tour with Kylesa, White Hills, and Lazer/Wulf. Remaining tour dates listed below; preorder their phenomenal new LP, The Eldritch Dark, here Two days and ten degrees (Celsius!) stood between our homes in Toronto, Canada and our first date supporting Kylesa on…
It’s been a few months, I’ve posted about appropriately metal things – I’ve earned myself a break from the death metal mines. Luckily for you, the three people that don’t close the page when they see my byline, some of the stuff I listen to when I’m giving my ears a break is just close…
According to their Facebook page, UK doom/Heavy Metal quartet Arkham Witch‘s personal interests include, “Ales, Histories, Wars, Invocations and Audible assaults. Drinking as fuck!” And their description of their sound is pretty much bang on too. “Old School Heavy Metal/Doom infused with Lovecraftian horror, tales of mighty Barbarians and festering evil superstitions!” What’s not to…
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… In her exquisitely rendered, frequently disquieting, always edifying new book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films well-respected critic, festival programmer and King Diamond…
Decibel‘s coverage of the debut LP from Richmond, Virginia dark thrash stalwarts Iron Reagan has been fairly comprehensive — last month Chris premiered a stand-out track off Worse Than Dead in this space and there is a short profile of the band in the print issue on stands now — but one aspect of the…
5. Loudblast – Sublime Dementia 1993 (Semetary) Appearing with three tracks on Century Media’s cool In The Eyes of Death compilation in 1991, Loudblast were virtually unknown outside the four corners of France even though they’d released two full-lengths and a string of demos prior to Sublime Dementia. Loudblast twisted Schuldiner’s brutal/melodic idiosyncrasies (from Human)…
Astrohenge was yet another band I stumbled across last year while perusing what was once a plethora of music blogs. As our Q&A with their fellow countrymen Dragged Into Sunlight indicated, Astrohenge is part of a diverse crop of UK bands “doing their own thing.” Although it’s been over a year since the London quartet’s…
Because every day another band records another song. Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck. Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm. Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…
photo credit: Lou Strummer France’s grindcore miscreats, Nolentia has recently made their newest and second album available to the world’s general populace and specifically those of you who enjoy your Nasum and Pig Destroyer weirded up a notch. The album’s called May the Hand That Holds the Match That Will Set This World on Fire…
When the Deciblog caught up with GOJIRA frontman/guitarist Joe Duplantier last week, he was clocking up the road miles across Canada on in a tour that’ll see the French progressive/death-ish metal quartet take in the west coast of America before snaking along the south and terminating in New York. Supporting their fifth album, L’Enfant Sauvage,…
If you’ve been keeping up with our last two issues (which also happen to be our year-end and 100th), you’ve probably noticed that there’s a new Holy Grail record coming out this month. While you’ll have to wait until January 22nd to see if your excitement about Ride The Void even comes remotely close to…
If you know Decibel, you know we hold chameleonic U.K. doomsayers Paradise Lost in the highest regard. So, it’s an extremely extreme honor that Garden State funeral doom heroes Evoken are taking their maiden voyage in the Decibel Flexi Series by covering PL’s crushing “Rotting Misery,” which initially appeared on their 1990 debut, Lost Paradise….
Sweden’s Khoma is probably best known on this side of the Atlantic – assuming they’re known at all – for being the side project of Cult of Luna’s Johannes Persson and Fredrik Kihlberg. Au contraire. While they may not have been as on the radar of metalnerds as Cult of Luna, Khoma has existed in…
On January 19th, Decibel will celebrate a century of extremely extreme issues at Philadelphia Union Transfer in exalted company: four-time cover stars Converge; swine-ablating grindhogs Pig Destroyer; crossover champs Municipal Waste; Repulsion (be still, beating heart); 2011’s AOTY artists Tombs; and funerealy epic doom titans Evoken. It’s the perfect Decibel storm, a line-up of bands…
** In most cases, Decibel features “all the metal that’s fit to print”, but there are times when metal’s meta, so when letters are falling out of the margins and don’t have a home, they go to the Deciblog. The following interview is the full transcript for the Winterfylleth feature in Decibel #98 [available HERE]….
Having shows in one’s place of residence seems like such a big deal to most people. To an old fart like myself, going to see a band play in a basement or living room is as natural as going to see a band play at some place where overzealous security goons get way too familiar…