Year: 2012

We’re of the opinion that there can never be too much metal in the world. Thus, we greet the news of a new label, Mutants of the Monster—started by C.T. from Rwake and David Hall from Handshake, Inc.—with great expectations. And the best way we here at Decibel can to celebrate the debut of this…

We’re just about two weeks out from a new Malignancy record (!), and the Yonkers, New York tech-death grinders have graciously provided Decibel with an uber-sick opening salvo entitled, “Global Systemic Collapse” — which actually might be one of the more cheerily optimistic tracks off Eugenics. Here’s what the band has to say about the…

Decibel usually maintains a safe distance from the film and TV business because, well, it looks totally fucked up and confusing and the printed word is a tough enough mistress to keep. But when anthropologist, award-winning film-maker and metal fan Sam Dunn came calling looking for funding and support for an extreme metal episode of…

How do you separate the debut and Ariettes Oubliées… as musical entities?Fursy Teyssier: I’d say that Ariettes Oubliées… is a much more dense and solid album than Septembre… as the concept of Les Discrets became more precise in my head, so I knew exactly which atmospheres I wanted to create and what the album needed…

November 16th, 1981. Utter that date to any KISS fan and you’re going to get punched or hugged. Who knows, you may get nothing because maybe said KISS fan never did his homework. Either way, it doesn’t really matter because this is Justify Your Shitty Taste, and I’m talking Music from “The Elder” by KISS.

Bands like Gojira and Godflesh might be major brand names ‘round these parts, but mention them to your average Metallica-loving broseph and you’re likely to get a squinty-eyed, the-fuck-you-say? half-nod. But Decibel just won’t quit. We dig deeper, danker, darker and dirtier (though rarely fitter or happier) to turn up a few otherwise overlooked gems….

Hands up those of you who remember Wales trio Taint? Aside from having our man Bonazelli throw down as the band’s biggest supporter to the tune of given up first born and oaths taken on the graves of dead relatives, the trio gave the world three unfuckwithable albums (All Bees to the Sea, Secrets and…

As detailed in our November issue, we’ve had to wait a good while between Witchcraft albums. When news of the band’s new record finally hit this May, the press release also nonchalantly dropped a couple of bombshells about the group’s lineup. Despite the changes, however, two pillars continue to be frontman/founder Magnus Pelander and bassist…

Only a short introduction is needed here. This gentleman played on Hall Of Fame certified None So Vile, not to mention the inimitiable Blasphemy Made Flesh. He’s back in Cryptopsy and a big reason their eponymous new album rules. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re proud to welcome Jon Levasseur to the shredder’s studio this week. Hey…

It’s isn’t often the “extremely extreme” or the “new noise” transitions from death, black, doom, or whatever to punk rock, so on September 19th, 2012 the Deciblog puts on a pair of 20-year old Doc Martens, trades our jean jacket with the Kreator backpatch for a leather one with studs and self-painted logos, and defies…

Fucked Up, Rifflandia Festival, September 14, Victoria, BCRifflandia has one of the coolest names for a music festival. It seemed in past years when it was smaller that it was more about the “riff” than it is in its current iteration, where hip-hop, Americana, indie rock and, well, Fucked Up intermingle. For instance, we preceded…

When through the magic of Facebook we recently learned that a twenty-five year-old aspiring solar panel technician and diehard thrash metal maniac from Calexico, California had tattooed the epic artwork from the poster of the inaugural Decibel tour onto his right forearm, it was pretty much inevitable we’d reach out. Turns out Papu Martinez is…

“Epic’s in my nature,” says Mark “the Shark” Shelton. “That’s all there is to it. It’s all about the telling of a good story.” He’s talking about his writing style and ethos for Manilla Road and new side-project with Manilla Road bassist Ernie Cunningham Hellwell, but such a declaration applies equally to Shelton’s expansive conversation…

According to Russian linguistic experts, appending the suffix “ka” to the end of a word is to mean it’s little or so small it’s cute.

Bands like Gojira and Godflesh might be major brand names ‘round these parts, but mention them to your average Metallica-loving broseph and you’re likely to get a squinty-eyed, the-fuck-you-say? half-nod. But Decibel just won’t quit. We dig deeper, danker, darker and dirtier (though rarely fitter or happier) to turn up a few otherwise overlooked gems….

Vancouver’s Scythia is a confusing bunch. Are they pirate metal? No, not really. Folk metal? Nah. They may have folk elements, but they’re not that dour. Yeah, you heard me. Battleshield metal? I made that up, but it makes them sound a lot tougher and more sinister than they actually are. Let’s go with what…

Back in 1998, Philly’s Troc hosted a fantastic triple bill featuring Sepultura, Vision Of Disorder and Earth Crisis. Notably, each band had released a record that year that, for better or worse, would serve as a turning point in its career. While Sepultura ushered in the Derrick Green era with Against and Earth Crisis jumped…

We get a lot of music in these parts that doesn’t make you feel good. So dB will gladly accept sweet party anthems secure in the knowledge that many readers give ample spins to Appetite for Destruction when they are claiming to dissect some obscure 80-minute black metal opus. “War Woman” comes from Oakland’s Lecherous…

So, what happened with Slumber? I know there were record label complications, but I didn’t know there were member issues.Ehsan Kalantarpour: After the first and only album Fallout Slumber got locked in a doom/death style. We felt that the album set way too strict formula on what we could do next. We wanted something much…

By now you probably know that Decibel came into blood-splattered existence in October of 2004, but you may not know that Editor-in-Chief Albert Mudrian and Publisher Alex Mulcahy began collaborating on regional indie record shop in-store magazine Stereo-Type well beforehand. In light of today’s shitty announcement that Hydra Head Records will be closing shop, we…

Like London, Ontario and Paris, Texas there’s a city in the California Bay Area with the same name as one of the great metropolises of the world. Yep, Dublin, CA was named after Ireland’s capital, but this East Bay suburb is probably best known in the metal world for being the hometown of some heavy…

This morning Decibel has the pleasure of bringing you an appetizing little slice of “mile-high deathgrind” courtesy Denver’s own Enemy Reign. Culled from the super-solid, old-school-meets-new-school-and-for-once-they-actually-get-along upcoming full-length pummeller Between Hell and Oblivion, “Bathed in Flames,” guitarist Nick Guenther tells us, “puts everything we love about metal on display.” “Between the scorching blast beats, classic…

What else could New Mexico nerve-shredders Noisear have named their forthcoming album? Turbulent Resurgence kinda sums everything up nicely; in the year since the release of the near free-jazz grind lunacy of Subvert the Dominant Paradigm, the band have shed some serious personnel and had to regroup and re-focus. But despite the changing of the…

1. “Red All Over”Travis Ryan: Just a song about violence. Nice and simple… And bloody. Leon del Muerte: The fastest song I’ve ever written. This one and “Under the Weight…” were completed towards the end of the writing cycle, but I knew for sure that this would be the opener. That’s two-for-two on opening songs…

What’s up, Motherpeckers? It seems the fall is a little dry, at least this part anyway, so let’s plow through this. We’re going to start with the fucking evil HOODED MENACE, Effigies of Evil. This is old school death metal, and I mean old school. Slow, mean, nasty, heavy: These guys don’t need blasts to…

Bands like Gojira and Godflesh might be major brand names ‘round these parts, but mention them to your average Metallica-loving broseph and you’re likely to get a squinty-eyed, the-fuck-you-say? half-nod.  But Decibel just won’t quit.  We dig deeper, danker, darker and dirtier (though rarely fitter or happier) to turn up a few otherwise overlooked gems. …

According New Orleans-based sludge doom outfit haarp, their music is a weapon. Not the kind of weapon the U.S. government has in the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (H.A.A.R.P.), but more the ancient Celtic god kind; a weapon of enchantment. Though we really wouldn’t say our experience with haarp—stylized in all lowercase letters—is enchanting…

So, the other day, Repulsion’s bassist/vocalist/friend of Decibel, Scott Carlson sent us a link to a rather peculiar little article from the Washington Post with the comment attached, “Our music is truly Repulsive.” Check it out: Is Listening to Music Making You Worse at Your Job? Now, why out of all the bands that have…

It’s obvious that we have quite a lot of love for Grave around these parts. Don’t believe me? Just check out Greg Moffitt’s review or Jonathan Horsley’s profile in our September and October issues, respectively. While the Swedish death metallers just released their new album Endless Procession Of Souls last week, guitarist/vocalist Ola Lindgren had…

John Darnielle has delighted readers of Decibel since the magazine’s inception with his South Pole Dispatch backpage column, and we are certainly grateful to have his humorous, provocative and thoughtful commentary gracing our pages every month. But Darnielle has a long, colorful history of writing about metal, both as the mastermind behind the long-running Last…