Year: 2012

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love; stuff that’s essential listening that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This week’s entry is from 1969, opens with…

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….

In the interest of making sense of the terrible–but, fortunately, non-fatal–accident Baroness suffered Tuesday in the U.K., we consulted former Candiria guitarist John LaMacchia, whose van was decimated on the road nearly a decade ago. As a fellow crash survivor, what was your gut reaction when you first heard about the Baroness accident? Shock. It…

Normally, I’d sound off on something like this, but sometimes nothing more than “what the fuck?” needs to be said. Ok, let me just add one bit of commentary: the moustache that appears at 3:56 of part one kicked my ass like it’s never been kicked before.

Last week we ran the first part of our interview with the good folks at The Mylene Sheath. Lindsay and Joel—the duo behind the Athens, GA based label—talked to us about their beginnings, how they communicate with their fans and their vinyl releases. In the concluding half of our interview, find out about their newest…

What would you ask Tucson-based North if you had the chance? Well, our first question would be: why name the band North when you’re from the Southwest? Seems a little geographically confusing. Where’s North from, you ask? The Southwest. Eh?! A more apropos moniker would be, well, Southwest. Then, North’s fans would always know where…

To paraphrase the almighty David Lee Roth, “Summertime’s here, babe, need something to keep you cool. Better look out now, Decibel‘s got somethin’ for you.” Some frozen fuckin’ Dutch black metal on stick, that’s what we’ve got. Minus the stick. But full-on frostbitten, we swear. This premiere is guaranteed to drop the ambient temperature in…

On the upcoming Carnival of Death tour Florida death metal legends Obituary will shred a “fan-generated” set drawn primarily from the vile trinity of Slowly We Rot, Cause Of Death and The End Complete — including some tracks that have never before been performed live. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to get Obituary vocalist…

Noisear’s debut Subvert the Dominant Paradigm was one of the finest grind albums to scar the planet last year. It was remarkable: not only was it a nerve-shredding compendium of white-hot dissonance, skronky grind and blast that recalled by-gone genre royality Discordance Axis, but it was written and recorded in little over a day. Maybe…

I’ve often felt STS songs are like album-form movies. At this point, where does the cinematic inspiration come from?Aleksi: Mainly Twin Peaks, it has always been an inspiration, especially to the songs musically, but also lyrically to some extent. On Hope we tried to go for The Shining-type of vibes, but in hindsight that could’ve…

Welcome to the dog days of August. Fuck dogs (do not do this – ed.) Uh, there’s a band called GAYTHEIST, and they are releasing a record called Stealth Beats on Good to Die Records. What’s this about? Is it music for gay atheists? Is it music written by a gay atheist? Is it Atheist…

I’m not much for fantastical lyrics – no matter how brutal the imagined scenery, it seems there’s enough ignorance and atrocity just outside my apartment door to nullify the impact of some invented horrors from galaxies long ago and far away. And I’ll be bumguzzled if I can predict when synth infestation will command my…

There’s a good reason we don’t feature a lot of digital hardcore around these parts. That’s because most of it isn’t worth featuring. Dudes, if there was ever a musical revolution that fizzled out like a wet firecracker of disappointment quicker than the one Atari Teenage Riot was supposed to lead into the frenzied future,…

We spend a lot of time talking to artists—whether in blog posts or in each month’s issue—and rightfully so. After all, they put their blood, sweat and tears into making the music that brings us together. We haven’t necessarily dedicated a lot of space to the people actually putting out those releases, however, so we…

Working alone from home is often viewed poorly in metal thanks to about 10,000 too many shitty low-fi pornogrind and black metal bands. But sometimes doing your own thing and calling the shots on all aspects of your music is a very good thing. Case in point: Sophicide’s new album Perdition Of The Sublime, streaming…

Unless you’re heavy metalluminati Pagan Altar, perhaps like stateside and posi-message alter-ego Glass Harp, is an unknown entity. Now, most of the time, unheralded music from the ’70s is unheralded because it sucks. Or, the group never toured and the label folded upon release. Probably a few of those out there, right?  Well, UK’s Pagan…

Despite the exhortations of much extreme metal that life isn’t worth living there are things left to get excited about. One of them is the upcoming album from Pig Destroyer, their first since dB’s 2007 album of the year Phantom Limb. News flash: the new album from Relapse is called Book Burner and we’ve secured…

Although you might remember him from such Neurosis albums as Souls at Zero, Enemy of the Sun and Through Silver in Blood, let’s not forget that guitarist/vocalist Scott Kelly has staked out quite a nice little solo career outside of the band. His latest release, which “streets,” as the kids say, on August 14 (Neurot),…

This morning we’re premiering a supremely nasty slice of doomed out Mexican death metal from Gutwrench entitled “Meeting with the Dead.” The track is culled from the upcoming Razorback Records debut Mausoleum…To Dwell & Rot In and if it strikes your fancy lurch on over to the band’s Reverb Nation page where other abominations with…

All right, so metal has always elicited a strong emotional response but rarely (shit, never) has it inspired the abandonment of a sedentary lifestyle in favor of 20 push-ups and a 10km run.It’s like, disco has long had an association with that whole workout gym culture; Lycra, protein shakes, glutes, quads and aerobic dance for…

If lazy journalism persists in music, it’d be easy to say Austrians Dragony are like the umpteenth band to use the word “dragon” as part of their moniker. Well, that’s just not true. Umpteenth implies like 1 in 5 bands use “dragon”. Like System of a Dragon, Dragon Corpse, Dragon of God, Dragonatonia, or My…

Harrowing, multi-dimensional enlightenment is a fickle beast.  You expect it in extreme locales under strikingly improbable circumstances, perhaps while ingesting mind-altering substances… not so much in a well-lit library crowded with suits, police officers, and raggedy internet-moochers.  Yet here I am getting a hit of pure dark French terror-bliss, and my mind can’t manage to…

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love; stuff that’s essential listening that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This week, Girlschool gets sent to the principal’s…

Out of New Mexico’s oft-speculated desert sky flies the darkly evocative Night Terrain. The band members describe their particular style of racket as “equal parts space rock, doom metal, and stoner rock… riffs go from slow, sludgy and droning to uplifting, manic…” On July 24th, Night Terrain self-released their debut album, American Dream, which manages…

Alright, doodz…get your flat-brimmed ball caps out and your buttoned-down plaid shirts to the ready

Formed out of teenage jitters, a can-/will-do work ethic and long-term (possibly unhealthy) exposure to Neurosis, Swans and the Melvins, Boston’s Isis were in many respects different from what the rest of New England had to offer in the late ’90s.

We’re all getting old. The bands we grew up idolizing are slowing down, retired or making geriatric mockeries of themselves. And sometimes we unfairly and harshly lash out at the newest crop of musicians for not being as heavy or “tough” as we were. I was one of those young, doe-eyed metal kids once, who…

** The original Decibel interview appeared in issue #58 (HERE), but since the Swedes are slower than Candlemass when issuing albums, we felt it was kinda cool to necro-post the full Unanimated interview. Also, Unanimated claims to be working on a new album without drummer Peter Stjärnvind, who left his stool post in February 2012,…

Of all the “traditional metal” albums that have come out in the past year, one that’s snuck up on a lot of us here at Decibel is Residual Alcatraz, the debut by Greensboro, North Carolina’s Dogbane. Not only did the album get a positive review recently, but also we were honored to profile the band…

The tribal beats, the crunching metal guitar and the half rap/half sung vocals of Chuck Mosley coalesced into something altogether original. You can unfortunately perhaps heap some blame for nu metal on these dudes, but what they created at the time was in fact revolutionary. It was like Killing Joke, Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers swapped members for a jam session and came up with a new genre.