Year: 2013

Lycus’ debut was one of the best doom albums to leak long-form misery over 2013. A disconsolate epic, Tempest is an album that was thrown up around the desolate heart of a funeral doom sound so dense that it has its own bleak gravity hauling influences from black and death metal, drone and krautrock into…

For a band that “likes” Taco Bell (and White Castle), we’re pretty sure the dudes in Weekend Nachos have had their fair share of Nacho Bell Grandes. With a name such as Weekend Nachos, well, why wouldn’t they? Remember when Taco Bell used to put black olives and scallions on those things? Anyway, it’s not…

Well, as the year comes closer to ending, the releases are slowing down. Maybe not so much right now, but soon enough, so don’t be surprised if your old boy Waldo starts “pecking”a bunch of stuff he doesn’t really like . So, here’s all of the hate that’s fit to beak. Ten years of TOXIC HOLOCAUST. Say…

With Halloween now behind us, we can leave behind the pumpkin beers—is it me, or were there like a thousand of these things this year?—and move on to the big winter warmers. This is a time of year when the darker, heartier and higher ABV beers start to show up. In fact, it wasn’t that…

Oh, the power of an ‘e’. In 2011, a not-really-black metal band was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and called itself Noir.

** Today, November 1st, 2013, is an auspicious day. Decibel’s 100th Issue Show: The Movie DVD is out today, exclusively through Decibel’s kick-ass webstore (click HERE). To celebrate we’ve nailed down Handshake, Inc. proprietor David Hall. Who is Mr. Hall? He and crew were responsible for lensing the entire 100th Issue Show. So, let’s get…

The 8th FunFunFunFest kicks off next week in Austin and though it may not strictly be an extreme music fest along the lines of the usual multi-day extravaganzas featured in this space, it is one of the largest fests I’ll have the opportunity to write about and still offers a shit-ton of metal and hardcore…

Dustin Boltjes has a lot of reasons to be pumped right now. His band Skeletonwitch released its fifth (and possibly best) full-length, Serpents Unleashed, on Tuesday (probably the most important item on this list). The Ohio quintet just kicked off a string of tourdates alongside The Black Dahlia Murder. Oh, and he and bandmate Chance…

André Foisy plays guitar in Locrian and is a certified yoga instructor who teaches at Turbodog Yoga in Chicago, IL. You can find his yoga teaching schedule and more information about him on his blog. When I tour, I notice that parts of my body start to hurt once that I begin sitting in a…

You may have noticed that Decibel hit the 100-issue mark earlier this year. You may have even heard we threw a little party to celebrate that achievement. But did you know we also filmed and it turned into a fucking movie? Yeah, you probably knew that, too. But did you know that it will finally…

As you probably know from the endless stream of obituaries, tributes, and remembrances, Lou Reed died this past Sunday morning. Interestingly, none of the prominent metal blogs have mentioned his passing, save for the odd snarky remark about how we’ll never have a sequel to Lulu now. And it’s understandable, I suppose, because Reed’s music…

Halloween is this Thursday. Decibel wants you to be ready. 1. Minor Threat-aping Texas Chainsaw Massacre T-shirt The genius behind this Salad Days EP cover re-imagining… …should start an agency with whoever came up with “Guilty of Being Dwight” pic below, stat: (Picture cribbed from the Salad Days: The D.C. Punk Revolution documentary Facebook page.)…

The solo project of the incredibly prolific Tim Yatras (Austere, Grey Waters, ex-Nazxul, ex-Woods of Desolation, etc), Germ is, in a lot of ways, a band in disguise – which is appropriate, considering it’s almost Halloween. Instead of being a sexy pirate or sexy pizza, though, this is a killer post-punk/new wave band dressed as…

Limited edition records are kind of stupid. Every record, even Michael Jackson’s Thriller, are limited. At least, that’s what the late great Doug Earp (he of Wyatt Earp Records; Repulsion fans take note) said to me one day while I was buying a Cathedral Soul Sacrifice 12″. And he was absolutely right. Nevertheless, labels continue…

Black Metal’s induction to the Decibel Hall of Fame was inevitable. There’s simply no getting around its influence.

Dearest death-heads, please affix your finest gurn of appreciation as we welcome an exclusive stream of “King of All”, a real chunky piece of slo-mo O.S.D.M. chug taken from Demonical’s gnarly forthcoming Metal Blade LP, Darkness Unbound. As you would expect from Demonical, Darkness Unbound is one unsophisticated beast; Demonical, lest we forget, are graduates…

Michigan’s From Hell is the latest quality act from the Motor City. Self-described as d-beat meets thrash meets goth, From Hell’s Dischange-covering-Converge-with-Boss-HM-2s-hooked-up-for-maximum-effect is right down our proverbial plate. The group’s new full-length, Heresy, has been out since June, but From Hell are just now premiering—thanks to Paper+Plastick Records—the video for Heresy’s most intense track, “Holy…

** We make it no secret we’re fans of My Dying Bride. From their Hall of Fame induction to innumerable citations in pages and blogs, My Dying Bride has appealed to our inner and outer miser for an age or two. Well, this session was originally sent off to My Dying Bride in June, hoping…

Back in the fall of 2010, we gave you an early double dose of Halloween and winter, courtesy of the Black Metal Hall of Fame special issue. Three years later, we’re taking our corpsepaint craving to the next demented level and unveiling the Top 100 Black Metal Albums of All Time. We corralled our staff…

We always enjoy finding cool new sound-sculptors out in the cyber world, especially when we can use this blog forum to turn other people on to some under-the-radar artists.  We love it even more when those artists’ musical ventures make progress beyond their own self-run webpages. Earlier this year, we featured Ukrainian drone-doomers Nonsun as…

It’s not even officially “out” (even though you can already download it if you have a digital subscription), but we’re already getting heat via Twitter for our new Brewtal Truth column in issue #110 where we take to task metal bands for flying the flag for Coors Light in their band promo photos. In one…

January 19th will go down in Decibel history as an auspicious moment.

Tokyo’s Melt-Banana has been airing their newfound status as a two-piece for the first time in North America for about a week now with about three more weeks to go. It’s been a tumultuous term for vocalist Yasuko “Yako” Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata that’s seen them embrace life as a duo (and almost break…

Ihsahn–a man who needs no introduction around these parts–has certainly not been bereft of musical ideas lately. He dropped his fifth solo album (coming a mere 16 months after its predecessor) earlier this week and is already talking about its follow-up. To celebrate the release of Das Seelenbrechen, which Adrien Begrand described in our latest…

We have some streaming goodness available for the Deciblog faithful today. Please check out the new tune “The Apparition” from Pentagram (Chile) below. Frontman Anton Reisenegger said the following about the track: “‘The Apparition’ must be one of my favorite tracks on the album because it has this amazing early Slayer vibe. Haunting The Chapel…

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…

Today we’re streaming the uber-brutal debut full-length from Columbus, Ohio skull-crushers Empire of Rats — and it’s basically an unforgiving swan dive into the metallic hardcore abyss. Check it out below, then preorder this monster as an early Halloween gift for yourself here before heading over to get tickets for the band’s A389 X Bash…

That stark, black and white photo of a line of men dangling from nooses on the cover of No One Is Alone If No One Is Alive doesn’t exactly paint Czar as a cheery band. They aren’t, really – but they also don’t sound as lifeless as one might expect.  they basically play noise rock, but…

This morning Decibel is pleased to exclusively premiere this video interview with Freya guitarist/visual artist Brendon Flynn in which he discusses the intricate, elegant artwork he created for the band’s most diverse and intriguing offering yet, Paragon of the Crucible: Preorder Paragon of the Crucible here. Check out a track from the album here. Download…

Even though they are just off the red-eye after spending 30 days playing 30 shows across Europe with Black Tusk, there is plenty juice left in Fight Amp. New Jersey/Philly’s undisputed heavyweight noise rock/HC/punk/sludge/OTHER champs have one show left on the calendar, but Mike McGinnis just wants to keep on going. The Deciblog caught up…