Adem Tepedelen

Metal is getting old. We don’t mean boring and tired (well, occasionally that), we mean that it now has quite a history stretching back to a time when many of its current adherents weren’t even born. That decade known as “the Eighties,” when the NWOBHM happened and modern metal as we know it was pretty…

Do we have your attention now? Good. First, we need to address a few things about this photo, which we must admit, we find quite hilarious. #1) No live animals were harmed. These taxidermied critters—a stoat and a squirrel—had previously met their demise before they had bottles of what was, at the time (July 2010),…

Let us first just throw out a few numbers at you, just to give you an idea as to what the competition is like at the Great American Beer Festival, held by the Brewers Association every September in Denver. • 526 breweries from 48 states plus Puerto Rico, submitted beers • 3,930 beers vied for…

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, once in a while, on Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and said dud…

Being the senior member (in age, that is) of the Decibel contribs, any time anything “old school” comes around, it frequently gets kicked our way. And we’re totally OK with that. Especially when we get to shine a little light on a burgeoning metal fest in Baltimore that’s all about celebrating old-school metal. Defenders of…

Because of the stature they have attained, much of the metal-loving world puts the Big Four as the sort of holy, uh, quadrinity of thrash metal. These are the bands—all American—that we consider the originators and finest progenitors of the genre. But not so fast. If we’re to look at many of the Big Four’s…

OK, vinyl nerds, pay attention. What you’re about to witness is a little teaser from the fellas in Skeletonwitch and their label Prosthetic Records. In case you haven’t heard, Skeletonwitch will be releasing their fourth long-player, Forever Abomination, via Prosthetic on October 11 in North America. It’ll be available in three different formats but the…

It’s big news in the metal world when an album (or EP, or whatever) arrives with John Arch’s vocals on it. His Bruce Dickinson-like tenor was a beacon in the mid-’80s U.S. metal scene when he fronted Fates Warning on their now-classic first three albums. After he left the band, however, he basically put music…

Take a listen to our premiere of the new song, “Altar of Lies,” from The Fucking Wrath’s new album, Valley of the Serpent’s Soul. The Fucking Wrath “Altar of Lies” by Decibel Magazine Heavy, huh? Well, this aural onslaught is nothing compared to the brutality one occasionally suffers at the hands of one’s offspring. The…

Victoria, British Columbia, is on an island, and as a result gets skipped by 9 out of 10 touring bands. Other than, say, Anchorage, Alaska, this is probably the most inconvenient city of any size on the West Coast to get to. It’s the capital of BC, but it’s distinctly removed from the rest of…

OK, we apologize for the somewhat misleading headline, but we stand by its essential truth. Ex-Jesus Lizard/Scratch Acid frontman David Yow will be presenting his first solo NYC art exhibit called “Glass Gas Mask” this week at Fuse Gallery (93 2nd Ave, New York City). If you thought his lyrics and onstage antics were out…

We don’t care how many records, CDs, T-shirts or sweat pants a band has sold in its career, it hasn’t officially “made it,” in our estimation, until it gets a beer named after it (or one of its songs). That is winning, no matter how you measure it. Even a little ol’ noise/math band from…

The musical mavericks of Clutch, in our estimation, are the perfect band to represent the spirit of craft beer. The Maryland-based quartet has done its own thing musically and within the business side of the industry, and has been rewarded by a staunch following of diehard fans. They aren’t sexy, they aren’t trendy, but man…

For whatever reason, when people talk about influential metal scenes of yore, the L.A.area  just doesn’t seem to get the credit it’s due. Sure, the whole Hollywood/Sunset Strip glam thing left its mark in the mid-’80s, but some of the world’s biggest and influential, ahem, “real” metal bands arose from the L.A. area much earlier…

Leslie West will never be known as the “Eric Bedard of heavy rock.” The former Mountain guitarist/vocalist, who’s now well into his 60s, is apparently un-fucking-stoppable. Mere weeks ago the brother, who is diabetic, had to have emergency surgery to amputate one of his legs just below the knee. For most 60-something guitarists that would…

Unearth and the generous folks at Metal Blade Records have provided us with a little swag to give away to celebrate the recent release of the band’s new album, Darkness in the Light, and their current stint on the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival tour making the rounds through the middle of August (see dates…

It’s a well-established fact that we like to drink beer and listen to metal. But second only to that pursuit is being able to talk brewskis with other like-minded beer geeks. So upon hearing that Tombs bassist Carson Daniel James is an equally devout barley-pop imbiber, we called him to talk (and drink) beer. Decibel…

Zymurgy magazine recently revealed the “Best Beers in America,” a list derived from more than 28,000 votes from readers around the world. While Russian River’s Pliny the Elder imperial IPA topped the list for the third year in a row, Stone Brewing, of Escondido, California placed three of their brewtally named beers—Arrogant Bastard, Ruination and…

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and said dud is, in fact, The…

In which we re-assess Slayer‘s 1998 flirtation with nu metal. 

In 1985, any punk band with the temerity to add metal elements to their sound were rather haphazardly lumped into the “crossover” category.

The decision to induct Venom’s debut, Welcome to Hell, rather than the band’s second album, Black Metal, came down to one simple fact: there would be no Black Metal—the album or the genre—were it not for Welcome to Hell.

Because Angel Witch’s debut turned out to be not only their best album, but the only one recorded with anything resembling a stable lineup, it seems all the more precious today.

After 60-plus Hall of Fame inductions, one thing that stands out is that precious few of those albums contain and are best known for a single truly classic song.

It’s strange that the one of the cornerstones of doom is actually one of the most lyrically positive albums in the entire secular metal canon.

It’s hard to say who was more shocked—punks or metalheads—by hardcore band D.R.I. signing with Metal Blade Records via the label’s new Death Records imprint in 1985.

In 1985, the hardcore punk and metal scenes were like the pre-Civil Rights deep South: segregated. The two just didn’t mix.

As far as Hall of Fame inductees go, the making of Black Sabbath’s ninth album, their first with former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio, easily ranks as one of the most drama-filled.

It’s a stretch to call Diamond Head’s 1980 debut, Lightning to the Nations, “extreme” metal. In their era, the über-influential New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Diamond Head—four teenage mates from Stourbridge, England—were well-respected practitioners of a burgeoning new form of metal that was brash, raw and relatively fast.