Chris Dick

Hear a new Acrimonious song, “Elder Of The Nashiym!”

Obsidian Arc
Vision quest
dB rating: 8/10

Azarath, formed by Inferno in 1998, has released an impressive array of technically proficient, religiously fervent (against Christianity) death metal over the course of 16 years. The group’s newest album, In Extremis, yet again proves why Poland, of all Eastern European countries, is at the forefront of the death metal movement.

Formed in Krakow, Poland in 2010, Medico Peste aren’t your typical run of the mill black metal offering. Neither Scandinavian, Germanic, French, or British, the Poles have tapped into a sound that’s altogether alien and uninviting. Like the darkest dark.

There have been a handful of occasions when the beast rises out of the Lonestar State. From Absu and Divine Eve to Rigor Mortis and Devastation, the great state of Texas has produced some of the genre’s most intense acts. That tradition carries on with Laredo-based Venereal Baptism. Certainly, with a name like Venereal Baptism, there are only a few paths on which to tread. Brutal death metal, goregrind (sadly, this is still a thing), and black metal. Well, out of Laredo’s diseased womb Venereal Baptism is delivered to the iniquitous world of black metal.

Come hear the new black metal burner from Inferno while it’s hot!

Udo Dirkschneider will be 65-years old this year. 65. Undoubtedly, Udo is part of the golden generation. At his age, he should be enjoying a fine brew with his mates while savoring the warm breeze of Wuppertal nights. But, no, he’s not. He’s hitting the road

Over the course of metal’s storied history there are examples of long careers (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death, etc.), but there’s also the opposite. Bands, most promising, genre-leaders/benders, who issued a lone album or EP and then vanished for one reason or another. At Decibel, we’re more than pleased to praise the long-comings of bands whose careers have lasted a decade or more, but there’s an important slice of career-cutting bands that we’d like to highlight.

If there’s one black metal album that changed black metal—in almost every respect—it’s Dimmu Borgir’s Death Cult Armageddon.

For the better part of the ’90s, Enslaved‘s debut album, Vikingligr Veldi, was considered (along with Frost, of course) a quintessential piece in any collection worth its weight in plastic and cardboard. Available only on CD (first without a barcode, then with) on Deathlike Silence Productions (then on Voices of Wonder), the pivotal non-black metal full-length transported listeners to fjords, snow-capped mountains, dense Nordic forests, and the worship of mythical gods.

The last time Fides Inversa released a full-length (2014’s Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans) Ebola was making its way across West Africa, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared off the Gulf of Thailand, ISIL begins its terror campaign across northern Iraq, and Pope Paul VI is beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.

Appalling Ascension
Dark matters
dB rating: 8/10

The New Wave of British Heavy Metal wasn’t a movement. Until it was a movement. Early on, bands—mostly categorized as hard rock—merely created music the only way they knew how.

Bethlehem
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning
dB rating: 9/10

For Saxon’s Wheels of Steel [February 2017, #148] interviews, we were able to gather all five original members. As required by Hall of Fame edict #1. The current and former members of Britain’s heavy metal legends couldn’t have been nicer and more talkative. Graham, Steve, Biff, Pete, and Paul spun all kinds of fun and interesting stories about the events leading up to landmark album Wheels of Steel and what happened shortly thereafter.

Listen to Shaarimoth‘s excellent metal of death in “Faceless Queen of Bloodstained Dreams”. We’ve already bowed to our new god. Now, it’s your turn.

There are few bands as intense as Nails. From a resource perspective–the group’s a trio–Nails make an incredible amount of noise and for all their aggressiveness they’re instantly relatable, like few bands in Nails’ proverbial sphere (and outside their sphere).

Decibel synch up with Dark Tranquillity vocalist Mike Stanne and guitarist Nik Sundin to discuss Atoma and the events that allowed it to be the great album it is.

Grave Digger aren’t the most celebrated of groups at Decibel. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know or understand the importance the Germans, who formed 36 years ago, played on (European) heavy metal. From debut, Heavy Metal Breakdown, to new album, Healed by Metal, Grave Digger embodies the spirit of the genre.

Devin Townsend needs no introduction. That being said, for sake of formality, we’re introducing Canada’s most inspiring musician as Canada’s most inspiring (and slightly off-kilter) musician. Townsend should’ve never created his newest album, Transcendence. He was already on to something else–namely Casualties of Cool–but then something ordered his brain in Townsend’s general disorder.

Czech Republic’s most active, adventurous, and influential band, Root, are almost in their third decade. Formed in 1987, when their country and the world was in a different place, Root nevertheless managed to emanate outward from their industrial home of Brno.

Swedish melodic death metallers Dark Tranquillity are well known around these parts. The group’s discography is well documented in interview, review, and Hall of Fame form. Now that the Swedes have a new album out, the wonderfully crafted Atoma, it’s time we do our due diligence to see what’s brewing.

Sepulchral Psalms from the Abyss of Torment
Inverted, they’ve lived their lives
dB rating: 8/10

For the past four years, Tasmanian black metallers Ruins have been working on their fifth album, Undercurrent. Without the pressures of most bands–writing, recording, touring–frontman Alex Pope, drummer Dave Haley, guitarist Joe Haley, and bassist Kai Summers were afforded time and space to realize their latest black metal vision.

Let’s put it this way: Opeth now aren’t the Opeth of the mid-’90s or the mid-’00s. Older, wiser, better musicians, and better businessmen, Opeth, namely frontman/songwriter/elder statesman Mikael Åkerfeldt, have also changed their sound, if only to equal the bands Åkerfeldt admired as far back as we can all remember. Actually, the change isn’t new. The change dates back to 2011’s often misunderstood, but nonetheless incredible Heritage record, when Opeth closed the chapter on death metal and opened a new one on dark, progressive hard rock.

There’s death metal. And there’s brutal death metal. While the line, for most laymen, is either blurred or non-existent, things ramp up quickly when Sweden’s Deranged feel like an album’s due. There’s death metal and then there’s Deranged! Five years in the making, following 2011’s barbaric Cut Carve Rip Serve, Deranged’s new album, Struck By A Murderous Siege, finds the Swedes in full-on rage mode. Throughout the group’s untethered ninth album, they bark rabidly and relentlessly, as if there’s no concept of an “off” switch.

“A shifting vortex of horrific black metal, at first relentless in its force and momentum yet giving way to a metamorphosis that is utterly bleak and haunting. A chilling vocal performance by Hekte Zaren that combines scathing black metal vocals with dismal funeral operatics, sets this gem far apart from the redundant and the mundane.”

If Sarcofago, Watain, and Beherit got into a winner-takes-all fist fight, it might end up sounding like Kyy. If chaos, disorder, fervent calls to the Nameless One are our future, then Kyy might be the soundtrack to it all.

The first Justify Your Shitty Taste I wrote for Decibel covered, in detail, Dissection’s Reinkaos album, Jon Nödtveidt’s divisive, not-at-all-like Storm of the Light’s Bane comeback album.

Ulver traded their wolves’ skin for electronica and trip-hop 16 years ago. Are you over it yet?