Chris Dick

Retro is cool. Retro is where the girls are at. Retro is where the dollars are at. If you’re retro, you’ve got it made. Unless you’re in the business of retro heavy metal. Then, you just get the girls. Just ask Swedes Saturn. With just a few strums of their throwback axes and bygone haircuts,…

** Germany’s Dark Fortress have plied black metal’s murky, obsidian-colored waters for the better part of 20 years. In that time, they’ve crafted seven full-length, all of which have gone on to acclaim and recognition. Unlike most bands, Dark Fortress haven’t played it easy across their varied discography. They’ve experimented, tried new ways to mold…

“Cursed Redeemer is in my opinion a bit rawer and more live-oriented than our previous stuff,” pontificates Miasmal stringbanger Pontus to Metalship, “with a tad more rock ‘n’ roll thrown into the mix. I think you can hear that we’ve been playing a lot live since the first album, we have grown together a bit…

Every metalhead has a few skeletons in their respective closet. And by skeletons, we mean musical skeletons not anything particularly untoward or, possibly, illegal. Growing up first on pop music, then on cock rock, and then with thrash, death, black, and every fucking sub-genre (and sub-sub-genre) offshoot, it’s pretty easy to see and hear where…

** The original interview with Theologian’s Lee M. Bartow is featured in our stupendously awesome, but-not-so-metal “noise issue” (HERE). So moved by Bartow’s answers to our questions, we felt compelled to post the entire transcript while, as the saying goes, the iron is hot. Bartow’s not one to joy around and his music–self-admitted as “industrial…

It’s been three long years since The Haunted dropped surprise album, Unseen, on metaldom. Peter Dolving is no longer part of the band. Ceremonious or not. Former throater Marco Aro has returned, and with him a viciousness not heard on Unseen or The Dead Eye. The Swedes, in effect, are back! While some of you…

** The original interview Cut Hands’ William Bennett is featured in our groundbreakingly awesome “noise issue” (HERE). What follows below is the full transcript. If you’re adventurous enough to you’ll succumb to Bennett’s Afro Noise. What is Afro Noise? William Bennett: This was the name of the debut Cut Hands record, essentially referring to two…

** UK dark rockers Thine have a new full-length out. The Dead City Blueprint is probably an album not on your radar, unless you’ve followed the group since A Town like This back in the late ’90s. Should it be on your radar? Yes, if dark, melodic, melancholic, honest metal-infused rock is in your wheelhouse….

** Anathema’s on the cusp of a breakthrough. Actually, the Liverpudlians have been on said cusp for the better part of 15 years. But that’s neither here nor there. Music is always about right place and right time. That place and time have come for Anathema on, Distant Satellites. Like previous album, Weather Systems, the…

5. Sabbat Brit thrashers Sabbat were among a select few to come from the island to have made a genuine impact. To this very day, Dreamweaver remains singular. The group’s logo also has similar import. Like most thrash metal logos, it’s readable at a distance yet it has an edge to it. Each letter in…

“It’s been an accomplishment for us to complete the recording of our debut album and work with people that we never thought we’d have the opportunity to create music with, and it’s an honour to sign with Season of Mist and to be part of such an eclectic label and team,” says UK grind/sludge hybrid…

** When I cornered Lantlôs braintrust Markus Siegenhort (aka Herbst), I didn’t expect him to be so un-German. Whatever that means. Like the meaning behind the word “lantlôs” Siegenhort is more like a global guy, his music unmoored from the traps of what has been and will continue to be German black metal. Not that…

Natten Med De Levande Finntroll, Finntroll’s new album, translates to “Night With The Living Finntroll”. It spans a massive 19 tracks across the group’s discography. Captured in 2008 at Amsterdam’s Melkweg Concert Hall, the Natten Med De Levande Finntroll show went down as one of the group’s best. It’s fitting then that Finntroll’s original three–Trollhorn,…

“Well, from the get go, we wanted to write a straightforward heavy record from start to finish,” says guitarist Steven Funderburk in a recent interview with No Clean Singing. “We had nothing but heavy grooving in mind. It just made sense to have a title that not only fit with the lyrical content, but with…

** Death metal record of the year? It might just be Vanhelgd’s new album, Relics of Sulphur Salvation. Featured in DB (June #116), we decided mainman Mattias Frisk had too much to say than we could fit in print. So, we took out the full transcript for ‘heads everywhere. Read on and don’t sleep on…

What happens when members of Revocation, Municipal Waste, Goes Cube and Freshkills get in a digital room together, run through a few ideas over craft beer (presumably picked and curated by none other than Dave Witte), realize they have less time than they ever had before but decide to form a new music project? That…

Back in 2002, Relapse had the hairy balls to reissue a relatively unknown yet cult favorite in God Macabre’s The Winterlong. This was well before labels X, Y, and Z got on the reissue bandwagon of unfurling low visibility releases like they were unmined gold. Anyway, organized with full consent of the band by ex-Relapse…

“[Splinters] is taking everything from The Fragile King and pushed it to the extremes in every direction,” says Vallenfyre’s Gregor Mackintosh. “There are songs that are more doom oriented, like funeral doom. There are really fast songs, too. We had paid homage to our influences on the last record. This one has a lot of…

** March 2014. An eternity ago. We featured Behemoth on the cover, in which frontman Adam ‘Nergal’ Darski goes through his tribulations with career, state, and cancer. Darski’s also a bit of a traveler, too. We found five quotes that weren’t used for the March 2014 issue (DB #113) that remind us why Darski (and…

Back in the day, the “produced by” byline was a marketing ploy to get heavy metal fans into one band, well, into another. Easy marketing from the ground—a classic record or two—up. Swedish producer Tomas Skogsberg is renowned for his name attachment to several pivotal records throughout the ‘90s before he gave way to fellow…

A quick look at the track listing to Vanhelgd’s upcoming album, Relics of Sulphur Salvation, and one might surmise lead Helgder Mattias “Flesh” Frisk has a worm fetish. The word ‘maskätna’ translates loosely to ‘wormy’ and the track title “May the Worms Have Mercy on My Flesh” leaves little to the imagination. Turns out it’s…

For most Americans, the earliest Scorpions song we remember is “The Zoo,” “No One Like You” or mega-hit “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” But the Hannover-based hard rockers had a storied history well before they were MTV and rock radio darlings.

** Finnish death metal lords Corpsessed have come out of an unlikely grave. Formed in 2007 in the quaint town of Järvenpää from Tyranny and BeDimmed members, the Finns quickly set out to craft death based on their predecessors–no need to name names, really–but with a modern, individual touch. The group’s debut EP The Dagger…

** Norwegian thrashers Nocturnal Breed have been kicking it old-school for the better part of the last 15 years. Formed by guys originally associated with the black metal scene, but are now fully entrenched in the rigors of thrash, Nocturnal Breed know exactly what they’re doing on new album, Napalm Nights, the group’s first in…

Record Store Day (RSD) is tomorrow, April 19th. Record Store Day was created to celebrate and extract cash from habitual brick and mortar record store junkies (hey, Decibel are record store junkies). But the best thing about RSD is that labels, large and small, produce cool one-offs for collectors (nay, junkies) to stash, drool on,…

Gospel of the Witches is a new project of Karyn Crisis (Crisis), Davide Tiso (Ephel Duath), Ross Dolan (Immolation), Danny Walker (Intronaut). If the lineup wasn’t cool enough, the musical statement — made by Ephel Duath’s Tiso — is quite something else. Check out Crisis’s explanation of the project. Says Crisis: “The album is a…

By Justin Foley, DOWNLOAD THE SONGS HERE The Golden Era of American Independent Noise Rock (GEAINR) was the early to mid 1990s and the GEAINR Golden Format (GEAINRGF) was the 7”. At the time, putting out a 7” was a potentially quick and cheap way for a band to get people interested in their music…

Gainesville, Florida’s Frameworks aren’t on your radar. If you’re into stuff like Slint and Sincebyman, well, they should be on your radar. Self-described–we think they’re trying to be funny–as “Lounge Screamo” or “Tropical Punk”, Frameworks recalls a time when playing hardcore with a bit of gloom in it wasn’t cool or respected. You had to…

When it comes to describing Sons of Huns’ music we’re at a bit of a loss. Nektar mixed with Black Sabbath mixed with Kill ‘Em All-era Metallica? Steamhammer mixed with Sleep mixed with Ace of Spades-era Motörhead? Sure, any and all of it. The Portland trio’s style also picks up heavy influence from ’70s sci-fi,…

** When we premiered “The Perennial Link” (HERE) off Morbus Chron’s new album, Sweven, we were pretty bummed. Not about the song–the song is basically untouchable–but that we didn’t get the opportunity to stream more, like the entire album. If you’re wondering why there’s so much chatter about Sweven, well, it’s an incredible entry into…