Chris Dick

How’d Highness come together?Brent Eyestone: Highness is a name I’ve wanted to use on “something” over the course of several years. There’s been just about as many lineups while the ultimate realization was being formed. Originally, the band was to be half of the All-American Rejects and half of Forensics when Mike, one of their…

You started recording in December 2012 and finished in April 2013. That’s a long time to track. Who are you? Metallica? I’m kidding. It was done in pieces, correct?Dez Fafara: [Laughs] Yes it was. The first part was that we had the demos and went on a two month run in the states and I…

Things always come full circle. And when they do it’s either super-rad or pretty depressing. For Repulsion’s first visit to Stockholm, Sweden, it’s super-rad. Why? Let’s just say, the extremely extremes of Sweden’s early metal scene influenced Flint, Michigan’s grindcore/death metal revolutionaries Repulsion and, in turn, the dudes from the city whose motto is “Strong,…

How would you describe Aosoth to a newcomer?BST: We’re a French black metal band. The project has been created in 2002, but started really being an active band when MKM (vocals) asked me to join as a guitarist and song writer. That led us to record our first EPs and our first album. What originally…

There are times when you need to strip away the blastbeats, the growling, the hyperbolic horror movie cover art, the hyper-aggressive posturing and just rock. Plain and simple rock. Clutch does it. Maybe they jam a bit, but the core is tried and true rock. Same with Zakk Wylde when he isn’t over using pinch…

OK, where’d this come from? Majestic Loincloth’s been in the works for a while, right?Richard Christy: Yes, I actually filmed Majestic Loincloth as a low budget live action film with all my metalhead drinking buddies back in Florida in 2002 and 2003. I’d gather everyone together on a Sunday, buy a case of beer, and…

Sight of Emptiness are the first melodic death metal act from Costa Rica. The six-piece are currently shopping their recently completed album, Instincts, to interested labels. Guest appearances include Christian Älvestam (AtomaA, Miseration), Glen Drover (Megadeth), Ralph Santolla (ex-Deicide, ex-Obituary), Ole Halvard Sveen (Lengsel), Whitfield Crane (Ugly Kid Joe), and the Costa Rican Minister of…

5. Saint Vitus. Crosses galore on the second Vitus logo. Three of them. For the Trinity perhaps. The original SVS logo only had one. Three’s a crowd, we say. But this logo is boss. Looks a bit cheap and overdone at first blush, but the barbed letters? Could be heavy metal cliché. Nope. Crown of…

For a long while, Shining (SWE) and Shining (NOR) were swappable entities to the uneducated metal hoi polloi. Thankfully, they’re hardly interchangeable sonically (and visually), as one’s firmly razor-deep in DBM and the other is applying jazz, rock, and black into something rather undefinable—they call it ‘blackjazz’—but altogether Norwegian. Guess which one we have on…

Contrary to popular belief, Carcass’s fourth full-length wasn’t the result of a bunch of product guys, A&R gurus and major label marketing geniuses.

The last time we had our balls in the same pool as Boston-based thrashers Ramming Speed was a long time ago. They were guest blogging about dive bars (HERE) and we were tickled florescent green. Since then, Ramming Speed have visited more dive bars, helped jean-jacketed heshers snap a neck or two, signed to Prosthetic…

Name one British thrash metal act from the Golden Age of Thrash that kicks ass and makes newcomers Evile look like prepubescent chipmunks. Do it. Xentrix? Cerebral Fix? Hellbastard? No, no, and no. OK, we’re way off. The Brits had their share of awesome. Sabbat, Onslaught, Lawnmower Deth, Sacrilege, Seventh Angel, and Acid Reign were…

The consensus seems to be “Amorphis is back.” Was process to create Circle any different from previous albums? The energy is palatable.Tomi Koivusaari: We started to think before recording this album that maybe we should change the process of making album this time, as the last four albums we did at same studio with almost…

If you were to ask us what the acronym S.O.D.O.M. means, we’d have to be honest with you. We don’t know. Storm of Death of Metal? If Sodom were Czech, it might work. Sacrifice of Dead on Mars? Maybe Giorgio Tsoukalos were involved in the song’s conception, then we’d give it a 86.5% match. Or,…

I’m trying to put a finger on The Formulas of Death, but I can’t. Was the intention to make an album that’s hard to fit into one easy category?Adam Zaars: No, that wasn’t the intention, but I’m not surprised to hear the question. The intention was just to create flowing music. It would have been…

We’re certainly entering strange space when a band like Purson is beloved by metalheads of sundry stripes and sick permutations. Self-described as “Vaudeville Carny Psych,” Purson—if lines between music styles, genres, and eras mean anything—could be the missing link between Mellow Candle and Black Sabbath. Or, Fairport Convention mixed with iconoclasts Coven. However, you want…

5. Carcass – Carcass has had a few logos over their storied and infamous career, but none of them evinces the manic, electric quality of the group’s music quite like this iteration. Its angular, slightly italicized letters, the long stems of the two “c”s and “r,” and the near interlocking of the double “s” imparts…

Back in April 2010, Decibel pitted Finntroll against Norway’s Troll in a brutal troll-off. The segment, brilliantly titled Under the Bridge, can be found here in dB #66 if you’re at all curious as to who won the bridge battle. Then, in the winter of the Year of Our (Dark) Lord, the festive Finns in…

Brilliant things happen in the age of the Internet. Like former Pestilence drummer Marco Foddis Googling himself and finding our “in search of Marco Foddis post” so we could induct Pestilence’s storied Consuming Impulse album into the Hall of Fame. The issue in which Foddis features is available HERE for the doubters out there. Now,…

First of all, are you crazy? A double album in 2013?Dirk Verbeuren: [Laughs] We kind of thought that at first, too. Speed [Strid] had come up with that idea. That’s something he had wanted to do. In his head he’s like, “I wanna do a double album.” When he first told us he wanted to…

The Negator monikor sounds like a Decepticon from Transformers, but musically the Hamburg-based black metal quintet are as vicious as they are obscure. Go on, tell us you’re a fan. Anyway, across three well-received traditional full-lengths, Negator has earned a small yet ardent following. Led by frontman Nachtgarm—who also served time in Dark Funeral following…

All things being fair, death metal was a morbid accident. Tape traders, zines, dudes who formed record labels and hordes of disenfranchised, rock ‘n’ roll-fed youth were all willing to risk societal abandonment and future professional pursuits to make the music they adored a reality.

When drummer Martin Lopez bowed out of Opeth at the group’s high water mark, people thought he was nuts. Turns out he just wanted to find himself, and aiding him on that journey is new (well, not so new if you’re European) “heavy” progressive act, Soen. Formed by Lopez and guitarist Kim Platbarzdis about six…

Whoever came up with the name “Freedom Fries,” or “Bars with Stars,” or “American Love Sticks” should be marched over to France and hanged off one of those fancy Rococo buildings they like to put on postcards. French fries aren’t even French. They’re Belgian. That’s how the origin story goes, but history has a way…

Immolation’s been kicking the death metal coffin for longer than most of you—they formed in 1988—have been alive. Go back a few more years when the Yonkers troupe were Rigor Mortis (not to be confused with the Texas-based Hall of Famers Rigor Mortis) and before that Defcon, well, it’s fair to say the surviving members…

5. Loudblast – Sublime Dementia 1993 (Semetary) Appearing with three tracks on Century Media’s cool In The Eyes of Death compilation in 1991, Loudblast were virtually unknown outside the four corners of France even though they’d released two full-lengths and a string of demos prior to Sublime Dementia. Loudblast twisted Schuldiner’s brutal/melodic idiosyncrasies (from Human)…

There are times when you just want to forget the world around you and just cut a Persian rug. Great rock records were made without worrying what Tom, Dick, and Harriet Tubman were up to and how they perceived a sound, a scene, a recording technique, or a pair of pants. Sweden’s Spiritual Beggars have…

Now, you might be thinking, “Oy, what’s this Cauldron song doing as a Deciblog premiere?!” We realize Cauldron’s new long-player hit the streets—in the UK and Europe at least—last autumn, but this is the first time the Canucks have Tomorrow’s Lost available to North American hesher fiends without the import price on new Earache venture…

The last time HOD made album-related headlines was with 2009’s Serpent on the Ibex Moon label. Well, denizens of death, destruction, and ophidian-related apocalypse scenarios, San Antonio-based HOD have prepared the The Uncreated Demo, as a stop-gap EP between Serpent and as-yet-label-signed long-player, Book of the Worm. Self-described as “real fucking metal,” HOD—not to be…

5. Thou Art Lord – Thou Art Lord’s first logo was sort of a cross between the Mysticum and Mayhem’s logos. Not sure why they changed it—several times, in fact—to a dumb font or a hand-scrawled atrocity, but the Greek supagroup got it right. Just look at it! It’s Christ’s greatest foe. The symmetry and…