Chris Dick

There’s some indication that nuevo thrash gods Municipal Waste are, to put it mildly, a tad nutty. Case in point, the Richmondians’ near-takeover of the Deciblog. Search for Municipal Waste in our handy dandy search mechanism and not one but FIVE pages turn up. Inside those five pages you’ll find the Waste with long dong…

Maurice de Jong (aka ‘M’ or ‘Mories’) must’ve lived a tortured life or have continually horrific dreams, ’cause his musical output is absolutely disconcerting. I would point to his insanely prolific (and celebrated) outfit Gnaw Their Tongues (or Cloak of Altering), but this time it’s his near-decade old project De Magia Veterum, an industrial-powered, chaos-inclined…

** In most cases, Decibel features “all the metal that’s fit to print”, but there are times when metal’s meta, so when letters are falling out of the margins and don’t have a home, they go to the Deciblog. The following interview is the full transcript for the Winterfylleth feature in Decibel #98 [available HERE]….

France’s Hell Militia have been kicking (unfortunate) Euro ass since the early aughts, so it stands to reason there’s a “sizeable” contingent of believers into the group’s three full-length albums, the most recent of which is Jacob’s Ladder on the Season of Mist label. “Jacob’s Ladder reveals the inner side of Hell Militia,” says the…

How instrumental was the faux-documentary/film The Hellstrom Chronicle to the making of Insects?v.03/170: The film wasn’t that essential on our musical concept, but it surely influenced the overall lyrical concept on Insects. Its abysmal mood and the menacing close-ups of actually small creatures give a special kind of impression which helped to form pictures in…

The quote, “This is a good place to start where we left off”, seems appropriate for death metal outfit General Surgery. The first new material since 2009’s Corpus In Extremis: Analysing Necrocriticism effort, Like An Ever Flying Limb—yes, that’s a nod to Hall of Famers Dismember—follows in the gory, early Carcass-like footsteps of General Surgery’s…

Whether it’s the weather, the water, chowda or some other supernatural force at play, Massachusetts has struck again with venerated metalcore (a deprecated term replaced by the New Wave of American Heavy Metal) outfit Killswitch Engage.

Samhain is upon us! It’s better known as All Hallow’s Eve or Halloween these days, but that’s the Christians-supplanting-an-ancient-pagan-ritual-for-conversion-purposes naming convention thing. Ah, they did such dastardly deeds all over Europe, the Near East, Africa, Asia, and so forth. Anyway, it’s time for the leaves to turn a golden brown, the air to have a…

Only a short few months ago, Killing Joke frontman Jeremy “Jaz” Coleman went mysteriously missing. Canceled shows happened and, well, a bunch of (admittedly European) press covered Killing Joke when they would’ve anyway. Turns out Coleman was running around the Western Sahara, working on a solo album and a book. Neat. Coleman’s never been a…

Thirty years. What does that mean for Sodom to have been doing extreme metal for three decades? That’s a long time for any career let alone a metal band. Tom Angelripper: Yes, I can’t believe that we are still around with touring, recording, and all the activities. When we formed the band in ’82 we…

Informed by early Emperor, inspired by Anaal Nathrakh and motivated by long-ignored black metallers Mysticum, Rage Nucléaire might just be Canada’s best new black metal outfit. There seem to be too few from a country dubbed, “The Great White North”, but I digress. Anyway, the history of Rage Nucléaire surprises. No, the French-Canadians weren’t part…

Back in May, Decibel streamiered Evocation’s “Through The Darkened Peril” from the group’s killer demo/unreleased compilation Evoked From Demonic Depths – The Early Years. In that post, we gave a little background in why they mattered to a changing ’90s scene and how their 2006 reformation—an act of revenge, really—has given five dudes from Sweden…

Although our European brothers and sisters in despondent doom may’ve had the jump on Decibel this time around, it doesn’t deter our dismal displays of adoration—check out their Hall of Fame record example—for the venerated My Dying Bride. So much so, we’ve got four songs from the Brits’ latest long-player streaming. These tunes of torment…

ODERUS ASKS DEZ: 1. What is that thing on your chin? Dez: It’s a Tattoo to ward off Scary Monsters, much like yourself, my monstrous friend! In all honesty I tattooed my face to separate myself from the pack! Also it reminds me that the corporate world cubicle thing was / is NOT A LIFE…

by Scott Evans Ian wrote Part I right after Friday, our setup day. I’m writing this a month or two later, but I’ll pick up where he left off. Besides Ian’s rig relentlessly shitting the bed during setup, our tracking weekend went pretty smoothly. Since I engineer and play in the band at the same…

It ain’t often we say, “Hey, check out this black metal band with a great bass player!” Normally, bass players in black metal get the Jason Newsted treatment, but Borre-based Nidingr have two in guitarists Blargh and Teloch. Why have a full-time bass player when you have two guys with enough talent to sound like…

by Ian Miller There’s nothing like hearing a good drummer play a good drum kit in a room designed expressly for the purpose. In this case, the drummer is recovering from a head injury, but who can tell? I’m Ian Miller. I play bass in Kowloon Walled City. We’re about to record our third record,…

After nearly a decade of European dominance of all things anti-Abrahamic metal—starting with Bathory’s Viking-themed classic Hammerheart—Agalloch issued debut album Pale Folklore.

“I think ‘Doom-Jazz’ means playing heavy music, but not robotically,” said bassist Alexi Papadopoulos to Decibel when we were all much younger. “We like to give ourselves the elbow room for self expression. We are very scientific about our modes and time signatures and cues, but that’s what makes it fun.” That’s exactly the type…

How do you separate the debut and Ariettes Oubliées… as musical entities?Fursy Teyssier: I’d say that Ariettes Oubliées… is a much more dense and solid album than Septembre… as the concept of Les Discrets became more precise in my head, so I knew exactly which atmospheres I wanted to create and what the album needed…

It’s isn’t often the “extremely extreme” or the “new noise” transitions from death, black, doom, or whatever to punk rock, so on September 19th, 2012 the Deciblog puts on a pair of 20-year old Doc Martens, trades our jean jacket with the Kreator backpatch for a leather one with studs and self-painted logos, and defies…

According to Russian linguistic experts, appending the suffix “ka” to the end of a word is to mean it’s little or so small it’s cute.

So, what happened with Slumber? I know there were record label complications, but I didn’t know there were member issues.Ehsan Kalantarpour: After the first and only album Fallout Slumber got locked in a doom/death style. We felt that the album set way too strict formula on what we could do next. We wanted something much…

1. “Red All Over”Travis Ryan: Just a song about violence. Nice and simple… And bloody. Leon del Muerte: The fastest song I’ve ever written. This one and “Under the Weight…” were completed towards the end of the writing cycle, but I knew for sure that this would be the opener. That’s two-for-two on opening songs…

According New Orleans-based sludge doom outfit haarp, their music is a weapon. Not the kind of weapon the U.S. government has in the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (H.A.A.R.P.), but more the ancient Celtic god kind; a weapon of enchantment. Though we really wouldn’t say our experience with haarp—stylized in all lowercase letters—is enchanting…

First off, Michigan City is not in Michigan. It’s actually in Indiana, has views of the Chicago cityline, is closer to Gary, Indiana than anyone—even Michael Jackson—would ever want to be. Second off, Michigan City houses newly—as of 2008 at least—spawned sludge-doom outfit Yellowtooth. If you have yet to hear of Yellowtooth and their brand…

The last we had heard of Swedish black metal terrorists Ofermod, they were busy promoting their 2008 debut Tiamtü full-length and acting all anti-cosmic gangster—rumor has it headcheese Michayah Belfagor (aka Mika Hakola) has been involved in all sorts of untoward activity—while the rest of the world spun and burned like Belfagor and his unmerry…

What do goat heads, goat head masks, inverted crosses, bullet belts and improperly held axes have in common? Normally, we’d say Sadistik Exekution or Impaled Nazarene during their sado-battle-goat phase, but the answer is neither. It’s actually Greek duo Satan’s Wrath, who, if we’re being kind, are a bit of throwback to times when posing…

We’ve been geeked on Finland’s answer to My Dying Bride since 2003 when the fearless Finns issued debut album, The Morning Never Came. Years and four full-lengths later—the latest of which is the subtle yet stunning Emerald Forest And The Blackbird—, we’re still nuts about Swallow The Sun. So much so, we pre-empted the album…

The little birdies over at Century Media want us to present a sweet contest where One (1) winner can get tickets to see Decibel cover darlings Paradise Lost [issue #92, HERE], Devin Townsend, and Katatonia in the righteous flesh when the bad-ass tour of late summer kicks off September 4th in Seattle, Washington. But guess…