Chris Dick

I covered Asphyx in Decibel #89 [Municipal Waste cover] and from that feature, I quickly realized that across Asphyx’s impressive, if somewhat under sung, discography, the Dutch outfit has the word ‘death’ in nearly half of its discography; 3 out of 8, to be more precise. Well, that fact wasn’t lost on drummer/songwriter Bob Bagchus,…

Chances are if you haven’t heard Wolvhammer, you may’ve read some of drummer Heath Rave’s Deciblog rants on the virtues of Pantera’s Power Metal opus, peeped his Varg “visionary” tattoo primers, or checked out members of Wolvhammer in mid-tour exploit. “I definitely think this is a well thought out lineup for a tour,” beams Rave…

Each Gehenna album had different sonic attributes. From the eerie black metal of The First Spell through the death metal disposition of Murder and then back to brutal black hybrid on WW. Do you recall wanting each album to be singular, regardless of genre?Dolgar: We always try not to make the same album twice of…

It ain’t often the Deciblog gets its dirty paws on black metal. It’s even rarer that when we do get black metal to unfurl to the masses like some plague-wielding flag of hate and disgust, it’s of the weird, wait-is-this-real variety.

Funeral doom purveyors Evoken have been added to select dates on the inaugural Decibel Magazine Tour. With Behemoth, Watain, The Devil’s Blood, and In Solitude capping the tour, Evoken’s rare appearances will certainly ramp up interest in the tour’s extreme yet diverse sound and vision. Evoken will exclusively play the songs of death and despair…

By now, Norway progressive/black-ish/folk-ish metallers Borknagar should be a familiar entity to most ‘bangers. They’ve managed nine quality albums — including new long-player Urd — across a 17-year timeline and had the balls to recall and then host former frontman ICS Vortex alongside screamer/crooner Vintersorg, which is something most bands don’t do unless they’re on…

Decibel illustrator and layout guru Bruno Guerreiro is curating his first art show in Philadelphia. Huzzah! Held at Kung Fu Necktie, a neighborhood-centric watering hole/club, Guerreiro is aiming for the highest highs, displaying his illustrations to a backdrop of outer space heavy — in the form of local astro rockers Rosetta and Restorations, Brooklyn-based doom…

Teaming up with Warbringer and label home Century Media Records, we’ve been able to score — for you, of course — a pretty swell prize pack for doing almost the same amount of work as flipping over a couch cushion.

To honor national prog day — yes, it really is 2.1.12 here in the United States, where we don’t mess up the date by transposing the month and day — Decibel was originally going to get Rush to perform Opeth covers in our offices, but logistics proved the event’s undoing. They were all up for…

No strangers to the north east thrash metal scene—then dominated by Hall of Famers Anthrax—New Jerseyans Overkill famously peeked out from the underground on ‘88’s Under the Influence.

Metal writers (sorry, not journos) are subjected to a slew of email proclamations from publicists, labels, and other label-centric interests. Stuff like “on tour now”, “new promo materials”, “x band celebrates the release of y album”, and so on. Basically, every day it’s email after email of one band’s new album release after another. Well,…

How does the commentary track thing work? Are you talking over the music in real-time or is the commentary track spliced in after it’s finalized? Fenriz: Lord have mercy! Just listening to Viking’s Do or Die album from ‘87 on vinyl and starting the interview. Well, it works like a commentary track on a movie—I…

There are game changers and then there are game changers. I wouldn’t say Hard ‘N Heavy’s Grindcore Special Issue was a game changer in the same way Entombed, Paradise Lost, Napalm Deafth (phonetic spelling, natch), Bolt Thrower, Tiamat, and many others were in the dimmest part of the early ’90s, but it, unlike any Xeroxed…

#5 – Halloween End of the ’70s to be exact… But hey, Michael Myers is a bad-ass and one of those slow stalker killers that for some reason never go down and make the body count go higher by each sequel. It has to be said though that this is also one of the very…

What do you make of Second Ring of Power after all these years? It’s getting a second chance at life, so to speak.Jan Kuhanen: All of our albums have been re-released, so Second… is in no way specific. Plus, we have some bonus stuff with all of them except with the first one. Ismo Toivonen:…

The ever-resourceful (not to mention corporately brave) folks at Scion A/V have targeted Los Angeles as the city where they’ll corral a label — this time Nuclear Blast Records — and ask select number of the label’s artists to perform for an audience. Of course, they’ll be performing for an audience. It’s not like Deicide’s…

There isn’t just a horde of zombies coming from Camp Terrorizer. There are hordes of zombies. Plural. As the first Terrorizer, helmed by the inimitable Pete “Commando” Sandoval, album since 2006’s Darker Days Ahead, Hordes of Zombies repositions two members of Morbid Angel as the bad-ass mother-monster truckers we’ve come to expect (at least since…

Self-described “occult rock” outfit The Devil’s Blood garnered a fair amount of attention on 2008’s Come Reap EP. Now that time separates Come Reap from The Devil’s Blood’s lauded debut, 2009’s The Time Of No Time Evermore, the mysterious, Fenriz-approved Dutch duo has prepared yet another ritual in the form of The Thousandfold Epicentre, a…

In a universe of unpronounceable band names from cultures far flung and unfathomably distant, the Deciblog herewith and hereby and therefore brings you Ptahil (allegedly mouthed “Pet-a, Hill”). The band name has its origins in the Mandaean religion (Wikipedia, thanks), which like all things cool as fuck, from an occultist’s point of view, emanates from…

This is the album that solidified Diamond’s legend as not only one of the great metal vocalists of all time, but a great horror storyteller (and songwriter) with a flair for the dramatic.

It’s not often we bring you a bit of rock swagger. Mostly it’s darkly blasts, noisy grinds, or the brutalest of death that streams to the masses on the Deciblog. Mostly. Today, three days after an old fat dude in a puffy candy cane outfit dropped a deuce or two (socks, no-market cologne, lottery tickets,…

Where do you see Heritage of Satan as a single album and as part of Root’s catalogBig Boss: This album fits perfectly into discography of Root. It is the symbolic ninth album, so this serial number really says something. [Smiles] I’m not sure how I feel about Heritage of Satan. It feels less complete than,…

What do you get when you cross prime German thrash — Sodom, Kreator, specificially — with the unparalleled gravity of Brazilian thrash, which was influenced by prime German thrash? Norwegian noisemakers Nekromantheon. Formed in 2005 in the same town (Kolbotn) that birthed the mighty/Deci-approved Darkthrone, this power trio from the North is perhaps one of…

Becoming has a different feel compared to In the Absence of Light. What do you attribute that to?Ken Sorceron: Just looking back our catalog I would say each release has a different feel actually. I think we are proving to be one of those bands that recreates itself whenever and however we feel like it….

Formed by Cretin/Citizen mastermind Matthew Widener, Liberteer is the grindcore equivalent to the folk-Viking metal movement in Europe. Right. He’s taking back what’s his/ours. Amidst uncompromising blasts of anarcho-crust-punk-pissedasfuck whatever (a Napalm Death-Discharge Molotov cocktail birthed in nastiest defiles of Every City, USA), Liberteer throws down like it’s 1776. By using/integrating military march music and…

5. CarnifexThere’s nothing wrong with Carnifex per se, but whenever I hear the band’s name—which is rare—I immediately think Carfax. Sure, word ‘carnifex’ has a brutal origin—meaning ‘executioner’—, but the omnipresence of the Carfax Fox on television has potentially altered my reality. And who says carpet bomb advertising doesn’t work. Oh, random factoid. Salad Works,…

By now, Alcest’s “Autre Temps” isn’t necessarily a Deciblog premiere, but instead of streaming it on YouTube in-between clips of ninja squirrels and keyboard baby Amur tigers you can listen here where you belong. “Autre Temps” is the lead-off track to Alcest’s upcoming, much-anticipated full-length Les Voyages De L’Âme, and true to form it features…

The swamp black water from Georgia’s Okefenokee must have some kind of primordial quality to it. The bubbling earth’s been seeping into the state’s water supply (from the southeast, natch) for longer than history can record. Of course, dudes with beards, flannel button-ups, and guitars (possibly drums) drink said black water and what comes out…

We know who coined the term ‘blast beat’ or ‘blastbeat’, but which group was the first to employ the technique now synonymous with extreme metal drumming? Now that is a question I bet even a TakeLessons drum teacher wouldn’t be able to answer. Was it grindcore legends Napalm Death? Was it crossover heroes D.R.I.? Or…

Depending on your outlook on album art, it’s either an outmoded concept destined for the trash heap or a mandatory connection between the visual and audial. There have been some creative examples of album art in years past, but it’s a bit of a head-scratcher when two bands of underground stature end up with very…