Chris Dick

1. hol·o·caust [hol-uh-kawst, hoh-luh-]“a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire.” — Immortal’s Abbath Doom Occulta would disagree with this definition, especially the “fire” bit. His definition of “holocaust” is 100 years of winter followed by 100 years of brutal rule by the autocratic dictators of the frost-bitten kingdom of Blashyrkh. 2. tox·ic…

Opinions on Illud Divinum Insanus have gone from applauded to appalling. Mostly appalling. Check out the 35 (and growing) reviews on Amazon. Thus quoteth some Amazon reviewers: “a Spinal Tap level embarrassment”, “Inexcusable”, “An eight year wait for an absolute train wreck”, “How the mighty have fallen!”, and (my favorite) “It’s not completly [sic] terrible……

Fuck Starbucks! While soccer moms and day traders sip delicately and importantly on iced caramel macchiatos and munch through $40 mini carrot cupcakes, we here at the dB HQ start our uliginous days off with a grisly jigsaw (breakfast) stew of flesh and bone. Munificent amounts of gore topped with good stone ground mustard, actually….

German forward-thinking metallers The Ocean give us Part 2 of their recent trouble-filled trek through the U.S. and Canada. What to expect? A pro-filmed video, a few different accents (British, German, Australian), quick shots of front row boobage, the realization that the Job for A Cowboy dudes pump iron like Stallone, the group’s driver disappearing…

OK, what is the central idea to Amplicon? I read bits of what sounded to be a neat concept.Runhild Gammelsaeter: In a bout of delusions of grandeur, I decided to make a soundtrack of the cycle of the universe, from its birth by the big bang to its collapse, the big crunch, or whatever the…

Most people are picking up on Lifelover at Konkurs due to the Prophecy re-issue. Is that a good starting point for people interested in Lifelover?Kim Carlsson: Definitely, even though any of our albums would be a good starting-point Konkurs involves many of our trademark elements, so if it’s followed by our current release Sjukdom the…

Here I am back after a long silence. What can I say?! I naively thought I could be writing while on tour… I was wrong. For one, I was sick as a dog during the majority of the European tour, so for the most part the routine was: from bed to stage to bed. Day…

Metal is pervasive. It has no geographic restrictions. There are few countries worldwide—at least according to Metal Archives—that don’t have a grimace-faced metal act waiting to bash heads in and rebel against the shit that gets ‘em down. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard of Italy’s Necrodeath at one point or another. In fact, you’ve probably…

Tell me, kids. What’s with the vocal covers? I can understand bands doing covers of their favorite tunes. Been happening since the dawn of music, in fact. But dudes (and the occasional dudette) hanging out in their bedrooms—with mic in hand and webcam turned on—attempting to best their favorite growler for the world to see,…

New York City-based Nader Sadek has finally made the transition from conceptual artist to full-fledged recording artist on new album In the Flesh. Joining Sadek on his Season of Mist debut are Cryptopsy drummer Flo Mounier, ex-Morbid Angel frontman Steve Tucker, ex-Mayhem guitarist Rune Eriksen, Mayhem frontman Attila Csihar, Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan, ex-Monstrosity…

For aspiring young bands touring the U.S. isn’t a walk in the park. Now, bring those aspiring young bands over from Europe, where from what I can tell things are far more convenient and distances between points shorter, and nightly on-stage antics become not just a job but an ordeal. The Ocean evidently found out…

Over a plate of tasty three cheese (Manchego, sharp cheddar, and Paški sir) nachos, the braniacs at Decibel thought it’d be quite rad to hear what you guys—i.e., our readership, those that think we’re peaches, those that think we’re fuckwads, etc.—concoct when you’re feeling the need to mow down on a slab of cheesy, chippy…

What: The Zone – InfernoWhen: May 7th, 2011 Where: Lisebergshallen, Göteborg, Sweden The card was headlined with three title matches: Lightweight, Welterweight and Middleweight, but before we go to that, there were some great moments! Lots of submissions, a head kick knock out and a women’s match that made you cringe (in a good, violent…

Today is a good day for Enslaved nerds (I’m one of them!). Scion AV, yes the company responsible for free, rules-all concerts with dream-like line-ups, and Enslaved have teamed up for The Sleeping Gods EP, an offshoot release from last year’s dB-approved Axioma Ethica Odini full-length. Comprised of five tracks spanning 28 minutes, The Sleeping…

Anticipation is a strange thing, man. Since frontman David Vincent re-joined longstanding death metallers Morbid Angel in 2004, fans from Chicago to the outermost regions of space have looked forward to the follow-up to non-David Vincent fronted Heretic. Actually, not just looked forwarded to, but debated endlessly and heatedly on Internet forums, in livingrooms, and…

Yeah, even though we got Osama, there’s plenty of turmoil in the world to go around. Libya’s still a war-ravaged cesspool, the Midwest is experiencing Biblical-style flooding, Japan’s coping with the tsunami-related woes, the Ivory Coast has seen better days, and… and… I could go on forever. Well, there are two ways to handle the…

So, listening to the new Morbid Angel album got me thinking of Florida shock rock outfit Marilyn Manson. Don’t ask me why. You’ll understand on June 7th, 2011. Anyway, it was the first time I thought of Brian Hugh Warner and his band of post-apocalyptic gothic-industrial goons since, well, Mechanical Animals was the highest selling…

We often like to toot our own horn of death. Our horn of death is similar to the long horns Tibetans use to signal it’s time for morning meditation. Except our horns are made of flesh (goat, preferably) and bone (human, preferably) and when they resound down the vile streets of Philadelphia, the grotesque sound…

Moored by American funk and disco, reggae, dub, krautrock and the individual members’ sonic predilections, Killing Joke was more than the sum of its parts. It was a scene unto itself.

Friday, March 11, 2011: Philadelphia, PA (Kung Fu Necktie)After hastily packaging our new Viking Funeral LPs, meeting up with our most excellent roadie and merch extraordinaire, Jeffrey Hollis, bidding farewell to our friends at The Acheron and The Anchored Inn (best new bar in town! 59 Waterbury Street 11206), and packing all our gear into…

There’s nothing like regurgitated giblets in the morning. Using tools of the trade (i.e., fork and knife), we consume the gross, the unsightly, and the wrong to get us ready for traffic, silly ridiculous Excel spreadsheets, and reading press releases about odd bands signing to mainstream indie labels (uh, Jungle Rot signed to Victory). It’s…

At what point to you feel a song has been completed? I typically ask this question of bands who write long songs to see if there’s a threshold and if there is when to they feel it’s been reached.James Kelly: For us, it is when it has climaxed in terms of the energy we intend…

“Γοργόνειον III”, the front cover painting commissioned by Relapse Records for Horseback’s double album “The Gorgon Tongue” has quite a bit of history behind it.

The disconnect between classical music (all types) and heavy metal (all types) is probably less to do with musical form (although blues-based heavy metal is obviously divergent) than class. See, people into classical music are largely of a different economic, educational, and social background from dudes who headbang and play air guitar to “Fucked with…

Discovery Channel has Shark Week. Decibel Magazine has Stream Week. We’ve ‘streamiered’ (copyright, please) Septicflesh’s “A Great Mass of Death” (Season of Mist), In Solitude’s “Serpents Are Rising” (Metal Blade), and now we’re saving the best — Decibel Editor-in-Chief Albert Mudrian has officially screamed the following platitude while standing on his desk both hands outstretched…

You know, it wasn’t just me that went apeshit over Septicflesh’s previous album, Communion. Yes, I thought Sumerian Demons sucked, so going from suck-a-puck (it’s hockey playoff time) to rule-the-school (it’s exam time) is quite an accomplishment for the longstanding Greeks. Decibel contributor, The Mountain Goats mainman, and Stephen Colbert-approved John Darnielle also felt the…

The retro metal thing hasn’t played itself out quite yet. Sweden’s In Solitude (interviewed in the upcoming dB #80) are, perhaps like countrymen Ghost and Enforcer, on the forefront of the throwback-yet-modern sound emanating from the greatest metal country on planet Earth (my determination; feel free to dispute). Sure, the name In Solitude sounds like…

OK, I’ve never owned a vest. Not sure why. When I was young, I remember older kids around the neighborhood (we’re talking Flint, Michigan here) would sport denim vests proudly over the top of name-a-‘80s-metal-band-or-cola-here t-shirt. It was their uniform. Even in mid-August, they’d walk around in their denim vests (hair picks in the back…

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and said dud is, in fact, The…

No secret to anyone familiar with Decibel, its fearless editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian, or the magazine’s highly-trained metal taskforce that “seminal” (their words not ours) Florida outfit Morbid Angel are crucial the existence of proficiently extreme, Lovecraft-informed death metal. Countless—as a quick test of our quantitative use of “countless”, ask your fav band if Morbid Angel…