Daniel Lake

Dweller In The Valley New Release: Younger Dryas

May 30, 2014

Semi-rural, semi-suburban Maryland is hardly an obvious spawning ground for gritty black metal.  With Washington D.C. and Baltimore hogging all the attention, and Frederick area bars almost exclusively hosting good-time cover bands of dubious quality, the area’s heavy music scene is pretty damn subdued. Dweller in the Valley drummer/vocalist Dane Olds is a current Frederick,…

Doom Discovery: Suffer Yourself

May 23, 2014

It takes a special band to spend twelve-and-a-half minutes slogging through a freaky-heavy doom bum-out called simply “Darkness,” then decide there’s just more to say on the issue and tuck in for another 14 minutes and call the result “Darkness, Part 2.”  It’s like being lost in a menacing forest devoid of all large predators…

Stream New Nader Sadek Video!

May 15, 2014

It’s been three years, almost to the day, since Nader Sadek and an all-star cast of death metal notables released In the Flesh, a just-about-out-of-nowhere titan of an album that exorcised its creator’s disgust with the Western petrol-centric economy and culture and the way it abuses life on Earth, both past and present. Last year, Sadek…

British Binah Rupture Your Silence with New 7″

May 9, 2014

Today, Decibel celebrates the release of a new 7″ recording by English heavy-hitters Binah with a stream of the EP’s first track, “Rupture of Silence.”

Hour of Penance End Dynasties with New Album, Regicide

May 6, 2014

Italy’s itinerant papal-pounders Hour of Penance are set to return to the Brutal Death Metal ov Protest scene next week with their 6th punishing album.  Regicide will hit stores next week with the same force of conviction and yoke-lightening purpose as Sedition and Paradogma before it.  Hour of Penance hail from the epicenter of that strange mix…

Utah’s Gravecode Nebula Chill In The Dark With “The Frozen Sun”

April 25, 2014

About six months ago, a Salt Lake City, UT band called Gravecode Nebula heaved out its first album, Sempiternal Void, despite the fact that the band has been playing together in some form since 2006.  Fellow Salt Lake slowniks and Decibel faves SubRosa have mentioned GN a couple times when discussing local bands they enjoy,…

Darken Your April With Decembre Noir

April 18, 2014

Finally, it’s here!  I’m referring to the one weekend every year when even the brightest eyed, bushiest tailed Christian joins our cult of death for 48 hours and worships the treachery of friends, agonizing torture and public humiliation, and the brutal suffocation of a (reportedly) innocent life, just before we all pay lip service to…

Stream New French Black Metal From Paramnesia

April 11, 2014

The French black metal oddity Paramnesia is slowly, casually crawling out of obscurity, now that Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions are set to release the band’s self-titled full-length on April 16th.  Having apparently existed since 2005 (thanks metal-archives!), the project has only recently released recordings in the form of an EP and a split with German…

Check Out Turkey’s Chopstick Suicide!

April 4, 2014

Tomorrow (Saturday 4/5), the Dillinger Escape Plan are playing a Baltimore show with Retox, Trash Talk, and Norway’s black-jazzers Shining.  I plan to show up and receive a megadose of awesome, and I’m betting the Turkish hardcore oddballs in Chopstick Suicide might feel a little jealous about it. A couple years ago, Chopstick Suicide exploded…

Album Stream: I Döden by Swedish Atmospheric Black Metallers Skogen

March 28, 2014

A little over a week from now, Skogen will release their fourth album in five years, called I Döden, meaning In Death. The three Swedes have compiled an hour of farsighted, contemplative black metal – not quite folk, even though quiet acoustic passages exist; often raucous but with the sharpest edges all filed away by…

Spell Song Premiere: “Possessed By Heavy Metal”

March 21, 2014

Candles?  Flowing hair?  Human bones?  Leather?  Bullet belts?  A moustache?  Song titles like “Shocker” and “Possessed by Heavy Metal”?  We all know what this leads to… Vancouver rollickers Spell used to be called Stryker, and under that earlier name the trio released an EP and a split full of trad-heavy love.  Next month, they’ve enlisted…

New Song Stream by Barren Harvest

March 17, 2014

Sometimes the ravenous darkness crashes down to feast on your soul, and sometimes it flinches timidly away from all of your grasping. Last Friday, Aborted callously mounted the Deciblog to bring you a terrifying few minutes of violent death metal; today, we showcase the more ethereal side of shadows with new music from Barren Harvest….

Aborted Premiere New Album Track, “Necrotic Manifesto”

March 14, 2014

Belgian brutal deathsters Aborted expect to lay waste to bodies and spirits next month when they drop their 8th studio album in 15 years.  Necrotic Manifesto, due out April 29th on Century Media, tears through more than 40 minutes of churning, brain-berating death metal that alternates between harrowing chaos and deeply bangable grooves.  You can…

Stream Songs from New Panopticon/Falls of Rauros Split

March 7, 2014

Rather than planting our flag in one fertile corner of the extreme musical universe, Decibel has always enjoyed scrambling back and forth along the continuum, from the dingiest anti-production muckfests (found in our recent Top 100 Black Metal Albums special issue) to the most gorgeous prog explorations (such as Jeff Wagner’s super-mellow Cynic piece in the current…

New Song Exclusive: Dirge’s “Venus Claws”

February 28, 2014

Prepare yourselves, mortal ones, for a mighty slab of awesome to descend upon your unworthy skull.  First arising from the industrial haze of the mid-90s, France’s Dirge has shape-shifted through the past 16 years and (now) six albums to crush souls with music entirely in concert with their name. In two weeks, Dirge will see…

Full Album Stream: Nebelung’s Palingenesis

February 17, 2014

If you don’t live along the east coast of the United States, then maybe you’re having a chest-beating trad metal day, or a beat-on-your-desk black/thrash day, or even a middle-finger-hoisting death metal day.  But if you were in the path of the snow storm that dumped a few lead-heavy white blankets up and down the Eastern Seaboard, then you probably…

A389 Hardcore Headmaster Dom Romeo Interviewed

February 14, 2014

Last month, Decibel spent a few chilly Baltimore days taking in A389’s 10th Anniversary Bash.  That exceptional label has been responsible for lots of great releases, including #9 on our list of 2013’s best, Noisem’s Agony Defined.  The 4-show festival that celebrated the label and its friends was overwhelming in the number of bands that…

Stream New Song from Woccon’s New Album, Solace in Decay

February 7, 2014

Athens, GA heavy hitters Woccon are relative newcomers to the metal scene, but they’ve already made an impressive splash with the material they’ve recorded thus far.  Existing at some perfectly logical intersection of prog-friendly melodicism and aggressive doom, Woccon released an EP last year – The Wither Fields – that perked up our ears and gave…

Throw Me a Frickin’ Label Hack: Bulgaria’s Claymore

January 31, 2014

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Stream Full EP by Sisters of… (AKA Don’t Judge a Band By Its…)

January 24, 2014

As a general rule, we would suggest you not listen to instrumental “post” metal.  It certainly has its occasional charms and does an admirable job drawing the aurally cautious into the integrity-crushing arms of extreme metal.  Beyond the realm of intellectual curiosity and compositional hedonism, however, this gravity well of musical talent too often grows…

Metal Noam: Heavy Music + Heavy Politics = Killer EP

January 13, 2014

Just as there are many roads that lead to metal (adolescent anger, an ear for complex music, etc.), there are multiple avenues by which a curious mind might encounter Noam Chomsky, one of our era’s great-thinking heavy hitters.  Students of linguistic theory will certainly encounter his work, which in the middle of the last century…

From the Shuman Vault: Sweden’s (defunct) Necroplasma

January 10, 2014

In the interest of spangling your frost-still hibernation cave with the bloodiest of icicles this winter, we bring your attention to yet another bleak polar vortex that should scratch your hate-itch just fine. Starting in 1996, Swedish spike-sporters Necroplasma vomited forth a steady stream of demos, splits and a pair of full-length records, all of…

Prog-Death ‘Til You Drop with Exist’s New Sunlight

January 3, 2014

Back in May, the Deciblog allowed me the space to gush a little about Death To All frontman and Cynic tour buddy Max Phelps, who I’ve known a little bit since seeing his band Exist play in several low-key Maryland venues.  At the end of 2010, Exist recorded and released their In Mirrors EP, and…

From the Shuman Vault: Nosvrolok’s Maledictum Parasytus

December 20, 2013

Years ago, a former non-Decibel coworker caught wind that I was digging into the grimy corners of the blackened underground.  This coworker – a Mr. Shuman – immediately targeted my mailbox for blast ‘n’ rasp overload.  Data CDs loaded with entire discographies of 3rd tier blasphemers with photocopied cover art, cast-off compilations, and duplicate copies…

Throw Me a Frickin’ Label Hack: Oslo’s Shevils

December 13, 2013

There’s always been a hardcore softspot in Decibel’s metallic heart for the raw and the punk.  This writer admits to rarely getting stoked for such sounds, often preferring to hear artfully concocted studio recordings and leave the unkempt, wild fury on the stage where it’s most powerful.  But somehow Norway’s Shevils buried into these ears…

Introducing Incandescence

December 6, 2013

It’s always nice to hear bands that not only rip shit up but can also find the time and talent to compose some serious songage.  Last week, French-Canadians Incandescence dropped their debut album of rollicking black metal full of actual chops and interesting structures.  After releasing a few songs on their La Valse des Ombres EP…

Label Hack Update: New EP from Theatre Nocturne

November 22, 2013

Back in May, we were floored by the savage stylings of Theatre Nocturne and their Anhedonia EP.  The band returns in January to release a new 6-song stomach unsettler, entitled Depictions of Life and Death.  Theatre Nocturne, through their vocalist Justin Foley, have this to say about the new work: “Depictions of Life and Death tells the…

Year of No Light: Full Album Stream!

November 15, 2013

In just two weeks, French sexies… uh… sextet Year of No Light will release their 3rd official full-length record, Tocsin, through Debemur Morti Productions.

Throw Me a Frickin’ Label Hack: Alaska’s Nott

November 8, 2013

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Feast on All Hallows with Noire!

November 1, 2013

Oh, the power of an ‘e’. In 2011, a not-really-black metal band was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and called itself Noir.