Jonathan Horsley

Relapse could probably have found a stronger name for their 2013 autumn/winter sampler than, uhh, Relapse Sampler 2013. Cast your mind back when Earache were releasing their Grindcrusher sampler series, and Peaceville had the enigmatically titled Under the Sign of the Sacred Star; that was how you named a sampler. But that was back then,…

Okay, so this week’s big metal in the movies news has been dominated by former thrashers turned FM rock-metal conglomerate Metallica, who have roped in the wee creepy guy from Chronicle to star as a citizen roadie on a mission across town during a miscellaneously apocalyptic event. Taking its title from one of the many…

Ladies and germs, pray silence please for Craven Idol’s Towards Eschaton. Pull up the easy chair, pull on the headphones; you’ll no doubt find the north Londoners’ debut long-player an extreme metal album of rare power. This here’s a bona fide contender for album of the year, a soundtrack for those evenings when your ouija…

How did Napalm Death get its first Peel Session? Shane Embury: “I joined Napalm in July ’87, so the first thing I ever did with Napalm Death was a Peel Session—even before we had played live or anything, strangely enough. At that time, the BBC would have contacted Earache and this guy Martin Nesbitt was…

As you may or may not know, Californian next-gen thrashers Warbringer will be dropping album number four—IV: Empires Collapse—on Oct 29th through Century Media. The band have been on the road pretty much constantly since 2011’s Worlds Torn Asunder, and in that time have augmented their lineup with guitarist Jeff Potts and bassist Ben Mottsman,…

Prior to the release of 2012’s A Eulogy for the Damned, the Deciblog met up with Orange Goblin and found a band that was pretty much a long-standing institution turned part-time concern. Breaking bread over a table henged with pint glasses of cider and beer, the English quartet were talking about making their first studio…

There are a lot of hooks on Surgical Steel, but that has always been the case with Carcass; no matter how brutal it gets, it’s always hummable. Has that been deliberate?“Well yeah, I’m glad you think that. Yes some of the music is difficult to the untrained listener but we do wanna have hooks; they…

Courtesy of the good guys and ghouls from Horror Pain Gore Death Records, we’ve got a particularly fetid and rotten Monday afternoon treat for all you gore-obsessed Decibangers out there in the shape of Coffins Colossal Hole EP. Anyone with a penchant for sloppy-joe, old-school death metal will already be on first-name terms with the…

In 1985, a kid by the name of Tommy Memzercardo released “The Innocent, The Forsaken, The Guilty”, an off-kilter fantasy/epic metal EP featuring Bill Ward on drums. Back then, the former Black Sabbath drummer couldn’t be credited for legal reasons, while Memzercardo was a mystery all of his own, calling himself The Mezmerist and playing…

Three guys in pig masks? While we’d like to think that Purify the Horror were channelling the heist scene from BMX Bandits when they were working on their aesthetic, but it’s probably the whole anonymity thing that they were going for. Apart from the mortal threats issued during said bank job, the “Australian Goonies” doesn’t…

Listen, we have seen Red Fang’s promo videos. We’ve witnessed their love of the grog. And at the risk of sounding guilty of cynical lifestyle profiling, surely asking Bryan Giles to compile a tour diary sounded overly optimistic. How reliable a witness could the Red Fang guitarist/vocalist be after being jammed on a van for…

“I could go on all day about Pink Floyd record covers,” says Baroness frontman/guitarist John Dyer Baizley. “I could go on all day about Neurosis record covers or Converge—Jacob Bannon is another great album cover artist.” He really could. But we’re mean and we need five to compile an easily digestible list of cover art,…

Dark Descent Records have announced a two-day showcase festival at the Ash Street Saloon, Portland OR for October 4th and 5th. And the lineup (below), presented by Dark Descent in association with Parasitic Records and Ash St PDX is the exactly sort of super-necrotic death/doom/black bill of extremity that’s guaranteed to help you shake out…

Courtesy of Forge Again Records and exclusively for all you Decibangers out there, may this cursed quarter of the Internet be the first to steam in full the debut LP from Detroit punks Old Gods, Stylized Violence. What can you expect? Sheesh . . . Well, it is worth noting that the album artwork features…

Like his bandmates in Boston death-thrash champs REVOCATION, Dan Gargiulo should have been getting ready for Summer Slaughter 2013. Y’know, there are important duties to be done before hurtling across the country in a van: like filling said vehicle full of diesel, packing a bag, loading his guitar into the van, stockpiling Cheetos and cancelling…

Demon Lung‘s debut LP, The Hundredth Name, is a doom album constructed around a grand concept. Yes, it is a doom LP that incorporates some of the genre fundamentals and takes its cues from Candlemass and Coven’s ceremonial sense of theater, but lyrically it follows a tantalizing narrative wherein (loosely speaking) Satan’s long-lost kid is…

New week; new grind, folks. . . And this one’s a doozy, all the way from Switzerland and four years in the making. Courtesy of the good people at Relapse, we’ve got an exclusive premiere stream of Flies Will Starve from Mumakil. It is kind of ironic for a band who made their name with…

Calling all drum nerds, fans of Sabbath, Dio, Vanilla Fudge and umm, Rod Stewart (hey, who doesn’t have room in their heart for Rod?) in the Philadelphia and Allentown area; courtesy of the Sellersville Theater we have THREE pairs of tickets for Drum Wars Starring Vinny & Carmine Appice on Thursday June 27th at 8pm….

Courtesy of the good people at Safety Meeting Records, here is some fresh sludge in the form of the title track of Stone Titan‘s forthcoming debut LP, Scratch N’ Sniff. Okay, so those of you who are familiar with the underground scene in South Windsor, Connecticut, may well know all about the trio’s trippy sludge….

Lantern are a two-man death metal band from Kuopio, Finland, whose debut LP, Below, is the sort of warped and twisted 40-minute head-trip that should be mother’s milk to all those Decibangers who were weaned on the impenetrable darkness of bands such as Demilich and Demigod. Formed by a surprisingly mellow dude with a a…

“Thrash, Gothic, D-beat” . . . From Hell can spin their sound any number of ways, but, the truth is, they are probably having a bit of mischief with a description of a sound that pulls in as many different directions as there are explodo-throat moments of fierce, faceripping freak-outery on debut album, Heresy. Released…

A couple of weeks ago we told you that UK writer Dayal Patterson had finished off a 600-page history of black metal, Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, a book that aimed to peel the corpsepaint off black metal’s sensationalist public image and look at how it started and how it got to where it…

There’s no introductory preamble necessary for this clip from Maryland Deathfest: The Movie III. You all know that Maryland Deathfest is an obligatory pilgrimage for any self-respecting blastbeat-worshipping Decibangers. And Godflesh are, well Godflesh: The marriage of riff to machine, the sound of urban alienation, of a dead city collapsing in on itself, et cetera….

Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult is a 600-page book by UK author Dayal Patterson that delves deep into the history and development of black metal as an art form and a culture. It is released on November 13th, but is now available to pre-order from Amazon at a discounted price. Published via Feral House,…

According to their Facebook page, UK doom/Heavy Metal quartet Arkham Witch‘s personal interests include, “Ales, Histories, Wars, Invocations and Audible assaults. Drinking as fuck!” And their description of their sound is pretty much bang on too. “Old School Heavy Metal/Doom infused with Lovecraftian horror, tales of mighty Barbarians and festering evil superstitions!” What’s not to…

The following home-shot recordings of cult Italian metal champs Dark Quarterer should serve as a how-to for any bands, young or old, who want to marry metal’s appetite for epic derring-do and mysticism with a resolutely blue collar work ethic and run with it. You see, epic metal just doesn’t magic itself epic after a…

That Satan were one of the most slept-on bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal because of their name is a cruel irony. For a genre that adopted the devil as chief muse and aesthetic patriarch, Satan should have fitted right in; acceptance should have been instant. But while Satan, too, were a…

Courtesy of the good people of Agonia Records, welcome to what is definitely the closest the Deciblog gets to a red carpet event: The Internet premiere of Swedish experimental post-metallers The Moth Gatherer’s video for “Falling Deity”. The track is culled from their forthcoming debut LP, Bright Celestial Light, a dynamic and genre-unspecific album that…

It’s funny, the press releases that accompany doom records are unlike any of your typical puff-sheets, the purpose of which, of course, is to sell you on the record. No, the doom press release always comes with the caveats abound, stressing the oppressive track lengths, moribund subject matter, and advising helpfully that “it’s not for…

Attn: London’s Live Evil Festival 2013 has just announced a bunch of bands, and as you’d probably expect from the underground’s most, uhh, kvltly curated festival, with 100% of the line-up endorsed by Fenriz’s Band of the Week blog, they are all 100% poseur-free and awesome. Legendary Chilean death-thrashers Pentagram will be joined by: Arkham…