Jonathan Horsley

Pagan Altar “The Time Lord” EP remastered and reissued on CD

July 30, 2012

English N.W.O.B.H.M./doom elders Pagan Altar will release remastered EP The Time Lord through Shadow Kingdom Records on 11 September 2012. Having previously only available limited vinyl runs, The Time Lord has hitherto harder to find than a taxi on New Year’s Eve, a pint of unicorn milk, etc… This is the first time it has…

Interview: MARDUK’s Morgan “Evil” Håkansson on “Serpent Sermon” and jogging to black metal

July 23, 2012

Twelve albums in on a 22-year-old career and Swedish black metallers Marduk can still be relied upon 100 per cent to stick to the program and deliver a typically iconoclastic tour de force, touching upon all the genre essentials, anti-hymns to send toes curling in the Vatican and throughout Christendom. Serpent Sermon is pound for…

“Something wicked this way comes…” Black Sun Drum Korps bring industrial doom to Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”

July 16, 2012

On 21 September, Scotland’s most enthusiastical audio bloodletters Black Sun will reimagine Shakespeare’s most brutal play as a theatrical work of avant-garde metal. The Glaswegian industrial/doom trio, operating under their extra-war-and-extra-percussion Black Sun Drums Korps handle, will take the Bard’s text, cut it up and adapt it to their own aesthetic. Given how carnal, martial…

UFOMAMMUT post video teaser for “ORO: Opus Alter”

July 9, 2012

Italian doom trio Ufomammut have released a video teaser for forthcoming album Opus Alter, out 18 September through Neurot. Opus Alter is the second half of Ufomammut’s ORO series. Its predecessor, Opus Primum, dropped in April, and was a lush dizzying headtrip of psychedelic guitars, space rock ambience all darkened by the unspoken threat of…

Live Review || Decapitated: Covan Wake The Fuck Up benefit show, June 29th, London Underworld.

July 2, 2012

Benefit shows always have a weird vibe but death metal benefit shows are especially weird. Maybe it’s because the genre is ordinarily used as our portal to antisocial emotional territories, and when there is the attendant poignancy of a good cause it makes everyone feel as if they’ve been given a different script for the…

VOICES FROM THE UK UNDERGROUND pt 2: HUMAN CULL on picking the crust off 30 second grind

June 25, 2012

Human Cull are a gnarly grindcore trio from the United Kingdom who deal largely in 30-second riff-salvos. Guitarist and vocalist Edd Robinson admits as much that the band’s entire canon will be fast and crusty, but dammit he’s a humanitarian, it’ll be memorable too. Brevity in grindcore song structures was hardwired at the genre’s birth…

Transilvanian Hunger: Ptahil fan enjoys himself so much he eats a rat

June 18, 2012

Black metal fans have never been slow in exhibiting extreme behaviors to broadcast their devotion to the genre’s unholy cause.

VOICES FROM THE UK UNDERGROUND: OBLIVIONIZED on booking shows and saying yes to DIY misanthropy

June 11, 2012

Sitting in on rehearsals when London (-ish) death-grind crew Oblivionized first started it was kind of hard to see where they were going. Powered by former drummer Jonathan Rushforth’s hyper beats, with guitarist Sammy Urwin riffing under the creative direction of vocalist Zac Broughton, it was technical death metal at a time when technical death…

STREAMING: Witchsorrow “Aurora Atra”

June 4, 2012

“This is a song for when you begrudge the sun rising, the coming of another day. When you curse the sky and the sun hanging in it. It sets the tone for the album quite aptly, I think” So says Witchsorrow guitarist/vocalist Necroskull, by way of introducing “Aurora Atra”, an eight-minute, epic exercise in straight-up…

INTERVIEW: Ihsahn on new album “Eremita”

May 25, 2012

Once Second Wave titans Emperor were done scorching the earth with black metal, Ihsahn wasn’t slow in scaling the genre’s perimeter fence, and high-tailing it in search of a fresh sound that rested far from the genre’s weirdly orthodox iconoclasm. Progressive metal was a neat fit, a suitably abstract direction to define his sound as…

INTERVIEW: Storm Corrosion’s Steven Wilson

May 21, 2012

A meeting of minds between Opeth’s big chief Mikael Åkerfeldt and Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, Storm Corrosion is a down-beat, atmospheric heavyweight that is the sort of Weird Science fantasy wet dream prog-heads have been jonesing for ever since Wilson took over production duties on Opeth’s groundbreaking Blackwater Park. Their eponymous debut eschews any of…

Alligators and the Giant Maggot: Kylesa’s life on the road with GWAR

May 16, 2012

Last month, Savannah psychedelic metal crew Kylesa put in some serious road miles in support of GWAR. Prosthetics, artificial blood and semen are not everyday items on the underground metal touring circuit, so we got Kylesa guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants to take some pics and notes. This is what went down. 04-13 San Antonio, TX |…

COMPETITION: Win Cannibal Corpse, the Black Dahlia Murder, and Amon Amarth goodies

May 14, 2012

It’s competition time, folks, and courtesy of the good folk at Metal Blade we have a selection of swag to give away, on the condition that you A) answer the question correctly and B) are lucky enough to be drawn out of our moth-balled and dandruff-flecked Six Feet Under beanie. Now, we were going to…

Covan Wake The Fuck Up: Decapitated head to London for brutal benefit gig

May 11, 2012

UK-based death-heads, consider this your rallying cry for what will not only be one of the summer’s most gnarly nights of death metal, but a crucial fundraiser for former Decapitated vocalist, Adrian “Covan” Kowanek. Decapitated, Hades Lab, Dead Beyond Buried and Ted Maul tear up the Camden Underworld’s dilapidated bowel on 29 June 2012. Doors…

Premiere: Exclusive trailer from Watain’s “Opus Diaboli” DVD

May 7, 2012

You’re going to have to wait until June 5 before you can order Watain’s 13th anniversary DVD Opus Diaboli in the States. It has all the blood and fire of the Watain live show, but with none of the controversial aroma associated with having a stage show that’s been ceremonially doused with rancid animal blood….

INTERVIEW: Watain check in from the Decibel Tour

May 4, 2012

Watain’s arrival in the US might be bad news to priggish guardians of Christian morality but it’s good news for butchers who have ordinarily found animal’s blood harder to shift than the flesh. Watain require a lot of blood, and it doesn’t have to be fresh. It’s better if it isn’t. We can only presume…

Interview: Natur on cryptids, totems and debut album “Head of Death”

April 30, 2012

Partying, camping by the beach, hiking, fishing, smoking weed in graveyards, jamming King Diamond and Manilla Road: Natur had the sort of gnarly Rhode Island upbringing that all us city-bred shmucks can only envy. But it’s not only a healthy way to spend your adolescence, as Natur’s sticksman and designated spokesman, Tooth, can attest to,…

STREAMING: Natur “Vermin Rift”, from long-awaited debut LP

April 27, 2012

Since Natur received a commendation from Fenriz’s Band of the Week approval bunker, the folks waving the searchlight through metal’s underground have been waiting impatiently for signs that the New York quartet could all get themselves into a studio and actually release an album. A four-track demo, released two years ago and featuring signature track…

Live review || Cancer Bats Pentagram tour, London

April 23, 2012

Even if you’re not a red-hot Cancer Bats fan you’ve got to admire a spectacular set-piece like this. In part to launch new album Dead Set on Living but totally to rise to a challenge from their booking agent, the Toronto punk-metal road hounds scheduled a one-day tour of London, with six shows routed in…

Interview: Witchsorrow on forthcoming album, God Curse Us

April 20, 2012

Witchsorrow’s sophomore album will be ripe for picking come the end of May. This is exciting news for doom heads. But what’s that you say, the timing could be better? The British trio’s Sabbath/Vitus morbido-doom doesn’t really make for a summer record, right? Those who think that crestfallen pessimism and slo-mo riff ‘n’ dirge was…

Confessions: Orange Goblin on the beer and on the road

April 16, 2012

Orange Goblin’s appetite for ale is the stuff of legend. When the Deciblog caught up with them prior to the long-awaited release of Eulogy for the Damned, frontman Ben Ward, bassist Martyn Millard, drummer Christ Turner and guitarist Joe Hoare were piecing together the making of an album that was recorded over nine weekend sessions….

INTERVIEW: Terrorizer’s Anthony “Wolf” Rezhawk on the real zombie apocalypse

April 13, 2012

Speaking to Terrorizer frontman Anthony “Wolf” Rezhawk just before comeback LP Hordes of Zombies dropped, there was a lot that needed thrashing out. Firstly, there was the prospect of the Californian grind crew getting back together again after founding member Jesse Pintado’s death in 2006. Also, drummer Pete “Commando” Sandoval’s well-publicized back trouble, which has…

Justin Broadrick previews “Punchdrunk” from forthcoming JK Flesh album

April 9, 2012

In what should be received as manna from heaven to all those waiting for new Godflesh material, Justin K. Broadrick has released another promo edit from the forthcoming JK Flesh LP, Posthuman. Released through UK label 3by3 on 30 April, Posthuman sees Broadrick resurrect his Techno Animal nom de guerre for another harsh excursion into…

Interview: Anthrax’s Scott Ian on forthcoming live DVD, touring, and comic book movies

April 6, 2012

Just rocking up at ANTHRAX‘s recent London show to talk about comic book movies and assorted off-topic horseshit, we didn’t expect to have a video camera following us downstairs, backstage, our every move as we squeezed our wheasing, bloated selves onto a sofa to catch 20 minutes with the band’s commanding officer, Scott Ian. But…

Live Review || Electric Wizard — London Forum

April 2, 2012

Sure, doom is a solitary magpie affair that doesn’t ordinarily deal in good news stories. But c’mon, even the joyless industry beancounters will be left catatonic with optimism after Electric Wizard‘s first magic trick of the night: filling a theatre. It’s the measure of doom metal’s stock that it can pack the heathens cheek by…

Streaming: Hour of 13 “Who’s to Blame”, new track from forthcoming LP

March 30, 2012

The last time we saw photographic evidence of what Hickory, NC doom troupe Hour of 13 get up to when taking care of official band business—heavy metal, viz. doom in the vein of St.Vitus et al—they were hanging out in a forest with a naked girl squatting in the foreground. Since then they’ve went off-radar….

GONE FISHING: Enslaved’s most extremely extreme sportfish

March 26, 2012

When ENSLAVED‘s Grutle Kjellsson and Cato Bekkevold go fishing they don’t fuck around. It’s really not like going down the pond chasing blue gills or Tommy cats; in Norway, even the trout are built super-hench. You might have caught some footage of them catching alligator gar in Texas a few years ago, but you’ll definitely…

CULTURE VULTURES, ASSEMBLE! … Presenting Neseblod Records’ norwegian black metal exhibition

March 23, 2012

We’re just not the types to go flocking to gallery openings and digest culture of a weekend but this is different. From 29th March to 29th April, the beyond-necro Neseblood Records are curating a black metal exhibition at Oslo’s Popsenteret, chronicling the history of black metal. Whether it is the extremity of the aesthetic or…

INTERVIEW || Triptykon’s Tom G. Warrior on beauty and darkness (Part Two)

March 19, 2012

On Friday we brought you the minutes from an interview we were lucky enough to conduct with Triptykon frontman, Celtic Frost/HellHammer mainman Tom G. Warrior while he was on tour with Cannibal Corpse, Enslaved and Job for a Cowboy. Warrior seemed pretty ecstatic just to have the opportunity to play music, and that’s something that…

INTERVIEW || Triptykon’s Tom G. Warrior on beauty and darkness (Part One)

March 16, 2012

Tom G. Warrior was opting out of the press circuit while haring through the UK on last week’s Defenders of the Faith tour with Cannibal Corpse, Enslaved and Job for a Cowboy, but the Triptykon mainman granted the Deciblog an audience. Of all the times we’ve been in the company of Warrior since the Celtic…