Jonathan Horsley

ANAAL NATHRAKH—A night at the movies with Dave Hunt.

November 21, 2011

It was the other week at Candlefest in London that reminded the Deciblog that Dave Hunt, vocalist and master of ceremonies for Birmingham/Orange County(!) duo Anaal Nathrakh, had dutifully filled an optional extra on an email interview. It was right around the time when Hunt was mooting the idea that the Deciblog had imbibed amphetamines—which…

MELVINS Q&A: Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover talk vinyl splits, punk and Groucho Marxism

November 18, 2011

A couple of weeks ago we caught up with Melvins just before they played a sold-out show at the Electric Ballroom, London. They were traveling light, back to a three-piece for the night after auxiliary drummer Coady Willis called in sick (it was the runs, no one can play through the runs), but nevertheless in…

DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT Q&A: UK extremists on indivisibility, influences and hunting amplifiers

November 14, 2011

Dragged into Sunlight are one of the most exciting things to happen to the UK underground metal scene since Anaal Nathrakh started experimenting with black metal’s forbidden fruits and spitting the pips through a particle accelerator. Mixing elements of doom, black and death metal with a horrible, uncodified ritualistic live/visual aesthetic, Dragged into Sunlight genuinely…

EVILE INTERVIEW: Guitarist Ol Drake’s keeping the mystery and chasing off the influences

November 11, 2011

UK thrashers Evile were plucked from the womband signed to Earache in 2006, offered before the world as not only the saviors of UK thrash, heir apparent to Sabbat, but the more frenzied quarters of society were proffering them to be the next Metallica. Like, yeah, let’s not burden four kids form Huddersfield, a reasonably…

LIVE REVIEW: DAMNATION FESTIVAL 2011

November 7, 2011

Welcome to University of Leeds. This is Damnation Festival’s seventh year, the fourth since moving to the three-stage venue. It’s no minor triumph to last seven years as an underground metal-fest, packing the punters in when having to compete with larger festivals with their larger budgets, surviving all that industry bullshit at a time when…

OUT NOW! Decibel’s Thrash Metal Hall of Fame Special Issue

November 4, 2011

That’s right, folks, our Collector’s Edition Thrash Metal Hall of Fame issue is back from the printers and available—right now—to buy from the Decibel webstore and a select few indie record stores. After hopefully violating innumerate health and safety regulations to print the third of Decibel’s gnarly Hall of Fame Collector’s Editions in Vic Rattlehead’s…

LIVE EVIL FESTIVAL 2011: Video Highlights

October 31, 2011

A few weeks ago we posted a Live Evil festival preview which was, in all fairness, maybe a little mean-spirited seeing that the vast majority of folks couldn’t cross ocean, continent or geographical border to attend an underground metal festival in London, U.K. Not at such notice, anyways. Live Evil 2011 was the festival’s sophomore…

Being Devin Townsend: Q&A with Ziltoid’s old man

October 28, 2011

Devin Townsend is on the phone and he’s freaking out because he’s booked four shows in London; over consecutive nights he’ll be playing Ki, Addicted, Deconstruction and Ghost in their entirety, and it’s a big fucking deal. It’s stressful. He’s also headlining Leeds, UK metal-fest Damnation, which he promises to go heavy on with the…

NOW STREAM THIS: WOLD Badb

October 24, 2011

With the release of last year’s beyond bizarre Working Together for our Privacy Canadian black metal/noise duo Wold appeared to have misplaced their minds. What really should have been some sort of haunting, spectral noise record was in the cold light of day just one sustained fog of static that was the ultimate challenge for…

NOW STREAMING: GNAW THEIR TONGUES Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus

October 21, 2011

While it’s unhealthy to try drill into a rich seam of depression and self-loathing, mine it and milk it then wallow in it, sometimes those sort of dark moods are just unavoidable. For nigh-on six years, Gnaw Their Tongues, a solo project of Dutch polymath Mories, has deconstructed black metal, adding avant-industrial elements and haunting…

KVELERTAK/SKELETONWITCH: Tour Preview/Reminder/Warning for Livers

October 17, 2011

OK, so this is is effectively grabbing a pile of kindling and tossing it onto the hype inferno, but fuck it, we should probably remind/advise you that his forthcoming Kvelertak/Skeletonwitch tour is the most exciting thing that’s happening Stateside in the immediate future. Consider this a public service announcement, or something to that effect. Shit,…

Beware of the dog! My Dying Bride’s new EP, the Barghest O’ Whitby, is a leg-humper and a biter

October 14, 2011

My Dying Bride have done something truly remarkable: they’ve piqued my attention, big-style. Maybe it was years of clandestine market research or a visit to some cobwebbed shaman, experimentation with psychedelics or an acupuncture/hypnosis combo, but deciding to record a 27-minute histrionic doom track about a supernatural dog is on the face of it an…

Insomnium – Contest!

October 10, 2011

Roll up, folks: it’s competition time! Courtesy of the good folks at Century Media we have one strictly limited edition boxset of Insomnium‘s new album, One for Sorrow and a t-shirt too (see below… It’s reassuringly black so won’t clash with downcast expressions and your sense of metal self). One for Sorrow is the Finnish…

Justin Broadrick interview: Godflesh, growing up and anarcho-punk

October 7, 2011

If Godflesh’s supremo of beats ‘n’ riffs, Justin K. Broadrick, is having trouble getting an unbroken night’s sleep, it’s not the attendant stress of having resurrected the industrial metal project for near-monthly live excursions after a near-ten-year hiatus. It’s not their forthcoming appearance at UK metal-fest Damnation that’s worrying him either, because he and Ben…

Tapes from the vault: Triptykon’s Tom G. Warrior Q&A

October 3, 2011

This is some pretty hefty call-and-response type shit going on here, so it you’ll thank me in advance for not yammering on with no end in sight about how great Tom G. Warrior is, about how Celtic Frost and Hellhammer‘s collective legacy is responsible for some of the most essential records in metal, a whole…

Cliff Burton is awesome: 25 years on

September 30, 2011

Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of Cliff Burton’s death. Metallica were traveling through Sweden on the Damage Inc. tour in support of Master of Puppets, when the band’s bus crashed just outside Ljungby, killing Burton. He was 24. Sometimes it’s easy—perfectly natural, too—to over-egg it and go nuts when evaluating the dead’s music or art….

LIVE EVIL FESTIVAL 2011 PREVIEW

September 26, 2011

One way to make sure your festival doesn’t suck, isn’t polluted by buy-on bands and weird compromises that all but beseech the audience to head to the bar for every third act is to have Darkthrone’s Fenriz choose the line-up. Using our favorite hiking metal punk’s Band of the Week blog to draw upon, the…

Doom fans: get weirded out by Obake’s shapeshifting debut

September 23, 2011

Obake’s self-titled debut is a worthy soundtrack to finishing off a nightcap on such evenings when you’re expecting some gnarly spectral giant to visit mid-dream and inform you in disembodied tones of some uncomfortable truths, or deliver a prophecy on your soon-to-be-doomed future. Sure, when the opening riff to “Human Genome Project” kicks in, Obake…

ANCIENT WISDOM: Senior citizens run the rule over Album of the Year shortlist

September 19, 2011

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, it’s a bit early to start thinking about the album of the year. It’s only mid-September. But such are publishing and album release schedules that we Decibel footsoldiers are mentally ensconced in winter, like, this year is so over. But the thing is, compiling a top 10 ten or…

Cannabis Corpse take the high road through Europe

September 16, 2011

The Deciblog took to sober prayer and genuine concern when Cannabis Corpse brought their marijuana death metal party through Europe. The big worry was in the logistics: just how were four weed-obsessed death metal dudes from Richmond, VA going to negotiate over ten border controls, navigate themselves across the continent without some Midnight Express fucking…

Never get off the van: Wormrot check-in from UK tour with Evisorax

September 12, 2011

Singapore grind trio Wormrot’s sophomore UK tour Evisorax was the sort of faceripper that had the usual confederacy of punk and metal extremists out in force, complete with dogs on strings, and the usual anarcho-patched collective. The Deciblog could only witness first-hand the fireworks-indoors intensity of tour finale in London, but enlisted band manager Azean…

Bastard Priest: Ghoul-in-chief Matt Mendoza goes haunting the chapel

September 9, 2011

When Bastard Priest dropped the five-track Merciless Insane Death demo through Zombie Ritual Tapes in 2008, the duo left an almighty crater for all crusty death-heads to fall into and over each other. Genre veterans spent days nursing the shell-shock associated when detonating explosive underground death metal finds. It was a bitch, for a week…

Growing old dis-gracefully: Discharge frontman Rat on why punk’s most explosive survivors can never die

September 5, 2011

There have been few bands who have had more influence over so many different scenes than Discharge. There was the whole first generation thrash bands, the likes of Metallica, who took time to broadcast their love for Discharge from metal’s commercial apex, and despite housetraining and declawing Discharge‘s furious, rough, on-take urgency, still nonetheless would…

Are you down for life? Biohazard are auditioning singers: Here’s the Deciblog guide to the field

September 2, 2011

You might have heard this but F.Y.I. Biohazard are hosting an open audition in the search for a replacement for vocalist/bassist Evan Seinfeld. This is great news. Seriously, folks, if you’ve ever apportioned serious mirror time to bicep curls while reeling off how many blocks there are to get to the subway, you should be…

UK doom duo Pombagira talk voodoo and Iconoclast Dream

August 29, 2011

It took a lot of guitar amplification to put together Pombagira’s fourth album, Iconoclast Dream. We’re talking some 19, 20 vintage amps and cabs in the arsenal; that’s overkill for most bands, even those more mob-handed in personnel would struggle to justify having such an inventory. But with extreme doom, where tempos are slow and…

The Deciblog goes over the mountain with Randy Rhoads biographer Joel McIver

August 26, 2011

Randy Rhoads died 10 years before the official guitar tablature for Tribute found its way through my door, subsequently bogarting so many onanistic early-90s teenage years of practising guitar for the edification of no one save for the family spaniel. But the impact of his style—all neoclassical Ritchie Blackmore one minute and kinda like a…

EXCLUSIVE: “No Stairway!” …Mick Barr’s Coiled Malescence album stream

August 22, 2011

Mick Barr is not the sort of guitarist to just chill on the money chords, putting out the catchy riffs and hanging off the pentatonic scale until the familiarity sends you tripping. No way. Whether it’s his work as one half of the mind expanding avant-garde duos Orthrelm and Crom-Tech, the dual-personalities of solo projects…

Full Disclosure: Primordial’s Alan Averill’s state of the world address

August 19, 2011

Spare a thought for Primordial frontman Alan ‘Nemtheanga’ Averill who, mid-scream at last week’s Bloodstock Festival, Derby, England was robbed of his powers. In comic book terms, this was like grounding Superman and surgically enhancing him the old lead contact lenses. But more remarkable is that he lost it in the first place, like, even…

Heavy ship: Batillus’ captain Geoff Summers talks heavy doom

August 15, 2011

All of you good people out there whose recreational time is spent zoning out, hunting down and then getting suitably crushed in turn by overly hefty riffs should really be taking notice of New York doom outfit Batillus. Their debut longplayer Furnace has all of the weight required to wind on impact, but is also…

Napalm Death New Album Update: Shane Embury Tells (Almost) All

August 12, 2011

This is a borderline case of premature ejaculation in the press/hype sense that the Deciblog maintained an unblinking vigil on Birmingham, England grind progenitors Napalm Death for news of the long-awaited follow-up to 2009’s Time Waits for No Slave, and ran like a fucking gazelle with a hot poker in its ass, straight to the…