Justin Norton

Six months ago, Google mandated that we remove the hate speech contained in comments for interviews that editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian and staffer Justin Norton conducted with (respectively) Inquisition (May 1, 2014) and Daniel Gallant (May 5, 2014). At the time, we were unable to delete those comments, so we simply took the interviews down. Now we’re able to better moderate the Deciblog, so here are the interviews as they were originally printed.

The proverbial long way to the top has definitely been a long one for Byzantine, which started in a part of rural West Virginia with minimal access to heavy metal and widespread economic problems. Many of the band’s best songs since their formation have touched on the problems of Appalachia, particularly rampant prescription drug abuse. Decibel  talked to frontman Chris “OJ” Ojeda about his long metal apprenticeship and one of the world’s most dangerous jobs: prescription pharmacy delivery driver in rural America. 

In New York’s flourishing metal scene the experimental death metal band Pyrrhon is a bit of an outlier. Formed when most of the band members were in college, Pyrrhon received widespread acclaim for their 2014 album The Mother Of Virtues, a blend of lyrical and instrumental virtuosity. Pyrrhon is fronted by Doug Moore, a onetime high school athlete and University Of Pennsylvania graduate who rejected conventional paths to success to pursue music. He talked to us about cross-state commutes to band practice and the end times.  

Upon hearing that Deicide’s sixth album In Torment In Hell was a potential selection for Justify Your Shitty Taste our Editor-in-Chief responded with a simple: “Oooh, that’s bad.” No other words were uttered. But is it really?

The late Robert Hazard had a stellar pop music career, even if he never became a household name. Perhaps his best known accomplishment was writing  Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”  But Hazard had a melancholy side, best evidenced by his 1982 song “Escalator Of Life.” The song — for all intents a dark wave tune despite modest chart success — was a critique of 80s consumerism. The New Jersey metal duo Stygian Depths recently reimagined the song.

Pyrrhon caught our attention last year with their excellent album The Mother Of Virtues, which combined technical yet chaotic death metal with frontman Doug Moore’s staccato prose poems. A lot has happened in the ensuing year. The album made many year-end lists but the band split from Relapse and has since teamed with David Hall and Handshake for a new EP.

One of the most intriguing post-hardcore bands to emerge in the 90s was Craw. However, their first three records — considered by many to be American underground classics — have been out of print for more than a decade.

Coffins is a long-time dB favorite and we’re happy to bring you four tracks from the new collection Perpetual Penance. 

One of the reasons Napalm Death has been so successful is their relationship with producer Russ Russell. Russell has worked with the band since 2000 and will probably be with them when they are making albums in their 70s. He joined us from England for a chat on working with the grind legends. 

Roughly two years go, I received a Facebook friend request from someone named Jonathan Dick in Birmingham, Alabama. I was late to join social media so the idea of befriending someone I didn’t know stuck me as curious. Jonathan was different: I found his profile picture – a snapshot of an intimate tea party with his daughter — utterly endearing. 

We’re starting a new feature here at the Deciblog. Since we’ve inducted so many classic albums in the course of our decade-plus existence we’re going to do our best to rank songs on these classic albums. First up is Celtic Frost’s classic mini LP Morbid Tales, which was released in 1984 and inducted in 2007. 

Last we checked wasn’t Brutal Truth/SOD/Nuclear Assault impresario and longtime Decibel friend Danny Lilker retiring? Well, that didn’t take too long. The guy just put out another grindcore record!

Green Hell. Septic Death. Green Death? Yes, that’s the moniker for a Des Moines thrash band looking to restore Iowa’s reputation in the extreme metal world after decades of Slipknot. We actually picked up on Green Death in our print edition, with an effusive review that said: “this Des Moines outfit plays a classy brand…

It’s Wednesday, possibly the second shittiest day of the week. Do you feel like some death metal? Of course you do. For your streaming pleasure today we have “Bastards Burn” from Psychomancer’s new EP Inject The Worms, released yesterday by Orchestrated Misery. This is good stuff if bands like Jungle Rot and early Malevolent Creation…

Agnostic Front has provided their New York brand of hardcore beatdown to generations of listeners. Incredibly, they are still at it it today more than three decades after their formation. Their new album The American Dream Died shows that they haven’t lost their edge even if a few members are a little longer in the…

To Mega Therion is Greek for “The Great Beast.” It’s a pseudonym for the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation and a nickname for every metal musician’s favorite mystic, Aleister Crowley. And it’s the very fitting title for Celtic Frost’s first real full-length album.

Poland’s Infernal War has been relatively quiet for the better part of a decade. The band is about to release their new full-length album Axiom via Agonia Records. Here’s their take: “Axiom is the essence of Infernal War. At the same time, it’s not a copy of our previous works. The new material is more…

When Oliver Amberg was barely out of his teens he joined Celtic Frost as they started perhaps the most contentious shift in extreme metal history. But Amberg’s roots with the band stretch back several years; he was friends with bassist Dominic Steiner, who played on To Mega Therion (see the Hall Of Fame in our…

The Ohio brothers behind the indomitable Hell’s Headbangers label don’t fuck with the formula. Their excellent releases during the past two years or so include Midnight, Nunslaughter (a new EP every month), Shitfucker and, err…Goat Semen. You can welcome the appropriately named bangers in Gouge to the extended dysfunctional clan. Like many of their brethren…

Long before guitarist Ryan Butler joined Landmine Marathon he played with the Phoenix hardcore band Unruh. During their five-year run (from 1995 to 2000) they released multiple demos, two albums and toured widely. In addition to seeding Landmine they birthed a rogue’s gallery of Arizona hardcore bands. Unruh recently celebrated their 20-year anniversary with a…

Tad Doyle has preached the Gospel of heaviness for the better part of his life. His seminal band TAD was one of the first out of the gate in Seattle’s grunge movement and one of the earliest bands signed to the legendary Sub Pop label. Although they never achieved the massive crossover success of their…

While you might hear an awful lot about society’s ills in metal you don’t hear about the plight of rural America too often. But the harsh realities of Appalachia provide much of the inspiration for Byzantine’s take on thrash, particularly on “The Agonies,” the song we’re premiering today. Frontman Chris Ojeda explains: “The Agonies” is…

It’s hardly a news flash — particularly if you read Neill Jameson’s reports from his time as a record store clerk — but physical music is either in its death throes or experiencing a painful rebirth. Whether it’s A or B depends on who is involved in the conversation. Aqualamb Records is banking on the…

There’s going to be a lot of alliteration today, faithful Deciblog readers. Sorcerer formed in Stockholm, Sweden in 1988 and was active until 1992. But, as we’ve seen many times, good metal bands never die — they just reunite. Sorcerer got back together for a one-off show at the Hammer Of Doom festival in Germany…

Show me that you are suffering? Game on. People are still talking about The Academy Awards. Purina faces a lawsuit alleging their pet food is filled with toxic ingredients. Your album cover is sort of creepy. And it’s Wednesday. Streaming today: “Show Me That You Are Suffering” from the Colombian black/death metal band Nepente. The…

Men Without Hats were one of the biggest pop bands of the early to mid-80s. And “The Safety Dance” was one of the biggest songs of the decade, and continues to resonate. People never stopped doing “The Safety Dance.” Remixes show up every week, including a metal version (more about that below). The Saturday night…

At the beginning of the year we published an interview with author Peter Bebergal about his excellent new book Season Of The Witch: How The Occult Saved Rock and Roll. Among the topics discussed: why metal has picked up (again) on the occult approach and themes so popular in the 70s: “There’s just something about…

In the new edition of Decibel with our tour headliners on the cover J. Bennett gets into a fascinating conversation with Liturgy frontman Hunter Hunt Hendrix (aka Triple H) about just what constitutes “black metal,” among other topics. There’s no need for any investigation or atom splitting when it comes to this band. Hacavitz is…

Boy, it’s easy to get lost in music videos these days. In the latest black-and-white video for Lay Siege’s “Hollow Hands” the English sludge/hardcore hybrid certainly does their best headbanging. But the camera keeps panning to a guy who looks like a community college English professor who is very pissed off at the book he’s…

The videos that arrive at Decibel headquarters are often predictably bad. There are the things we loathe (lyric videos), things we find annoying (videos talking about the making of videos) and the low budget (we’ll just record ourselves playing live and hope people give a shit). Boy, did Shredhead’s new animated stop motion video just…