Shawn Macomber

For those who had a hunch that the first short story collection from Wonderland Book Award-winning author/Freak Tension zine proprietor/Weirdpunk Books founder MP Johnson — a deft writer who refracts extremely extreme weird horror fiction through a legit prism of punk-metal-hardcore culture and attack — would be an exquisitely strange, beguiling, and brutal experience…. well, Berzerkoids certainly does not disappoint.

Decibel caught up with death metal legend Stevo do Caixao and Howling/Wooden Stake mainwoman Vanessa Nocera for a chat about the Surgikill origin story and its reworking/resurrection of the lost/last Impetigo song “Planet of the Vampires.”

Larissa Glasser — AKA Thuringwethil — is  best known for her work as the guitarist/vocalist of “witching metal” powerhouse Hekseri and as a rising author of Clive Barker-ian surreal dark fiction found in anthologies such as The Healing Monsters and Procyon. Glasser’s eclectic, disquieting new solo album The Hill was recorded under the moniker Spoorloos, You can hear a track here. 

Mike “Gunface” McKenzie — the perception-scrambling metal visionary hitherto best know as the guitarist of The Red Chord guitarist and mastermind behind Stomach Earth — recently recorded a song for Sesame Street entitled “6 Steps to Potty Training.”

Most Decibel readers likely know 6623 Press founder D.X. Ferris as one of the most incisive, dogged metal journalists around — the man who literally wrote the (absolutely indispensable) books on both Reign in Blood and Slayer’s “Jeff and Dave” years.  

As grind-infused industrial black metal levelers Anaal Nathrakh put the finishing touches on the band’s as-yet-untitled ninth full-length — tentatively slated for an October release via Metal Blade — Decibel caught up with vocalist Dave Hunt for a illuminating chat.

Discerning extreme music fans won’t be able to fully immerse themselves into the brilliant madness of Beast of Light — the third ethereal, proggy blackened death metal opus from Philly purveyors of auditory esotericism Surgeon — until the end of August, but Decibel has the exclusive premiere of the band’s video for “Forest of Ghosts” today. 

Hatchet unleashed its dark thrash smorgasbord Fear Beyond Lunacy on the day before Halloween last year, but these San Fran shredders aren’t done bringing the scary and fucking with your psyche quite yet as our exclusive premiere below of the band’s disquieting video for “Tearing Into Hell” makes abundantly clear. 

Entombed guitarist Uffe Cederlund gives Decibel the exclusive scoop on how the long-awaited return of one of the greatest death metal bands of all time. 

Talking SIEGE and Infest reunion shows with Robert Williams and Chris Dodge.

Two of the most respected labels in underground music today — 20 Buck Spin and Gilead Media — have combined their considerable heavy metal firepower to found and curate Migration Fest, a three day celebration of aural boundary-pushers and face-melters set to go down at the historic Capitol Theater in downtown Olympia, Washington this August. The stacked lineup includes Krallice, Christian Mistress, a The Body & Krieg collaborative performance, Thou, Vastum, Mutilation Rights, Kowloon Walled City, Pale Chalice, Vhol, Auroch, and a slew of others. 

Scream Bloody Gore
Eternal howl
dB rating: 9/10

Worried that you might not find fitting way to mark the twentieth anniversary of Cannibal Corpse’s Vile that doesn’t require being, say, devoured by vermin, mummified in barbed wire, or eaten from the inside? Were you hoping to celebrate George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher’s debut via a more metaphorical than naturalistic orgasm through torture?

Fire Work With Me collects graphic artist extraordinaire Valnoir’s most beguiling, uncompromising pieces from his storied fifteen year run at his Paris-based Metastazis studio in one lush 276 page full-color volume which former Morbid Angel frontman David Vincent calls “insightful and inciting” and Watain head priest Erik Danielsson promises will be “relevant to all who crave the sublimity of the extremes.”

A picturesque New Hampshire town is on the verge of honoring its most famous fallen heavy metal son — and you can help!

Formulated to serve as a brutal antithesis to what the band views as the pervasive conformity and repressive theology of its Mormon-majority home state, the upcoming debut full-length from Salt Lake City atheistic agitators Making Fuck A Harrowing End brings on the dark via an unusually expansive, roiling maelstrom of doom and sludge metal accented and emboldened by guest spots courtesy SubRosa violinist Kim Pack. 

Take a journey into the outer limits on ex-Overcast/Shadows Falls’ members Transient spaceship on today’s Demo:listen…

Kick Me Silly – VC III
Bigger Bang
dB Rating: 8/10

Featuring ex-members of Transistor Transistor, Trap Them, Landmine Marathon, and Abigail WIlliams, the immersive, affecting debut from True Cross, Pure Divorce, deftly imbues majestic layered soundscapes situated somewhere between My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr and Slowdive with the power and transfixing sway of its primal predecessors. 

It’s a legit Zelda Rubinstein-style multidimensional experience — which is to say even as you feel the warmth of the light and the strange, ethereal allure of the other side it is pure sturm und drang all along the path.

Eyes Alive, the sophomore offering from Texas’ premiere purveyors of “Alaskan Mountain Metal” Turbid North, is essentially a master class in how to meld the best of various extreme metal subgenres in clever and effective ways without sacrificing any of the primal potency that makes great metal great.

Their story was too unreal — surreal — and insane to be true — but it was. — Philip H. Anselmo

Former Fangoria Editor in Chief/current Shock Till You Drop overlord and auteur Chris Alexander unleashes a completely remastered, expanded, vivified edition of his strange and beguiling way-the-fuck-down-the-rabbit-hole collection Music For Murder. 

For a bunch of ferns, Staghorn sure knows how to rock the fuck out…

To commemorate five years of Decibel Flexis we’ve asked Decibel writers to write a review-length tribute to their favorite disc. Today’s installment features two Torche bangers, “Pow Wow” and “80’s Prom Song.”

The bustling, thriving heavy metal scene in Puerto Rico may have thus far escaped the attention of metaldom writ large, but that is all about to change courtesy The Distorted Island, a fascinating, edifying, perception-altering, due-giving feature length documentary that takes viewers on an inspiring tour of a extremely extreme, beautiful microcosm of creation and trve fandom.

And we’re premiering the entire goddamn thing right here, right now:

Ah, to be young “Infernal Satanic Sinners” playing your “Execution Symphony” as you cry out for “Violent Revenge” and “Death to the False Ones”!

The average day at the office for David Karon in the laboratories of KHDK Electronics is, it would seem, not so average.

“Banshees and ghouls and demons,” he tells Decibel. “We pretty much knew from the start of this project we’d be rolling in that realm of evil.”

The effort in question is the Ghoul Screamer, a supercharged, lithe, insanely versatile, more sinister take on the classic tube screamer pedal painstakingly developed and perfected over a period of three years with company cofounder/Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett — and set to be unleashed, appropriately, on Halloween.  

This morning we’re streaming Elder Giants, the paradoxically ultra-dark debut full-length from German black metallers Sun Worship — a roiling, nasty, multi-layered beast which, already much-beloved in Europe, at long last receives its North American release next week.

Candy Striper Death Orgy frontman and Nuclear Assault superfan looks back as Dan Lilker & Co. hit the road on their “Final Assault.”

Tapered Limbs of a Human Star
Yup, I think we found the Queen…
dB Rating: 8/10