Shawn Macomber

Sit back, y’all. Steve Austin-affiliated psychedelic post-rockers LAE are about to take you to another plane of existence via the title track of the album Break the Clasp out next week. (Physical pre-order here; digital here.) Here’s what the band has to say about the track… In the last months of our previous band, Lae-Tseu,…

My review of Dave Hofer’s excellent Perpetual Conversion: 30 Years & Counting in the Life of Metal Veteran Dan Lilker — out now on Handshake, Inc — will appear in an upcoming issue of Decibel, but the book is such a crazy, inspiring smorgasbord of gonzo metal history/wisdom a distillation of a dozen of its…

If you’re looking for some doom-y metallic hardcore nastiness, rising Michigan badasses Hollow Earth are here to oblige. We’ve got an exclusive stream of the uber-brutal slow-burner “The Reclamation” of band’s upcoming debut full-length, Silent Graves. Check it out. Preorder here. Metal Injection has got the video for “Swallowing Knives.” Tour dates after the jump.

Time to take that pep back out of your step, kids — this morning we’ve got two haunting premieres from Belgium’s dark ambient/industrial music mainstay Neuropa Records… First up is “Conquest of Glory” off Barcelona-based darkwavers Der Blaue Reiter’s upcoming Le Paradis Funèbre II — L’ Adieu Du Silence, a record “inspired by a tragic…

Horror and metal. Metal and horror. One couldn’t quit the other even if it wanted to. Which, as anyone who has attended either a horror con or metal show recently can attest, neither does. Except maybe those djent dudes whose non-role-playing-game media consumption is limited mostly to scouring Nova physics + math specials for potential…

Alice Cooper famously refuses to even broach the idea of maybe someday retiring and if there’s one thing the ridiculously epic mash-up of career-spanning fist-in-the-air anthems and grandiose dark carnival theatrics so exquisitely captured on Raise The Dead — Live From Wacken makes clear it’s that there’s abso-fucking-lutely no reason on earth he should pull…

The buzz, my friends, is justified. Metalhead, the “dark, intense drama of loss, faith, redemption, and heavy metal” from acclaimed Icelandic director Ragnar Bragason, is a gorgeous, harrowing, touching, and, despite its black metal grim moments, ultimately, uplifting piece of tour de force filmmaking with a soundtrack that previously only existed in the dreams of…

Shadowy metallic hardcore antiheroes The Banner are set to return this December with Greying, the long-awaited full-length follow-up to 2008 crusher Frailty. In honor of the band’s imminent resurrection and well-known affection for the horrific aesthetic, Decibel requested and received the following Halloween week list of frontman JSS’ Top Five Risings From the Dead… 1….

Forgive But Avenge — the deliciously over-the-top, ultra multidimensional debut EP from father/son extreme metallers Vomit Fist — is out today, and we’ve got the exclusive stream below! “It’s been a very deep and intense experience working with my son Leo (Lurkrot) and his best friend Malcolm (Skrag) in this band and creating this record,”…

Philadelphia-based music photographer and frequent Decibel contributor Gene Smirnov captured the new Hivelords line-up — which includes Lydia Giordano of Surgeon — slaying a new track at Boot & Saddle recently… Hivelords from Gene Smirnov on Vimeo. Looks like the follow-up to the excellent Cavern Apothecary is going to be a scary, beautiful, leveling thing,…

Even those who don’t find the exquisite cacophony of Skinny Puppy all that alluring would be hard pressed to deny frontman Nivek Ogre is a singular artist and consummate performer. We’re talking about a man who on a trio of instant-classic albums a couple decades back — Rabies (1989), Too Dark Park (1990) and Last…

No Child Left Behind, the latest record from guitarist Mitch Roemer’s post Pulling Teeth/Ruiner crusty hardcore behemoth Old Lines, is out tomorrow and we’re streaming the whole damn thing below for our class-cutter readership. Which is okay, apparently, ’cause the press materials here tell me Old Lines uses its music as “a device to speak…

Look out, people — Hang the Bastard dragged this lumbering, oppressive beast of a song up from the sludgy pits of its upcoming self-titled album to wreak exclusive havoc on the Deciblog…and it is way nastier than we were warned. Record is oct October 14 via Century Media. Another track/trippy video after the jump.

Ask writer/director/provocateur extraordinaire Adam Ahlbrandt for his job description and here is what he’ll tell you: “I make audio/visual filth, gore, death and sleaze.” This is no idle boast as anyone who has seen either Ahlbrandt’s uncompromising, viscera-festooned feature-length films — Cross Bearer (2012); The Cemetery (2013) — or his nightmarish music videos for band…

Is there any heavy metal story more heroic and heartening than that of Nader Sadek? Seriously. Here is a serious connoisseur of extreme music and culture — not to mention an extraordinary visual artist — who came up in a time and place — that would be Egypt in the eighties — where his interests…

Last year we excerpted a couple selections from Lewis Dimmick’s excellent book This Music over at the Metalnomicon. He came back not long ago to take us behind the scenes of hardcore megaliths Sheer Terror. Today he returns with another great guest essay on Beyond/Quicksand guitarist Tom Capone’s metal roots and his uber-brutal Mutilator fanzine……

We’re big fans of Philly grind-punkers/Decibel tour vets Die Choking around these parts

Anaal Nathrakh doesn’t — or at least shouldn’t — require much of an introduction — the ridiculously consistent Birmingham black metallers are simply one of the most utterly fearsome and inventive outfits currently operating in the modern extreme metal scene. Elite level mind-fuckers. Aural devastators. Masters of what the band’s new Metal Blade bio calls…

Hope you’re ready to get dirty this morning, people — the super-pissed self-titled EP from Wilmington, North Carolina hardcore upstarts Society Sucker streaming below is rife with gloriously grimy grooves, rancid earworm riffage, and nasty, nasty straight-from-the-gutter breakdowns. Officially out on September 16th, preorders for Society Sucker are on seafoam green, gold/yellow clear or black…

Last week Philadelphia black metal stalwarts Krieg unleashed a disquieting beast of an album christened Transient. Now comes appropriately dark visual accompaniment in the form of the video for “Ruin Our Lives,” streaming below. Get into it.

Check out our exclusive stream below of Toronto psych-metallers Das Rad cleverly embedding a subversive catchiness into the fuzzy, atmospheric doom of “Eye of Baal,” a track off the band’s upcoming debut full-length Radiation. And if you like the Hawkwind-meets-shoegaze-meets-Can vibe, there’s another preview track here.

Super sick gore-obsessed metallers Ghoul just kicked off a tour with Skeletonwitch and Black Anvil in support of the band’s recent limited edition six-song release Hang Ten and the reissue of We Came For the Dead!!! out tomorrow. Or, as guitarist/vocalist Digestor prefers it… Once again GHOUL is coming to your rotten country to murder…

Looking for some authentic Italian you can’t get at Olive Garden? Try this uber-brutal, churning platter of tech-y death metal courtesy Rome’s Hideous Divinity. Aptly dubbed “Sinister and Demented,” the track is off the band’s upcoming Herzog-inspired sophomore effort Cobra Verde, out next month. (Preorder here.) Bon appétit!

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a column delving into the vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… Some readers may recall Dustin LaValley’s memorable Metalnomicon bow a little over a year ago. We’ve invited the literary extremist back today to give us the lowdown on Swallowed: A Hypersexual Romance, his new novel…

When the classic line-up of UK crossover heroes English Dogs reconvened for a raucous U.S. tour a few years back enthusiasm went straight through the squat roof. And yet a rumored new album, even the band’s most ardent fans would likely admit, seemed a much dicier prospect. After all, the 2011 jaunt focused on To…

Napalm Christ lives up to its name. Need we say more? Actually, no, no we don’t. ‘Cause we’ve got the exclusive stream of the band’s upcoming catchy-yet-dark-as-fuck self-titled 12-inch streaming below. (Pre-order here.) Enjoy! A389-146 NAPALM CHRIST (Napalm Christ) 12" by A389 Recordings

A few years back super-under-appreciated Minneapolis noise rockers Hammerhead reunited for Amphetamine Reptile’s twenty-fifth anniversary bash and released an EP dubbed Memory Hole…which for a long while seemed to describe the place where the band was destined to disappear down. Happily, it is not so, and today we have your first exclusive taste of the…

Think you’re having a bad day/life? Well, Stephen Tanner is pretty sure he’s got your ass beat, and then some: The bassist of experimental sludge-y noise rock auteurs Harvey Milk is about to release a unsettling-yet-mesmerizing, pitch-fucking-dark concept album about his life entitled Things Haven’t Gone Well under the apt moniker Music Blues and we’ve…

To co-opt/augment Riki Rachtman’s old Headbanger’s Ball sign-off, on Written in Blood Darkness Divided has one foot in the metalcore gutter, one fist in the Between the Buried and Me/Devin Townsend-y gold. And for those who don’t reflexively hate the former, the latter will be a very welcome development indeed. Anyway, here’s your chance to…

Only a few days left until metallic hardcore levellers Colombian Necktie unleash the scary/sick debut full-length Twilight Upon Us, but for those who can’t wait we’ve got an exclusive stream of the track “Guiding Light” below: Check out another track here. For more information visit Bandcamp, Twitter, and/or Instagram.