Shawn Macomber

What with the recent killer Owen Hart and Graf Orlock albums — not to mention those imminent Ghostlimb jams! — Vitriol Records has been on quite a tear of late, but even those crazy bastards have realized the only way to truly put a cherry on top of this nasty buzzsaw sundae is by offering…

Lord, maybe it’s because the video is a cross between Shaun of the Dead and Spinal Tap or perhaps because the song is such an awesome, intricate, swirling mass of NWOBHM riffage, but I can’t get enough of the spectacle that is HELL’s new video for “On Earth As It Is In Hell”: HELL has…

As a jaded old man who still buys CDs, I’ve never thought much about how the youth of today kill time while ripping digital files off the information superdriveway. Well, some days you really do actually learn something new and thanks to a bit pulled together by the crack investigative journalism team over at Nerve…

So, alright, the G.G. Allin “throbblehead” was cool.

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and said dud is, in fact, The Shit. Today,…

Ever wonder what Vinnie Stigma would do if he encountered a litter bug while playing chess in a little piazza? The new video for the Madball track “All or Nothing” off Empire has the answer: He’d tell the punk to keep Brooklyn beaut-ee-ful, or else. Actually, prowling around the city looking for at-risk youth is…

Last week LA Weekly used an article on “identity, music and sexual attraction” from the journal Psychology of Music as a jumping off point for a round-up of various congruous research under the header “Can Bad Taste in Music Ruin a Relationship?” The material is mostly pretty thin gruel. (Not to mention manifestly debunked by our…

Ukraine has had a tough go of it of late. The glow of the 2004 Orange Revolution has dimmed significantly, one of the nation’s most celebrated playwrights, The Pagans author Anna Yablonskaya, was killed in yesterday’s Moscow airport suicide bombing, and amidst these woes the international press seems predominantly interested in a human chain of…

Twenty-five years into a career of contemporary “murder metal,” the band that penned “Albert was Worse than Any Fish in the Sea,” “What the Heck Richard Speck (Eight Nurses You Wrecked)”, The Unabomber EP, and a twenty-six track 2000 concept record exploring the life of Jeffery Dahmer (sample chapters: “Drill Bit Lobotomy,” “McDahmers,” “Into the Toilet with You”) has…

Any Decibel readers out there been feeling a strange, niggling affinity for the Son of Man this week? Do you suddenly empathize with that robed, bearded dirty hippie antagonist of early Slayer records? Is holy water no longer singeing your skin? Are you finally able to consume garlic? Fear not, friends, these are not signs…

Scrawling out autographs in lines of hemoglobin and plasma script isn’t necessarily a requirement to land your band’s record in the top five of Decibel‘s annual year-end list, but take it from Watain (#2, Lawless Darkness), it sure as hell doesn’t hurt your chances any to open a vein or two. “The final goal has…

A sequel to Lords of Chaos this surely ain’t: According to a recent AFP article (which reads more like one of John Darnielle’s “South Pole Dispatch” satires than a legit news story), Armenian police have began cracking down on “emo” rock fans: Officers have visited schools, searched pupils whose distinctive clothing marks them out as…

Like most pioneers of form or style, Andrew W., founder and sole proprietor of Aversionline, has never really quite received his due as one of the hands-down finest, most incisive writers on hardcore, metal, and its sundry cross-pollinations. Yet on the eve of its eleventh anniversary, his webzine-cum-mp3 blog nevertheless remains one of the primary electronic watering holes…

In a strange bit of serendipity, I happened to finally get around to watching Behemoth’s excellent Evangelia Heretika DVD on the same day the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Poland, Bastion of Religion, Sees Rise in Secularism.” Thus, after being flabbergasted by a tour documentary wherein Catholic politicians collude with the police in…

…and it’s a shiny, newly refurbished heart. Diamond’s wife Livia breaks news of the several heart attacks which culminated in the diabolical falsetto’s recent triple bypass open heart surgery in a fairly harrowing post on Coven Worldwide. Here’s an excerpt: “If you are interested in the details of how this surgery is performed, please look…

Regular Decibel readers have long been aware of the charms, brilliant hot hot chaotic post-hardcore jams, and edifying intellectual aspects of Look What I Did. (Who could not love a band that titles an album Atlas Drugged then plumps it with songs like “My Girlfriend, Leo Strauss,” “Pussy Comitatus,” “Jekyll Island Fiat Scratch”?!) Those who don’t…

As Jeanne helpfully reminded me a couple days back, it’s damn near time I dress my dogs up in a stupid/humiliating costume, do a little hostage photo shoot, and print up the latest batch of Christmas cards sure to enkindle in my pugs’ hearts a desire to discover the secret of how one becomes a…

Alright, so maybe the title of Cee Lo Green’s solo album The Lady Killer has a certain death-metal-circa-1991 throwback feel to it and, sure, the first single “Fuck You” likewise encapsulates some cross-genre sentiments, but I can’t be the only one surprised to learn the Gnarls Barkley frontman is not only not actually named Gnarls…

Oh, lordy. A post-emo kid in a tragically deep v-neck t-shirt and festooned with the requisite rejected-by-Flock-of-Seagulls haircut runs to MTV for help confronting his deathcore band fronting tormenter via Bully Beatdown, a reality show based upon the flawed premise that if you have a professional mixed-martial artist humiliate some asshole on television, that’ll be the end…

Strange things may or may not be afoot at the Circle K, but, man, this video of Keanu Reeves talking about potential directions a third Bill & Ted film could go is as awesomely oddball as his Herzog impression is on target. Movie Trailers – Movies Blog Let’s face it, they’d need an auteur like…

For those of us who prefer our Halloween more Samhain than All Saints’ Day it isn’t always easy to wade through the morass of dark culture in search of the elusive story/record/film that is both sinister and smart. Disappointments abound. So when Decibel caught wind of a discerning metalhead launching his own upscale horror publication,…

From the crackerjack crime-fighting outfit at the Idaho District Attorney’s office comes word, via press release, of a great & glorious victory: A Hayden psychosocial rehabilitation worker was sentenced today for Medicaid Provider Fraud, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden said. First District Judge John P. Luster sentenced Lindsay A. Nelson, 26, to 30 days in jail,…

Bonded By YoYo from Shawn Macomber on Vimeo. Decibel caught up with Alex Lee of Bonded By Blood at the Hostile City Death Fest to chat up the amiable young shredder about his rumored alternate career plan should this whole thrash metal revival thing prove fleeting: Professional yo-yo master. As you’ll see, it sounds kind…