Zach Smith

Last week, we brought you the first part of Chris Naughton’s landscape themed playlist. While his first six picks covered some well traveled territory–Drudkh, Bathory and Ulver to name a few–the rest dive a little deeper underground. According to Winterfylleth‘s guitarist/vocalist, however, all “capture the very essence of their environment and their history through the…

Instead of rambling on about how great the new Winterfylleth album is and coming up with some clever way to introduce what Chris Naughton decided to cover in his playlist (spoiler alert: it’s one of my favorites), we’ll just let the guitarist/vocalist handle the intro himself: “Considering topics that would make for an interesting playlist…

Our Managing Editor and I share a fondness for many bands, but if I’m remembering correctly, he was responsible for introducing me to one in particular via his review of The Ruin of Nová Roma way back in the day: Taint. While the trio broke up in 2010, guitarist/vocalist Jimbob Isaac has resurfaced in Hark….

We love AmRep and we’re pretty sure a lot of you do too. If so, there’s a good chance you’ll also dig The Color of Noise, a film about HAZE XXL (Tom Hazelmyer) and Amphetamine Reptile Records.

You may have heard that there’s a new Rosetta EP on the way (that’s the cover up there), but the band also just announced that it will be playing two special record release shows for Flies to Flame. While our hometown favorites are always worth seeing, these gigs have something extra to offer. Not only…

If you’ve been to shows around the NYC area–particularly at The Acheron or Saint Vitus Bar, both in Brooklyn–then chances are you’ve seen Frank Huang. More often than not, he’s armed with at least one video camera to capture that night’s show for everyone else’s viewing pleasure. After noticing him time after time at gigs,…

Despite teases here and there, it’s now been five long years since the last Irepress record (yes, I realize this is a Lazer/Wulf playlist–I’ll get there next sentence, I promise). Given that the group is one of my favorite acts around, it’s high praise that stumbling upon Lazer/Wulf has helped satiate my craving for new…

Last week, we brought you the beginning of Evan Patterson’s “dark country and folk” playlist. In two-and-a-half years of doing these, it’s safe to say that his picks–most of which originated on 7″ singles–are some of the more obscure, yet fascinating, we’ve encountered. While Part 1 tackled tracks from 1956 to 1963 (don’t miss the…

Given how well our last and only playlist from a Louisville native turned out courtesy of Coliseum’s Ryan Patterson, we had high hopes for one from his brother and fellow Derby City dweller Evan. While the former focused solely on Killing Joke and caused me to listen to “Total Invasion” on repeat for months, the…

Mutilation Rites’ last record, Empyrean, landed on our top 40 records of 2012. To these ears, however, the group’s new LP tops that effort and so we’ve been playing it on a near daily basis since it dropped last week (Daniel Lake also streamed the whole thing here earlier this month). Since the Brooklynites just…

Misery Index is no stranger to these playlists. In fact, we were in the midst of winter 2013 when bassist/vocalist Jason Netherton regaled us with “bleak tunes that recall those snowbound blizzards from yesteryear.” This time around, guitarist Mark Kloeppel went in a totally different direction to get you in the know about “hard” jams….

For the past decade or so, Goatwhore has been one band that you can count on to put out quality release after quality release. The quartet’s latest LP is yet another um, merciless, entry in its oeuvre. So to celebrate both the recent release of Constricting Rage of the Merciless and the start of the…

***Past Decibrity entries include: Child Bite Ruby the Hatchet Melechesh Karma to Burn Primordial Giant Squid (Part 1) (Part 2) Bastard Feast Encoffination Obituary Revocation Winterfylleth (Part 1) (Part 2) Hark Lazer/Wulf Young Widows (Part 1) (Part 2) Mutilation Rites Misery Index Goatwhore North Tombs Sadgiqacea The Atlas Moth Arch Enemy Archspire Cormorant Eyehategod (Part…

As psyched as we were for the last year’s new Pelican album, we were just as excited to see the band in the live setting again after a long six year wait. Now those worlds are set to collide soon when the Chicagoans drop Arktika, a nine song 2013 live set recorded in Russia. The…

I first read about North via Catherine Yates’ review of What You Were back in 2008, but it wasn’t until I perused our Managing Editor’s writeup of the record in that year’s top 40 that I thankfully got around to listening. Even though it’s been a while since then, once you’ve read last year’s interview…

In case you can’t remember that far back, Tombs‘ last record, Path of Totality, was our top album of 2011. Fast forward three years, and the band’s latest release appears to have garnered near-universal acclaim since it dropped earlier this month. So it’s only fitting that guitarist/vocalist Mike Hill’s playlist focuses on something that, in…

For Fred Grabosky and Evan Void, the dudes behind Philadelphia-based Sadgiqacea, music is only one, albeit rather large, part of their lives. Each is also into art as Grabosky is a freelance illustrator (drawing and inking) while Void, when not also playing in Hivelords and Ominous Black, tattoos at Living Out Loud Tattoo in Lindenwold,…

The Atlas Moth‘s new record is one of my favorites so far this year. But, as you’ve probably heard by now, the artwork and packaging–two things that some bands still care about–is something to admire in and of itself. So vocalist/guitarist Stavros Giannopoulos was kind enough to tell us about some other albums whose covers…

Nick Cordle may no longer be the newest member of Arch Enemy, but he’s still a relative newbie compared to Michael Amott, Daniel Erlandsson and Sharlee D’Angelo. While the band’s latest record, War Eternal, will mark his first Arch Enemy recording, the guitarist (that’s him on the bottom right) started touring with the quintet in…

When Oli Peters takes his songs about “lucid dreaming, a monster made out of teeth, a king who creates duplicates of himself who then overthrow him, and a guy who feeds himself to his backyard pig” on the road (my favorite part of KSP’s recent profile), he and his Archspire brethren tend to keep the…

Back in early 2012, Chris Dick sung the praises of Cormorant’s Dwellings. Since the band’s recently released follow-up is yet another quality entry in its still nascent catalog, we asked Nick Cohon to tell us about some of the “darker country music” that he listens to (the guitarist is also rocking a Gov’t Mule Dose…

In celebration of Eyehategod‘s first full-length studio album in nearly a decade and a half, last week we shared five musical selections that frontman (and soon to be cover star) Mike IX Williams’ listens to on his “stupid iPod in the filthy tour van.” As promised, here are the rest of his eclectic picks which,…

It’s been nearly 14 years since Eyehategod graced us with a new long-player, but thankfully that drought will come to an end in a matter of weeks when the band’s self-titled fifth LP drops on May 27th. Not only are the album’s 11 songs well worth the wait, but frontman Mike IX Williams was kind…

So far as we can tell, Loudblast has never brought its live show to the good ol’ USA despite nearly three decades of extremely extreme enterprises (or if they have, it’s been a long, long time). Fortunately, the French quartet’s video for “Ascending Straight In Circles”–which we’re pleased to premiere–provides a pretty good idea of…

Florida may not always have the most sterling reputation, but it’s produced a slew of the bands that we cover and love. For starters, consider Atheist, Hate Eternal and many Morrisound alumni. As Jason Heller detailed in our latest issue, Floor–another Sunshine State spawn–returns next week with its first new record since 2004’s Dove (which…

Back in 2010, Scion ran the “No Label Needed” contest in which the car company enabled a band to “receive insight and instruction on the music industry from music industry professionals while recording an EP at the Machine Shop” (you can read more about it here). Minnesota’s Iron Thrones came away winners and proceeded to…

Back in 2012, Mehdi Safa, the man behind shelsmusic, was kind enough to talk to us in detail about his label (you can read that here and here). Six months later, we interviewed Astrohenge, one of my favorite discoveries of 2012. So when we heard this week that shelsmusic had signed the London quartet, we…

I was a wee freshman in college when Source Tags & Codes, the third full-length from …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, dropped in the winter of 2002.

Sure, it’s been a year since Iron Reagan dropped its debut full-length. Despite the various other commitments of its members, the band recently began a run of tour dates that will take them through April, all while wrapping up work on their sophomore LP (which, by the way, will be for Relapse). Given how much…

Last we’d heard from Fight Amp, the trio was just off a red-eye after spending 30 days last fall playing 30 shows across Europe with Black Tusk. Now that the South Jersey natives are set to hit the road yet again–a brief jaunt of seven shows in seven days–guitarist/vocalist Mike McGinnis passed along five current…