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When the promo for UK band William English’s debut full-length, Basic Human Error showed up in my inbox, I made a basic human error and judged a book by its cover. 

While maybe not as majestic an image as Wolves in the Throne Room, Pitbulls in the Nursery certainly evokes some specific imagery as well. This French five piece may not be chowing down on babies, but their technical death metal attack is still pretty fierce in its own right. 

I knew from the off that Vancouver’s Witch of the Waste was going to be a band that hung out in extreme music’s left/left-centre field. How? T-shirts, brah!

German death metallers Morgoth were resurrected in 2010 after a long silence. In 2014, the group unleashed the God Is Evil 7″ to wide applause (from the death metal community, particularly in Europe). All seemed well for Morgoth’s return. 

As usual, we here at Decibel are ahead of the game; we wrote about this lost proto-metal group back in 2011. Now you can hear the glory for yourself thanks to our stream of the brand-new reissue of their two albums.

I’d say Korpiklaani need a haircut and a bath, but maybe, like Samson, that’s the source of their powers. Whatever the secret is, you won’t find anything much more fun than their Finnish folk metal, and we have the video premiere to prove it.

When the idea of running an advance stream of a track from The Architects of Extermination, the forthcoming third album by Chicago’s Kommandant was proposed to me, I was all naively like, “Well, shucks and swell! Sure! Why not?!” Good call, dummy.

Meet the new ruler of the Planet of the Apes, listen to his music, and enjoy some cocaine-dipped bananas with our exclusive premiere of The Humans Soundtrack Volume II.

Last week, we brought you an exclusive stream of Savage Land, the forthcoming debut LP from Death-worshipping supergroup Gruesome. This week, vocalist/guitarist Matt Harvey (Exhumed, Dekapitator, the “Death to All” tour) breaks down the inspiration for each song and provides some hilarious insight on what it’s like to write and record music that’s delightfully derivative.

Despite some unfortunate hairstyle choices, Valborg play a pretty unique style of doom. Going for clean and bright where a lot of bands go for dark and dirty, the German trio has found a path less traveled into this oldest of metal genres. There’s something to be said for aesthetics. You can check out the…

Metal has seen its fair share of worship bands over the years (see Black Sabbath’s direct line to every doom band ever), but it’s rare that one comes along whose sole purpose is to pay homage to one specific group and their highly specific style. Enter Gruesome, a bonafide supergroup (members of Exhumed, Malevolent Creation,…

I’ll be honest – I was excited to post this video because I literally laughed out loud as soon as the singer popped up on screen. Still, once you get past that initial silliness – well, it doesn’t get any less goofy, but it does get crazy catchy. Not really a surprise, considering that Civil…

Chris Barnes possesses a directness impressive even by the standards of his former bandmates in Cannibal Corpse – and we’re talking about dudes that have called recent albums Torture and Kill. He also smells exactly like you’d expect him to, but that’s neither here nor there. His group, Six Feet Under, is back with their…

Meek is Murder formed after ex-Red Chord axe slinger, Mike Keller, probably having had it with  trying to figure when, if ever, bassist and band mate Greg Weeks was ever being serious about anything, departed from the Boston bruisers to nurse his internal head wounds in peace. While none of this can be confirmed, what ended up coming…

It’s hard to think of any instance in which post-metal could be considered uplifting. Minsk certainly aren’t going to change that. This Illinois-based act brings a widescreen sensibility to their Neurosis, storming through 76 minutes of sludge and misery. With the ever-dependable Sanford Parker guiding the storm, their latest descent into the void is a…

JRR Tolkien meets a seriously eclectic heavy metal melting pot on the upcoming Black Tower full-length debut The Secret Fire (Unspeakable Axe/No Idea, June 2), and we’ve got the exclusive premiere of the video for the track “Death March.” Here’s what drummer/vocalist Dave Williams had to say: “‘Death March’ is the opening battle cry from Black Tower’s inaugural…

Here’s one to send you off into the TGIF abyss… We’ve got an exclusive stream of “Black But Shining,” one of seven gorgeously remastered tracks on the re-release of Sic Lvceat Lvx, the debut album from forward-thinking black metallers Schammasch. Here’s the lowdown from vocalist C.S.R. Six years have passed since me and B.A. (drums)…

Admittedly, before a couple weeks ago, I didn’t know much about California’s Upsilon Acrux. I had no idea the band had been around for almost twenty years, is set to release album number seven and have toured and shared the stage with the Locust, the Fucking Champs, the Dillinger Escape Plan, the Boredoms and a…

If you’re a doom metal fan and don’t know Ufomammut, go hang your head in shame and sit in the corner for a while, then check out one of the most inventive discographies ever in the entire history of heavy music and then come back here for their latest. Ecate is ostensibly about Greek gods…

You like formless shrieking, right? Hell, what’s NOT to like? Especially when it sounds like it’s taking place in the void of space. Yes, I know technically you can’t hear anything in space, but nobody told these guys that. Terra, despite their name being rather earthbound, go for the more cosmic sort of black metal….

I hate studio reports because I get to hear about music instead of the actual music. Like yeah, it’s great you’re doing something but I need that goodness hurled into my sound pits right now. But we should all be willing to wait for something like Drugs of Faith, the grind and roll three-piece led by…

And so it ends. My personal weeks-long salute to Relapse’s 25th anniversary in interview form, that is. The real celebratin’ hasn’t even yet begun – what with the upcoming fests, tours, beer collaborations, reissues and the loose promise of more Devourment thongs and booty shorts, it promises to be a crazy year steeped in warm…

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…

What will the neighbors think? After a bit of recent onstage drama Trey Oswald is out as the vocalist of Reagan Youth — “Please go get help that you so desperately need,” the “members” section of the band’s Facebook page not-so-subtly reads — and former Dead Kennedy’s frontman/punk rock documentarian Jeff Penalty is in. “There’s…

Here, we continue with the third of four weeks dedicated to Relapse-related interviews in celebration of the label’s 25th anniversary. Go check out the interview I did with founder and president, Matt Jacobson here and here. Beyond interviewing Matt himself, the next most obvious thing would have been to track down bands past and present…

If you’re into heaviness and weirdness, you’ve come to the right place. No, not the Decibel blog, although there’s certainly no lack of weirdos here; I’m talking about Flummox. This power trio clearly digs Primus, Mr. Bungle, and Mastodon, and their first full length takes them to some unusual places. To their credit, despite some…

Toward the end of our conversation with Christopher Mazeika — proprietor and high priest of Philadelphia’s badass new temple of all that is extremely extreme, Vinyl Altar — we inquire how closely his life resembles what we saw/read in High Fidelity. It’s kind of an offhand, silly question, but what Mazeika gives us in response…

Long-running UK metallers Hellbastard have two basic planks in their party platform: 1. “Support the underdog & hail the mighty riff.” 2. “Raise hell and rock the fuck out.” Both of these admirable attributes are on display in this double-barrel exclusive premieres (!) of both the band’s trailer for the sure-to-be-sick upcoming album Feral… …and…

Last year, Mutoid Man slammed our faces into various solid objects by blasting on to the scene with their Helium Head EP. The quality of high-octane punky, rocking prog metal quickly saw them outgrowing their selling point as a simple side project of Stephen [Cave In] Brodsky and Ben [Converge] Koller to become a propulsive…

Today we bring you an exclusive video premiere by Italian death/thrashers Krysantemia, celebrating the advent of their third album, Finis Dierum, on Memorial Records.  The band’s blustery/blistering confluence of influences has seen them perform alongside Obituary, Rotting Christ and Kataklysm, and is right now crisscrossing Europe in support of warmongers Marduk.  The new album was recorded…