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Ask Resurrecting Judas bassist/vocalist Dylan Hromadka about the inhuman growl n’ howl he laid down to give the monster in the recent reboot of The Thing a voice, and in return you’ll receive a list to rival the one Benjamin Buford ‘Bubba’ Blue rattled off to Forrest Gump whilst singing the praises of shrimp, the…

With the release of last year’s beyond bizarre Working Together for our Privacy Canadian black metal/noise duo Wold appeared to have misplaced their minds. What really should have been some sort of haunting, spectral noise record was in the cold light of day just one sustained fog of static that was the ultimate challenge for…

This holiday season, it seems pertinent to assign a rough hierarchy to some of the shittiest/best horror films in the past few decades. And I don’t mean films I don’t like; I mean films that fall between the glorious realms of “I think I love it” or “I refuse to ever think about it again.”…

Having formed before most of us — me, included — were born and having the dubious distinction of some of the worst cover art of all time (Narita, thank you very much), New York heavy metallers Riot are preparing to release their first album in five years. Titled Immortal Soul, the group’s new effort obviously…

Every other Friday, Waldo the African Grey Parrot, frontbird of thrash-grind immortals Hatebeak, will get you caught up on the week’s latest “extreme” releases. Wow, Happy Halloween everyone. Since I’m on a bi-weekly cycle here, Halloween will have come and gone, and we all know that it’s my favorite holiday. It seems the labels don’t…

While it’s unhealthy to try drill into a rich seam of depression and self-loathing, mine it and milk it then wallow in it, sometimes those sort of dark moods are just unavoidable. For nigh-on six years, Gnaw Their Tongues, a solo project of Dutch polymath Mories, has deconstructed black metal, adding avant-industrial elements and haunting…

Hello out there. Kevill here again, coming to you from some bar in Manhattan where I have found a place to actually sit down and write.

This is still some weeks away, but now is the time to book your flight to the west coast or Texas to see one of the premier doom bands in the world sweep across the plains and possibly rattle California into the ocean. Australia’s Mournful Congregation is coming to America at the end of November…

What makes Tom tick? You’ve been doing Evergrey for more than 15 years now.Tom S. Englund: I don’t know, man. Must be as simple as the love for creating music and music in general. That and, of course, travelling the world numerous times as a result of the chords I play and write of course…

Do we have your attention now? Good. First, we need to address a few things about this photo, which we must admit, we find quite hilarious. #1) No live animals were harmed. These taxidermied critters—a stoat and a squirrel—had previously met their demise before they had bottles of what was, at the time (July 2010),…

As an unabashed booster of the original version of Quietly, Undramatically, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical when I heard Woe mastermind Chris Grigg was embarking upon a full remix of the record. The end result, however, definitely won me over, bringing a new level of epic-ness and clarity out of the…

OK, so this is is effectively grabbing a pile of kindling and tossing it onto the hype inferno, but fuck it, we should probably remind/advise you that his forthcoming Kvelertak/Skeletonwitch tour is the most exciting thing that’s happening Stateside in the immediate future. Consider this a public service announcement, or something to that effect. Shit,…

When death and his plague exhaling horse come knocking on your front door, the last sound you’ll hear won’t be “…Baby One More Time”. It’ll be the dirge of doom expulsed by Texas/Georgia duo Encoffination. Not unlike the members’ grime-encrusted outfit Father Befouled, Encoffination’s brand of death is unpolished, guts hanging out, but ultimately dangerous….

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love; stuff that’s essential listening that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This week, we rush the pearly barricades armed…

My Dying Bride have done something truly remarkable: they’ve piqued my attention, big-style. Maybe it was years of clandestine market research or a visit to some cobwebbed shaman, experimentation with psychedelics or an acupuncture/hypnosis combo, but deciding to record a 27-minute histrionic doom track about a supernatural dog is on the face of it an…

Truth be told, I spend way too much money on music. Truth be told, and considering my monthly take home, I spend waaaay too much money on music. A couple years ago, as a means of avoiding homelessness, I came up with a plan to curtail my record shopping insanity. Basically, if I’m browsing at…

Motha fuckin’ True Till Def. It’s a free event at Santos Party House, merging two genres that go together like bread and pudding: hardcore and hip-hop. I absolutely fucking loved it when Anthrax did that song with Run DMC. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free? (You have to RSVP, it’s like a wedding.)…

Hey out there metal dudes! Week two of the tour blog now, we have been completely hauling ass across the south. In the week since I wrote the last blog in Anaheim, we are now clear on the other side of the country in Tampa, Florida. Been doing drives averaging 9 or 10 hours every…

If you met Riley online or at a show, you may talk about the new Wolves in the Throne Room or Primordial or Agalloch. What you’d probably skip is dietary restrictions and a jogging regimen at six in the morning. But this metalhead is trying to lose some fucking metal weight. “Being fat is dumb;…

The nature/nurture quotient breaks down, the promise of the sprawling, churning overture that launches the anthemic title track is relentlessly fulfilled. Reroute to Remain is not only In Flames most multidimensional, diverse offering, it is also the record where every previously established aspect of its game — stellar, yeomanly guitar work; a rhythm section jackhammering ever deeper into the foundation — congeals, raising the whole to hitherto unscaled heights.

By Oscar Ramirez (bass) To me these albums take me back to when I was in my high school days. Walking home with my headphones in, people looking at me weird because I’m trying to mimic the brutal vocals, just overall crushing in-your-face music. I got the privilege to see most of these bands, except…

Let us first just throw out a few numbers at you, just to give you an idea as to what the competition is like at the Great American Beer Festival, held by the Brewers Association every September in Denver. • 526 breweries from 48 states plus Puerto Rico, submitted beers • 3,930 beers vied for…

Mike Muir releases the damn near schizophrenic funk-folk-metal-punk hodgepodge The Mad Mad Muir Musical Tour under the Cyco Miko moniker today, and to mark the occasion Decibel conducted a wide-ranging interview with the iconic Suicidal Tendencies/Infectious Grooves frontman. Topics include the recent “Big 4” shows, his longtime bandmate Robert Trujillo’s insane success as an extra…

Roll up, folks: it’s competition time! Courtesy of the good folks at Century Media we have one strictly limited edition boxset of Insomnium‘s new album, One for Sorrow and a t-shirt too (see below… It’s reassuringly black so won’t clash with downcast expressions and your sense of metal self). One for Sorrow is the Finnish…

Hello all! Kevill here, writing the first blog I’ve ever done for, well, anything. I’m not much of a blogger/record keeper kinda guy, I never take photos of anything or write in a journal, any of that. But here I get to report all the happenings on our first ever USA headlining tour with Lazarus…

Every other Friday, Waldo the African Grey Parrot, frontbird of thrash-grind immortals Hatebeak, will get you caught up on the week’s latest “extreme” releases. What’s up? Your boy Waldo is back from the humdrum void of “real” work. As the year starts to wind down, so do the releases. Not that there’s not plenty coming…

If Godflesh’s supremo of beats ‘n’ riffs, Justin K. Broadrick, is having trouble getting an unbroken night’s sleep, it’s not the attendant stress of having resurrected the industrial metal project for near-monthly live excursions after a near-ten-year hiatus. It’s not their forthcoming appearance at UK metal-fest Damnation that’s worrying him either, because he and Ben…

There was a time when we divined the future out of tea leaves and coffee grounds (tasseomancy), a time when we ritualistically porked one another to achieve a greater sense of being (sex magick), a time when we stacked sticks and let them fall to try to find the right path (Rhabdomancy), and there was…

In the current issue of Decibel, Master Chef contestant Derrick Prince dishes on his recent experience as a finalist on the Fox cooking competition. So, what was it like going before that judge’s panel? “Gordon Ramsay is like one of those angry football coaches you see on TV – they’re rough and they scream at…

Ha! I’ve finally received a heavy metal tattoo for critical analysis! This week’s installment of Flesh Parade comes from Josh over at the LunchMeat VHS fanzine. Josh says that he got this tattoo after a night of heavy drinking. Drunk points? Check. Josh continues, “It was decided that my buddy, who was the piercer of…