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In this week’s Demo:Listen, let Washington D.C. plague Sickdeer tear your head off and replace it with something even more hideous.

I sincerely hope that everybody reading this piece takes an hour out of their Friday (then several more hours out of their weekend) to soak up the majesty of Pallbearer‘s newest album, Heartless.

America’s mid-west has a long, rich history of being home to the noisiest of noise rock’s champions and kings/queens. Chicago’s War Brides mimics the sound of humanity collapsing in a heap of defeated misery.

Happy Pi Day, nerds!  If you’re looking for some top shelf circumnavigation music, get in here for a listen of a new song by Montreal post-metal powerhouses Black Sails for Red Seas

Next week we get Dodecahedron’s brand new exercise in high-concept dissonance via Kwintessens, due out March 17 on Season of Mist.  We conducted a little Q&A with guitarist/songwriter Michel Nienhuis and vocalist Michiel Eikenaar, much of which can be found in issue #150 (Decibel Tour cover), but you can read the remainder of the interview here.

Blood Sun Circle has a new record entitled Distorted Forms on the horizon on their newly christened label and the Gorham brothers have made some exciting improvements to their retail space.

Early last year, Quebec’s progressive blackened death crew Hands of Despair revealed their stand-out sophomore record, Bereft, and successfully extended the sound and strengths that had made the debut, Hereafter, such an enjoyable listen.  Today we bring you their latest video single for Bereft‘s penultimate track, “Étoc,” along with the band’s explanation of the video’s origins and execution.

We spoke with Behemoth’s prime abominator Nergal about what it meant to return to the stage after his devastating illness, and what he could recall about his tourmates during that time.  Some of his remarks are exclusive to the Special Issue, but the remainder of that interview is here for you to check out right now.

Can we at least agree that the record’s title, Hyperakusi (a Swedish word defined as “hypersensitivity to everyday sounds”) hits the nail on the head?

Nearly ten years since its inception, high-concept Belgian brutalizers Saille bring down the fire with their fourth album, Gnosis, to be released through Code666 Records on March 13th.  Today we bring you a lyric video for the record’s opening track, “Benei ha’Elohim.”

Vidian have recorded a video for “Pole Shift,” one of the solid-as-hell tracks from the A Piece of the End EP.  Check it out in full here and start your Tuesday right.

You have to give it to any band that has managed to play its first shows outside of its home country on the other side of the planet.

This year, Tuomas Saukkonen and Wolfheart return on Tyhjyys, to be released on March 3rd through Spinefarm Records.  Today we bring you the fourth track from the new record, called “The Flood.”

We checked in with two guitarists (Hamish Glencross and Andrew Craighan) and let them gush praise about one of their favorite bands.

Before Atonement Fever took hold, we received this, a re-recording of Immolation‘s first song ever, “Immolation,” in Issue #146 (December 2016, Phil Anselmo cover).  The song was special for the band back when it was first recorded, and its new rendition is significant for its own reasons…  See the included interview for details.

Things have been quiet on the Rottenness front for a while, but the band is ramping up again and aiming to keep busy throughout 2017.

Read about former Yob drummer Gabe Morley’s struggle with mental illness and homelessness and learn how you can help him secure stable housing. 

These days, dozens of online tastemakers can each have their own Top 10 list without overlapping any other list.  It’s a testament to the affordability of recording technology, to the direct connections artists forge with their fans, and to ever more insulated channels of musical taste.  Here are a few albums you might have missed but should probably check out before you lose yourself to all the glorious promises of 2017.

Zao dish the dirt on the making of their limited edition Decibel Flexi Series track. 

“Hope” is black metal change you can believe in. 

Hailing from Kentucky, Pissed On’s forthcoming The Hanged Man EP promises to be one of grindcore’s most jam-packed releases in 2017.

Because New Year countdowns are all the rage and never get boring, count down the songs on Plague Soundscapes with us.  Or against us.

After the dust settled and forty records were assigned a place on Decibel’s vaunted list, five remained that probably could have swapped places with anything else on the list without causing any greater/lesser irritation than lists like this already stir up.  Why should they get left out?  Here are the five records that tied for #41 on our Top 40 Albums of 2016.

Orange Goblin vocalist Ben Ward leads the charge to help members of Team Rock in the wake of the devastating news that their jobs are disappearing.  Can you help?  If yes, CLICK HERE.

In our Hall of Fame piece on 1992’s Neurosis‘ Souls at Zero, though, we had the unique opportunity to speak with former members Simon McIlroy (keyboards, samples, etc.) and Adam Kendall (film loops, color wheels, other visual elements), two super friendly guys with a lot to contribute.  Today, we offer the outtakes from our conversation with Mr. McIlroy. 

Says David Hall: “I almost died making this video….I passed out and woke up covered in beer and bong water and all the candles I had set up had been knocked over, but luckily they landed in a puddle of my urine and didn’t burn my tits off.”

Meta is Car Bomb‘s second self-released record, and if you heard 2012’s cryptically titled w^w^^w^w then you probably know where this one is headed.  Spend a little time in Car Bomb’s headspace and you can be sure to either evolve or disintegrate into your very own pool of primordial goo.  And yes, both Joe Duplantier (of Gojira) and Frank Mullen (of Suffocation) lent their talents to parts of Meta.

Ritual & Revival deliver extreme jams. THESE ARE LITERALLY EXTREME JAMS.

Here’s a near-full recounting of our conversation with drummer Tomas Haake (for the juiciest quotes, you’ll need to grab a copy of the magazine itself).  Here, he tells Decibel a bit more about the writing and recording process and describes some of the more technical aspects of touring and continuing to be relevant in 2016.

More Agathocles!