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In an attempt to gain an outside perspective on our current cover stars, Gojira, we contacted author, radio personality and all-around bearded badass Ian Christe.  Here’s what our man had to say about his personal interest in the band and how he sees them fitting into the wider scope of the current metal scene.

Hailing from Wrocław in western Poland, The Dog has been blasting out the powerfully violent powerviolence for a solid three years now. Here’s a rather apt description: “Lost generation music for people who feel like shit and don’t know exactly why. Keywords: lost hope, broken dreams, lack of satisfaction, stagnation.”

By now, we hope you have been enjoying Gojira’s new album, Magma, as much as we have.  What follows here are outtakes from our cover story interview, including discussions about specific songs on Magma, the forthcoming U.S. tour and that mystical, mysterious place called NYC.

Welcome to the first installment of an occasional Decibel blog feature called How We Roll. In this series, we’ll look behind the scenes to see what bands bring on the road to make extensive touring more comfortable (or more forgettable). Our first guests: Venom Inc.

Hear “Of Hollow Judgement” from Colosso‘s forthcoming death metal steamroller Obnoxious.  (That’s the album title, not commentary on releasing new death metal steamrollers.)

The Armstrong Metalfest has grown from humble beginnings to be a regular mainstay with its south-central BC location making for a popular summertime destination for fans and bands alike. We tracked down co-founder Jesse Valstar to get the low-down.

As a monument to the collapse of one isolated psyche, as an exploration of an emotional sphere often relegated to the unconscious, Neurosis & Jarboe is far more compelling than any other attempt we’ve heard yet.

In honor of Black Sabbath‘s final trek around the globe, we are running our 2014 print feature on the story behind the cover art of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, which was illustrated four decades ago by a rising Los Angeles artist named Drew Struzan. 

SubRosa‘s hulking chords, massive percussion and thick bowed-string atmospheres absolutely crush on their contribution this month.

Expedite your passport application, make the trek north of the border, take advantage of the Canadian dollar trading at 75-80 cents on the American greenback.

Few are the bands who will still gleefully slaughter your favorite pet in service of the seething abyss.  Sweden’s Astrophobos are one of these few.

Portland, OR extreme art duo Muscle & Marrow sound off about performance jitters, the benefits and drawbacks of performing their music with only two sets of arms/legs/throats, and an offhand hope for more cats and books in their lives.  We couldn’t fit it all in the magazine, so get the rest of the interview right here.

Alaric vocalist and lyricist Shane Baker talked to Decibel about death rock, learning to sing and End of Mirrors. 

Death, metal, “Wall of Death,” and vinyl. Get the inside story from our Ghoul contact in Creepsylvania. 

A Piece of the End compiles four songs that coalesced unexpectedly during rehearsal, and Vidian have decided not to sit on them until the next album is ready, which is good, because sitting on anything this spiky-lumpy-grumpy would not be good for the posture.  Check it all out right here.

Says vocalist Agathon about the song: “‘The Shameful Kiss’ is about The Ritual conjuring the dark forces. Those forces might be unknown for many, but it does not mean that they do not exist. I think ‘The Shameful Kiss’ caught the old Gloomy Grim mood… Without the keyboards this could be pure Thrash Metal song.”

Lariyah Hayes of Khaotika talked to Decibel about what’s planned for her series of Darkadya books and how she was motivated by her brush with death. 

What is a Cannibal Accident?  How could it happen?  Well, their music sounds like their album art looks – like a ghoul-possessed intestinal tract giving violent birth to even more grisly demon-innards, rending flesh without end.  If you’re gonna gore-grind, this is how you should do it:  phlegmy-wet and funny as hell.  Listen right here and tell us we’re wrong.

KEN mode’s Shane and Jesse Matthewson have decided to take a step back from being full-time road dogs and focus on their new venture, MKM Management services, which combines their desk job skill set with their rock and roll lifestyle experiences.

In this month’s issue of Decibel, we bring you a flexi so close to our hearts that it’s practically a third ventricle.  We got Asphyx mouthpiece Martin Van Drunen to talk about his relationship to the magazine and its editor, as well as the way the band put together our most recent edition of the flexi series.

New album, Bereft, turns all the black/death goodness up to (generating random and completely unexpected number) eleven, and we demanded an audience with Côté.  You might have read some of Côté’s thoughts in Issue #139 (May 2016, Amon Amarth cover), but now you can check out the rest of the interview and get a listen to this consistently powerful underground metal act.

Hickory, NC’s Rapheumets Well is a band heavily steeped in science fiction and fantasy. They slam dunk their lushly orchestral and luxurious symphonic melodic blackened death metal into a fantastical and fantastically creative and complex world that I don’t even want to embarrass myself trying to explain.

Oranssi Pazuzu is Finland’s gift to anyone hoping to spliff out with the alien invaders just before their extra-dimensional reality-shuffling machine divides and conquers and sends all our psychic energy back to their home planet as quaint souvenirs.  Värähtelijä rarely sounds familiar or simple, but consistently satisfies the need we have for rock music to truly progress.  Keep reading to find out why, while you could probably continue to exist without hearing Värähtelijä, you really shouldn’t want to.

Commencing with the ritualistic application of corpse paint, feature-length documentary Blackhearts shares the stories of three black metal bands from drastically different backgrounds visiting the genre’s birthplace in Norway.

We had the chance to interview Mr. Owen for an article in Issue #136 (Feb 2016, Abbath cover), but we had to cut down our man’s responses to fit in the space available.  Now you can read the entire interview, and hearing Owen’s freakish tunes is now only a click away.

When you take a step back and consider that yellow-and-blue flag waving Swedish death metal as pumped through the (real or imagined) Boss HM-2 pedal is almost a genre onto itself, it’s perplexed me since 2011, when they released their self-titled debut, that Gothenburg’s Miasmal hasn’t been a name on more lips and tongues.

This month, we wrangled the prolific East Coast trio Horrendous from their jobs holding down every recent Decibel event to discuss their contribution to the series.

We continue our periodic look at the East Bay metal scene with Tristin Campbell of Control. Campbell is a needed throwback to the do-it-yourself ethos that made Northern California so rich musically.

Whether you think they’re the best or worst thing to happen to extreme metal in years, you can’t miss this premiere for an album that’s sure to end up on many top 40 lists at the end of the year. 

Dublin-based band stabs into the murk with some of the most energized, bleak and ripping blackness we’ve heard in some time.  Hear the album, Heir to Scoria and Ash, here before its April 22 release, and learn more about the band directly in our interview with guitarist L.M.