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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.

Sweden’s Livet Som Insats second full-length, Check Your Grind features a take on the iconic Beastie Boys cover. We’d say the similarities end there, but listen and see if you can pick up on the similarities between the bands while we introduce you to them via a getting-to-know you interview.

Napalm Death, the Melvins and Melt Banana will begin their triumphant month-plus trek across the States (and a couple Canadian cities) this Saturday, March 26th in Phoenix, AZ.  When ND’s Shane Embury twisted our ear about a possible oddball interview between himself and the Melvins’ own King Buzzo, there was no question.

Ivar Bjørnson talked to Decibel about his love of electronic music and what metal fans can expect when they hear his other work in Bardspec. 

English death-mongering quartet Horrified are on the brink of detonating their new album of of melancholic rage (due out March 25 on Stormspell Records), and they want you to hear it here first.

Orlando’s The Glorious Rebellion is the sort of band that, were they alive and kicking back in the late 80s/early-to-mid 90s, would have been about as seriously tailor-made for a life signed to AmRep as one could imagine.

This month, we contacted Swedish death miscreants Tribulation, whose 2009 debut, The Horror, perked up ears but whose subsequent efforts, including last year’s The Children of the Night, turned our collective heads all the way around, several times over.

Wipe up your drool in time for Thrill Jockey’s March 18th release of No One Deserves Happiness and read what drummer Lee Buford has to say about touring, pop music and working with other bands.

Where were you when you first unlocked an unlisted track after a long period of dubious silence as a record played possum? Or when you noticed an album creeping up to track 69, where Tool’s “Disgustipated” lurked at the edge of Undertow? If you were born after 1995, maybe never.

Illness mainman Gulnar, of Poland, has advanced his dark agenda several more steps with AHP, and we got caught in the line of fire.  Classically deranged raw black metal speed meets eerie ambient speculation for one hell (you can say that again) of a journey.

Jonesing for some cave-galloping, sludgy-toned, fuzzy hate-spittle metal?  Feel like you haven’t gotten your rocks off properly for the past several years?  Then you’re probably already a Black Cobra fan.  If you weren’t already a fan, you can get in on the, eh, fifth floor right now with the Cali band’s forthcoming record, Imperium Sumulacra.

This month, we talked to every last damn member of 2015 eye-wideners Publicist UK about their inspired, curious choice of cover contribution.  We’ll leave the details up to Zack Lipez (vocals), Brett Bamberger (bass) and the Davids (Obuchowski and Witte, guitar and drums respectively), but we were certainly as positively surprised and amazed at their work on Tori Amos’s “Precious Things” as we were about last year’s Forgive Yourself.

Trigger warning: You may not want to read Josef Fritzl’s Wikipedia page

Every week, Decibel will premiere new material by bands of a heavy nature.  There’s no boundaries here, either.  Death, black, doom, sludge, progressive, stoner, retro, whatever!  It’s all fair game.  What’s this section called?  DEMO:LISTEN, naturally.  This week we take a look at El Topo, an instrumental oddity hailing from Istanbul, Turkey.

This month, we talked to Tatsuhito Mikami of Japan’s Church of Misery (and to vocalist Scott Carlson) about their contribution,  a special mix of “Confessions of an Embittered Soul” from COM’s forthcoming And Then There Were None record.

Every week, Decibel will premiere new material by bands of a heavy nature.  There’s no boundaries here, either.  Death, black, doom, sludge, progressive, stoner, retro, whatever!  It’s all fair game.  What’s this section called?  DEMO:LISTEN, naturally.  This week we scream into the abyss and the abyss screams back: New Zealand’s Veneficium, Obduktio & Scumripper from Finland and Brooklyn’s Horns & Hooves.

If you didn’t catch Richard Christy’s review in Decibel #136, let me introduce you to the most metal horror film ever: Deathgasm. It’s a Kiwi midnight party flick made for and by metalheads where blackened doom riffs unlock portals to demonic dimensions and “metal up your ass” is less of a threat than a literal promise. We’re talking corpsepaint, monsters, hilarious black metal music video parodies, dildo fights, and enough blood to satiate the most demanding gorehounds.

Upon learning that Tom and Jim Morris have been in the process of downsizing their operation, we at Decibel had to get all the dirt straight from the Morrisource.  We tracked down Tom Morris for his thoughts on the move and his studio’s past and future in the industry.

Every week, Decibel will premiere new material by bands of a heavy nature.  There’s no boundaries here, either.  Death, black, doom, sludge, progressive, stoner, retro, whatever!  It’s all fair game.  What’s this section called?  DEMO:LITION, naturally.  This week we take a look at three deserving European devastators: Belgium’s Humanity Defiled, Italy’s Dawn of a Dark Age and the Ukraine’s Nonsun.