Featured

Those who enjoy the antics of kaleidoscopic everything-and-the-kitchen-sink chaos metallers Look What I Did may or may not be aware of two things: 1) Zanzibar III: Analog Prison, the band’s long-gestating, much-anticipated rock opera follow-up to the straight-out awesome Atlas Drugged is “perilously close to having a release date” and 2) frontman Barry Donegan is…

When they released the DVD Majesty five years ago The Black Dahlia Murder proved that not only did they understand their fans, they understood how to make a watchable documentary. On their second DVD Fool ‘Em All our tour co-headliners take it another step. Not only do they make you laugh, they make you care…

** When I cornered Lantlôs braintrust Markus Siegenhort (aka Herbst), I didn’t expect him to be so un-German. Whatever that means. Like the meaning behind the word “lantlôs” Siegenhort is more like a global guy, his music unmoored from the traps of what has been and will continue to be German black metal. Not that…

Natten Med De Levande Finntroll, Finntroll’s new album, translates to “Night With The Living Finntroll”. It spans a massive 19 tracks across the group’s discography. Captured in 2008 at Amsterdam’s Melkweg Concert Hall, the Natten Med De Levande Finntroll show went down as one of the group’s best. It’s fitting then that Finntroll’s original three–Trollhorn,…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

So, this band from Vancouver called Expain (formerly known as The Almighty Excruciating Pain), who are as indebted to thrash as they are to quick-change jazz, Weired Al Yankovic’s discography and dusty recordings of the old Doctor Demento radio show, has a new album coming out. It’s self-released (well, sort of, as it was aided…

The Atlas Moth‘s new record is one of my favorites so far this year. But, as you’ve probably heard by now, the artwork and packaging–two things that some bands still care about–is something to admire in and of itself. So vocalist/guitarist Stavros Giannopoulos was kind enough to tell us about some other albums whose covers…

The summer doldrums are setting in. Fear not: the longest day of the year is coming soon (June 21) and we can quickly begin the reset to short days and plenty of darkness. And, we have a fuzzy, riff packed full album stream for your listening below. Wo Fat’s The Conjuring will be released on…

Review enough metal albums, and the process can be pretty simple, especially when it comes to those bands that stick to the specific characteristics of one particular subgenre. Each style has its own specific requirements and criteria, and as a critic, you’re basically asking yourself a) if it captures the essence of what this subgenre…

Jonesing for some blackout-dark, dynamic-as-fuck, gloriously oppressive, progressive-yet-unabashedly-brutal hardcore reminiscent of Blacklisted and early American Nightmare? What a coincidence! We’ve got an exclusive track off the straight-up awesome upcoming full-length debut from soon-to-be scene levelers My Fictions streaming below. “Stranger Songs is an LP we’ve been working on for over two years,” guitarist/vocalist Ryan Boone…

I blame every sobering statistic regarding global literacy on the fact that until now the world didn’t have Heavy Metal Movies, the twisted tome cataloging Mike “McBeardo” McPadden’s infatuation with extremely extreme music and film. With 666+ reviews of headbang-friendly films, McBeardo is your personal Virgil leading you into the underworld of metallic cinema treasures….

Sometimes, it’s not enough to have your recommended daily dose of righteous anger delivered by just one band. Sometimes, you need to split the rage. Xibalba and Suburban Scum are happy (angry?) to oblige. On their side of things, Xibalba bring the sludge. On the flipside, Suburban Scum deliver some thrashing hardcore. We have both…

Yesterday U.K. death/doom progenitors My Dying Bride announced the departure of longtime guitarist (and current Vallenfyre axeman) Hamish Glencross due to “irreconcilable differences.” Replacing Glencross is the man he originally supplanted back in 1999—founding guitarist Calvin Robertshaw. In his first interview since rejoining band, the author of rifftastic MDB classics like “Your River” and “The…

By the time future preconception-leveling heavy metal siren Kobra Paige hit age fifteen the Calgary, Alberta native had already been studying piano, classical vocal technique, and music theory for eight solid years.

For your streaming pleasure this Monday we have some death metal from Rome. “Crown Of Entrails” is from Devangelic’s Comatose debut Resurrection Denied and will be released June 24. The band is touring the United States now as part of the Comatour — check all of the remaining dates following the stream. Comatour featuring Devangelic,…

“Well, from the get go, we wanted to write a straightforward heavy record from start to finish,” says guitarist Steven Funderburk in a recent interview with No Clean Singing. “We had nothing but heavy grooving in mind. It just made sense to have a title that not only fit with the lyrical content, but with…

Looks like there’s some stuff worth talking about. Could it be? Two columns in a row? So, you leave Carcass, start a successful band, your ex-members make a comeback and kill it, and your singer quits. Where to now? ARCH ENEMY answer that with War Eternal. There seemed to be a lot of hurdles to…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Any time we hear that Lord Worm is back it’s like the return of the coolest substitute teacher at your school; the shop class alternate who lets the kids have at it with the broken bandsaw. Worm is a legendary death metal vocalist, a Hall Of Fame inductee with Cryptopsy and one of the most…

Hearing about Exhumed’s Matt Harvey joining forces with ex-Malevolent Creation drummer Gus Rio, Possessed guitarist Daniel Gonzalez and Derketa bassist Robin Mazen to form Gruesome, a band designed to be “basically a Death tribute band – as the County Medical Examiners are to Carcass, this pretty much is to Death” got me pretty excited. I…

Nick Cordle may no longer be the newest member of Arch Enemy, but he’s still a relative newbie compared to Michael Amott, Daniel Erlandsson and Sharlee D’Angelo. While the band’s latest record, War Eternal, will mark his first Arch Enemy recording, the guitarist (that’s him on the bottom right) started touring with the quintet in…

1992 was an interesting year. On the West Coast, the dichotomy between the intensity of Seattle’s grunge scene and Los Angeles’ growing racial tension (thanks to the highly publicized beating of Rodney King and the following riot) made for some interesting times. White kids were rebelling against conformity and black folks were rebelling in the…

Earlier this spring I interviewed Rune Grønn of Turbonegro, and one nugget he shared was that the biggest reason why the Norwegian band embraced gay imagery in the 1990s was because they knew it was the one thing that would scare away their peers in the Oslo black metal underground. No musical genre is untouchable,…

Caroline Harrison is an artist who sometimes photographs for online music publications. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter. Listen to The Mother Of Virtues and learn more about Pyrrhon. Please double click on the images below to enlarge. — I’ve been the sole visual artist that Pyrrhon has worked with during the nearly six years…

Earlier this year,  the world of film lost acclaimed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman to a tragic heroin overdose. Now it appears the drug is also responsible for the demise of one of metal’s most beloved figures. Dave Brockie, popularly known as Oderus Urungus, died on March 23, but it wasn’t until yesterday that officials ruled…

If you’re a metal fan, you have to know your history, know where the music you like comes from. It’s funny, though, when you find yourself digging through the lesser-knowns of “proto-metal” if you will, the Sir Lord Baltimores, the Buffaloes, the Pentagrams, you can lose sight of the forest for all those darn trees….

Scion A/V have tossed lots of free singles, EP’s, splits, compilations, and socks to the ravening metal hordes, but it’s rare that a band releases an entire album through that imprint. Los Angeles-based heavy rock trio Moab are doing just that. Their latest nine-song opus of fuzz and feedback, Billow, will be released later this…

It’s been thirty years since Yngwie Malmsteen unleashed Rising Force on an unsuspecting world, obliterating any and all preconceived notions of what was possible with an electric guitar. Now comes Guitar Gods, a tour featuring the legit insane line-up of Malmsteen headlining over a shred-heavy bill that includes Uli Jon Roth (Scorpions, Electric Sun), Gary…

Decibel has been excited for Black Anvil’s third album Hail Death since last year, when we gave readers a sneak peek of studio happenings in a print story. We’ve since teamed with the band to offer the first view of the documentary Making Hail Death. You can order Hail Death now from Relapse. Jason Shevchuk.

** Death metal record of the year? It might just be Vanhelgd’s new album, Relics of Sulphur Salvation. Featured in DB (June #116), we decided mainman Mattias Frisk had too much to say than we could fit in print. So, we took out the full transcript for ‘heads everywhere. Read on and don’t sleep on…