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If there’s a select group of people responsible for Decibel becoming the magazine it is today, one of those people is undoubtedly Katherine Ludwig. Why? Because as the founding editor of Metal Maniacs magazine, she helped spearhead extreme-music journalism. Unlike the more popular Metal Edge, a sort of US Weekly of hair metal bands, Metal…

Hope you’re ready to get dirty this morning, people — the super-pissed self-titled EP from Wilmington, North Carolina hardcore upstarts Society Sucker streaming below is rife with gloriously grimy grooves, rancid earworm riffage, and nasty, nasty straight-from-the-gutter breakdowns. Officially out on September 16th, preorders for Society Sucker are on seafoam green, gold/yellow clear or black…

Medusa Records is a label most metalheads won’t recognize. Based in Culver City, California, the label had a decent stint from 1986 to 1990, releasing a cadre of thrashers from Wrath and Wasted Youth to Christian metal acts Barren Cross and Vengeance Rising (remember their inexplicable inclusion in Hard ‘N Heavy’s Grindcore Special Issue VHS?)….

Isn’t this supposed to be a good time of year for releases?  Hmmm… well, there are SOME things. Welcome, oh ye Wizards of Gore. CANNIBAL CORPSE are back at it with A Skeletal Domain.  And what’s to be said about the 12th release by a forerunner in the genre of death metal? Well, if you’re not familiar…

We at Decibel Magazine wish to apologize for not doing enough to support the development and dissemination of grind.  By including occasional articles about other forms of heavy music, some of which include discernible tempos and recognizably human vocals, we have polluted the “scene” (which died 15 years ago, though our anger about it keeps…

By the time this goes live, KEN Mode’s first round of what promises to be another couple years of non-stop touring will have come to a close and the boys will be getting set to kick their feet up for about 20 minutes before hitting Europe with HARK. See all the details and particulars at…

We love AmRep and we’re pretty sure a lot of you do too. If so, there’s a good chance you’ll also dig The Color of Noise, a film about HAZE XXL (Tom Hazelmyer) and Amphetamine Reptile Records.

“It’s a testament to the boundless creativity of modern, progressive metal.” That’s what label Season Of Mist is saying about the sophomore album from tech death Quebecers (wrestling joke intended) Beyond Creation. Now, if you’re in the label business these days part of your job is saying good things about your roster so people will…

For some crazy reason the Canadian province of Alberta is on one hell of a roll when it comes to metal these days. The underground extreme side is thriving, yielding death metalers Revenge, primitive thrashers Blackrat, grind aces Wake, and old-school speed metal upstarts Gatekrashör. The Weir delivers first-rate noise, Chron Goblin excel at stoner…

Last week Philadelphia black metal stalwarts Krieg unleashed a disquieting beast of an album christened Transient. Now comes appropriately dark visual accompaniment in the form of the video for “Ruin Our Lives,” streaming below. Get into it.

A little over a year ago, we debuted a stream of Wrekmeister Harmonies’ You’ve Always Meant so Much to Me, a harrowing piece of modernist drone from mastermind JR Robinson (the Alan Moore-looking dude above). We dug it a lot,  so we are super psyched to let you know that he’s already recorded a follow-up,…

Check out our exclusive stream below of Toronto psych-metallers Das Rad cleverly embedding a subversive catchiness into the fuzzy, atmospheric doom of “Eye of Baal,” a track off the band’s upcoming debut full-length Radiation. And if you like the Hawkwind-meets-shoegaze-meets-Can vibe, there’s another preview track here.

As one of the greats of American black metal Xasthur left its mark on the indelible and the hard-won. Sadly, Xasthur, as of 2010, is no more but the legacy of main black Scott Conner carries on in not-so-new project, Nocturnal Poisoning. Certainly a sound to divide fans right down the middle of Xasthur’s “X”,…

What a bummer. Summer is officially over. It’s Monday. Our readers who aren’t chronic truants are back in school. Pretty much the only upside is that our managing editor’s beloved New York Jets started the season with a win, a nice start to their inevitable 8-8 finish. With that in mind, how about a little…

From a listener perspective, the most important department at any record label is the A&R department. They’re the folks that sift through demos and pitches from pushy managers and attorneys to decide which acts you can buy at your local Walmart (or wherever you pick up your Krieg records). And while the A&R capacity of…

Wolf = heavy metal. Leather, beer, whiskey, spikes, chainsaws, and greasy, long hair. Since the beginning of time Wolf has laid waste to posers (and poseurs) and pretenders, bands and forum-junkies too easy to extol the virtues of some C-level band no one has ever cared about except some A&R guy at CBS who is…

UK time travelers Deconstructing Sequence have recorded a new 2-song EP called Access Code, amounting to more than 16 minutes of new music.  Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like a lot, but the futuristic mech-out violence metes out a very high quality to make up for the relatively low quantity.  They pack as much music…

Looking for some authentic Italian you can’t get at Olive Garden? Try this uber-brutal, churning platter of tech-y death metal courtesy Rome’s Hideous Divinity. Aptly dubbed “Sinister and Demented,” the track is off the band’s upcoming Herzog-inspired sophomore effort Cobra Verde, out next month. (Preorder here.) Bon appétit!

Denmark’s Fossils are another impressive addition to the growing collection of killer two-man bands currently forming in the shadow of the continued absence of Lightning Bolt and the acceptance of the reality that the price of gas is never going to drop below $3 per gallon anywhere other than Indian reservations and south Texas. The…

You may have heard that there’s a new Rosetta EP on the way (that’s the cover up there), but the band also just announced that it will be playing two special record release shows for Flies to Flame. While our hometown favorites are always worth seeing, these gigs have something extra to offer. Not only…

Globalization really has changed everything, not just for business and our sex lives but for music. How else could you explain the fact that dudes in Mumbai are playing expert technical death metal and the crop of black metal bands in Australia? Case in point: the new album from Overcharge. Now, if you listen to…

There are certain bands I’ve only seen in specific settings, and in some cases it’s something where I’d like it to stay that way. I’m sure some readers might relate. For instance, I’ve seen Sodom four times, all on a cruise ship, and it’s gotten to the point now where the notion of seeing the…

Labor Day’s over. No more wearing white. Black, however, is always in season. Check out that fashionable album cover below for Divider’s All Barren. Their music also pulls together different shades of darkness, its menacing slow burn drawing from bands like Neurosis and Tombs. We are pleased to offer the opening track from the album…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a column delving into the vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… Some readers may recall Dustin LaValley’s memorable Metalnomicon bow a little over a year ago. We’ve invited the literary extremist back today to give us the lowdown on Swallowed: A Hypersexual Romance, his new novel…

BURZUM has been described as “music to make mortals dream,” and  The Ways of Yore (Candlelight) will do just that, because it’ll put you to sleep. I guess living in France can’t be that cheap; it seems like Varg cranks records out once a year or so. I’m not going to delve into his politics, the…

By now Decibel readers have come to know and love the young upstarts in Noisem. They turned heads during the last Decibel tour (and almost got Jeff Walker of Carcass in a lot of trouble — check out the details in the instant oral history). So Decibel and our friends at A389 Recordings are excited…

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)…

Tomorrow begins the touring cycle for Winnipeg’s tireless road warriors, KEN Mode in support of their forthcoming album, Success. The record itself isn’t slated to be recorded until November, but after almost a year at home, the rest of the world can almost hear the itchin’ in their britches to get back out on the…

If you’ve been to shows around the NYC area–particularly at The Acheron or Saint Vitus Bar, both in Brooklyn–then chances are you’ve seen Frank Huang. More often than not, he’s armed with at least one video camera to capture that night’s show for everyone else’s viewing pleasure. After noticing him time after time at gigs,…

Decibel‘s love of baseball is well documented, from the staff baseball road trip of years past recounted in the oral history of the magazine’s first decade to our annual baseball special. Our editor-in-chief is at this moment wondering why fate decided he should edit an extreme metal magazine rather than play in the majors. So…