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What the squawk? Let’s get into it. We’re going to pecking start off with MURDER CONSTRUCT and their first full-length on Relapse, Results. This is a grind supergroup so to speak, with members of Phobia, Exhumed, Cattle Decapitation, Bad Acid Trip and more. This is grindcore to a T, with a healthy dose of death…

Bands like Gojira and Godflesh might be major brand names ‘round these parts, but mention them to your average Metallica-loving broseph and you’re likely to get a squinty-eyed, the-fuck-you-say? half-nod. But Decibel just won’t quit. We dig deeper, danker, darker and dirtier (though rarely fitter or happier) to turn up a few otherwise overlooked gems….

We here at Decibel are all over Chicago’s Encrust.

We’ve been running these playlists for about six months or so, and our favorite ones by far involve well-established artists telling us about records that related in some way to each of their studio albums (we’re looking at you Shane Embury and Greg Mackintosh). So when we recently had an early morning chat with Katatonia…

We’re always stoked to get new material from one of the members of our storied Hall Of Fame. Decibel has received an exclusive sneak peek at the new Cryptopsy song “The Golden Square Mile,” from their forthcoming self-titled, self-released LP (due September 14). Cryptopsy also gave us a little more information about the song, which…

Not sure if you’ve missed out on “industrial doom metal” one-man outfit Author & Punisher, but if you own a Godflesh record, maybe a pre-suck Pitch Shifter 12″, or think Scorn’s Vae Solis is the only Scorn LP worth playing in the solitary confines of your treasured abode, then we think you need to stand…

This morning Decibel has the honor of premiering “Beyond the Realms,” a truly epic slab of whip-smart death metal from Chicago’s Black September. The track is drawn from the upcoming release Into the Darkness Into the Void available for pre-order here. If you like what you hear, check out more tracks over at Black September’s…

Breaking Shit by Decibel Magazine It’s strange to be premiering a song off Leave Your Leather On because I’ve been blasting the album for weeks. (It pays to be a big-time journalist.) And yes, I know – I guess these guys forgot about that Limp Biscuit song. Who cares? Stuff still has to get broken…

Seeing as Florida’s output of death metal has slowed to a trickle as scene veterans spend more time on the road, less time in the studio, or just sweat it out in semi-retirement, you could do worse than check in on Finland’s Gorephilia. Gorephilia’s long-awaited debut LP Embodiment of Death is old-school all right, and…

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love; stuff that’s essential listening that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This week’s entry is from 1969, opens with…

Bands like Gojira and Godflesh might be major brand names ‘round these parts, but mention them to your average Metallica-loving broseph and you’re likely to get a squinty-eyed, the-fuck-you-say? half-nod.  But Decibel just won’t quit.  We dig deeper, danker, darker and dirtier (though rarely fitter or happier) to turn up a few otherwise overlooked gems….

In the interest of making sense of the terrible–but, fortunately, non-fatal–accident Baroness suffered Tuesday in the U.K., we consulted former Candiria guitarist John LaMacchia, whose van was decimated on the road nearly a decade ago. As a fellow crash survivor, what was your gut reaction when you first heard about the Baroness accident? Shock. It…

Last week we ran the first part of our interview with the good folks at The Mylene Sheath. Lindsay and Joel—the duo behind the Athens, GA based label—talked to us about their beginnings, how they communicate with their fans and their vinyl releases. In the concluding half of our interview, find out about their newest…

What would you ask Tucson-based North if you had the chance? Well, our first question would be: why name the band North when you’re from the Southwest? Seems a little geographically confusing. Where’s North from, you ask? The Southwest. Eh?! A more apropos moniker would be, well, Southwest. Then, North’s fans would always know where…

To paraphrase the almighty David Lee Roth, “Summertime’s here, babe, need something to keep you cool. Better look out now, Decibel‘s got somethin’ for you.” Some frozen fuckin’ Dutch black metal on stick, that’s what we’ve got. Minus the stick. But full-on frostbitten, we swear. This premiere is guaranteed to drop the ambient temperature in…

On the upcoming Carnival of Death tour Florida death metal legends Obituary will shred a “fan-generated” set drawn primarily from the vile trinity of Slowly We Rot, Cause Of Death and The End Complete — including some tracks that have never before been performed live. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to get Obituary vocalist…

Noisear’s debut Subvert the Dominant Paradigm was one of the finest grind albums to scar the planet last year. It was remarkable: not only was it a nerve-shredding compendium of white-hot dissonance, skronky grind and blast that recalled by-gone genre royality Discordance Axis, but it was written and recorded in little over a day. Maybe…

I’ve often felt STS songs are like album-form movies. At this point, where does the cinematic inspiration come from?Aleksi: Mainly Twin Peaks, it has always been an inspiration, especially to the songs musically, but also lyrically to some extent. On Hope we tried to go for The Shining-type of vibes, but in hindsight that could’ve…

Welcome to the dog days of August. Fuck dogs (do not do this – ed.) Uh, there’s a band called GAYTHEIST, and they are releasing a record called Stealth Beats on Good to Die Records. What’s this about? Is it music for gay atheists? Is it music written by a gay atheist? Is it Atheist…

I’m not much for fantastical lyrics – no matter how brutal the imagined scenery, it seems there’s enough ignorance and atrocity just outside my apartment door to nullify the impact of some invented horrors from galaxies long ago and far away. And I’ll be bumguzzled if I can predict when synth infestation will command my…

There’s a good reason we don’t feature a lot of digital hardcore around these parts. That’s because most of it isn’t worth featuring. Dudes, if there was ever a musical revolution that fizzled out like a wet firecracker of disappointment quicker than the one Atari Teenage Riot was supposed to lead into the frenzied future,…

We spend a lot of time talking to artists—whether in blog posts or in each month’s issue—and rightfully so. After all, they put their blood, sweat and tears into making the music that brings us together. We haven’t necessarily dedicated a lot of space to the people actually putting out those releases, however, so we…

Working alone from home is often viewed poorly in metal thanks to about 10,000 too many shitty low-fi pornogrind and black metal bands. But sometimes doing your own thing and calling the shots on all aspects of your music is a very good thing. Case in point: Sophicide’s new album Perdition Of The Sublime, streaming…

Unless you’re heavy metalluminati Pagan Altar, perhaps like stateside and posi-message alter-ego Glass Harp, is an unknown entity. Now, most of the time, unheralded music from the ’70s is unheralded because it sucks. Or, the group never toured and the label folded upon release. Probably a few of those out there, right?  Well, UK’s Pagan…

Despite the exhortations of much extreme metal that life isn’t worth living there are things left to get excited about. One of them is the upcoming album from Pig Destroyer, their first since dB’s 2007 album of the year Phantom Limb. News flash: the new album from Relapse is called Book Burner and we’ve secured…

Although you might remember him from such Neurosis albums as Souls at Zero, Enemy of the Sun and Through Silver in Blood, let’s not forget that guitarist/vocalist Scott Kelly has staked out quite a nice little solo career outside of the band. His latest release, which “streets,” as the kids say, on August 14 (Neurot),…

This morning we’re premiering a supremely nasty slice of doomed out Mexican death metal from Gutwrench entitled “Meeting with the Dead.” The track is culled from the upcoming Razorback Records debut Mausoleum…To Dwell & Rot In and if it strikes your fancy lurch on over to the band’s Reverb Nation page where other abominations with…

All right, so metal has always elicited a strong emotional response but rarely (shit, never) has it inspired the abandonment of a sedentary lifestyle in favor of 20 push-ups and a 10km run.It’s like, disco has long had an association with that whole workout gym culture; Lycra, protein shakes, glutes, quads and aerobic dance for…

If lazy journalism persists in music, it’d be easy to say Austrians Dragony are like the umpteenth band to use the word “dragon” as part of their moniker. Well, that’s just not true. Umpteenth implies like 1 in 5 bands use “dragon”. Like System of a Dragon, Dragon Corpse, Dragon of God, Dragonatonia, or My…

Harrowing, multi-dimensional enlightenment is a fickle beast.  You expect it in extreme locales under strikingly improbable circumstances, perhaps while ingesting mind-altering substances… not so much in a well-lit library crowded with suits, police officers, and raggedy internet-moochers.  Yet here I am getting a hit of pure dark French terror-bliss, and my mind can’t manage to…