Interviews

Some bands are formed from friendships. Some bands are formed out of necessity. Some bands form a bond based off past relationships. For England’s Memoriam, featuring current and ex-members of Benediction and Bolt Thrower, the circumstances around their 2015 formation is the result of all three aforementioned scenarios.

Suffering Hour was destined to nab my attention. Today, we’re premiering some of the blackened death metal featured on their forthcoming album, In Passing Ascension.

Read a full interview from USBM titans Nightbringer. 

Craven Idol lead a blackened assault on greed and mindless worship on The Shackles of Mammon.

Before their Decibel Metal and Beer Fest performance – and before Panopticon drop their much-anticipated next album – we got to hear “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing” in the ongoing Decibel Flexi Series.  After dozens of listens, we wanted to get mastermind Austin Lunn’s perspective on the song and its creation.

Thrash metal’s new wave of ‘bangers are obviously cuing off benchmarks and milestones set in the ’80s and ’90s. To wit, Denver-based riff-slayers Havok originally formed as a nod to their favorite bands and records, but over time (or four full-length albums) they’ve come into their own.

The Doctor is in. Anything involving black metal convention is out. 

A nice fireside chat about metal, hardcore, the early-to-mid 2000s, and the future of extreme music.

Today, we’re showcasing Hyborian‘s video for “As Above, So Below,” an introductory interview with guitarist/vocalist Martin Bush and as rad a tour breakdown story as you’ll probably ever hear.

Chaos reigns as Turkish black metal veterans The Sarcophagus travel Beyond This World’s Illusion on their new LP.

It’s no surprise we love Crypt Sermon‘s rendition of Mayhem’s “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas.”

In this week’s Demo:Listen, let Washington D.C. plague Sickdeer tear your head off and replace it with something even more hideous.

Hopefully you held onto a least one tooth…

To celebrate the 10 anniversary of Martyr Immortal, Pulling Teeth — a ferocious, restless entity  that brilliantly Frankenstein-ed a slew of extreme music elements into a completely idiosyncratic whole during its stunning seven year run — is dragging itself away from the cold embrace of the grave long enough to reissue that landmark metallic hardcore masterwork and perform the LP in its entirety at a one-night-only performance at this year’s This Is Hardcore Fest. 

I sincerely hope that everybody reading this piece takes an hour out of their Friday (then several more hours out of their weekend) to soak up the majesty of Pallbearer‘s newest album, Heartless.

Losing two pivotal members will usually kill a band. That’s almost what happened to Swedish death metallers Evocation after Janne Kenttäkumpu Bodén and Vesa Kenttäkumpu decided the lifestyle wasn’t for them. Looking at death in the eye, the remaining members voted on reanimating the proverbial corpse, pulling Evocation out of a three-year silence.

DREAM BLOODY GORE shares twisted nightmares, dreams, and hallucinations from members of Gruesome, SubRosa, and Dreaming Dead.

On this week’s Demo:listen, we expose the  world to Virulent Specter.

After Anders Björler’s departure from At the Gates, vocalist Tomas Lindberg gives Decibel the scoop on new material. 

Coming straight out the Bay Area, meet 2017’s insurmountable death metal triumphator: Extremity. We’ve secured an exclusive premiere of “Chalice of Pus,” arguably the best track on Extremity’s debut album, Extremely Fucking Dead. So get dead with this exclusive premiere, plus an interview with Extremity’s guitarist/vocalist Marissa Martinez-Hoadley and bassist Erika Osterhout.

Decibel talked to psychedelic pioneer Arthur Brown about his role in the birth of metal and why art flourishes in times of political and social upheaval. 

Next week we get Dodecahedron’s brand new exercise in high-concept dissonance via Kwintessens, due out March 17 on Season of Mist.  We conducted a little Q&A with guitarist/songwriter Michel Nienhuis and vocalist Michiel Eikenaar, much of which can be found in issue #150 (Decibel Tour cover), but you can read the remainder of the interview here.

We caught up with Warbringer frontman John Kevill to discuss their new album, Woe to the Vanquished.

Blood Sun Circle has a new record entitled Distorted Forms on the horizon on their newly christened label and the Gorham brothers have made some exciting improvements to their retail space.

Early last year, Quebec’s progressive blackened death crew Hands of Despair revealed their stand-out sophomore record, Bereft, and successfully extended the sound and strengths that had made the debut, Hereafter, such an enjoyable listen.  Today we bring you their latest video single for Bereft‘s penultimate track, “Étoc,” along with the band’s explanation of the video’s origins and execution.

In which we make contact with the Bay Area’s latest morbid abomination, Funeral Chant.

We caught up with California’s Dan Seagrave-lovin’ Xibalba to talk about their new EP.

The sludge-heavy stoner rock of Hark takes on myriad new dimensions throughout the Welsh quartet’s exapansive, high-octane sophomore full-length Machinations, out later this week via Season of Mist. Decibel recently interrogated guitarist/vocalist Jimbob Issac about the brutal and harrowing personal roots of the album’s thematic content, finding the unlikely inspirational sweet spot between Azeaila Banks, S.O.D., Unsane and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the way playing large, prestigious festivals can expand a band’s sense of what is possible.

We talk to synthwave digital god Carpenter Brut about his inspirations and upcoming US tour.

We spoke with Behemoth’s prime abominator Nergal about what it meant to return to the stage after his devastating illness, and what he could recall about his tourmates during that time.  Some of his remarks are exclusive to the Special Issue, but the remainder of that interview is here for you to check out right now.

Decibel talks to the author of the excellent new book Heavy Metal Africa.