Interviews

As psyched as we were for the last year’s new Pelican album, we were just as excited to see the band in the live setting again after a long six year wait. Now those worlds are set to collide soon when the Chicagoans drop Arktika, a nine song 2013 live set recorded in Russia. The…

** The original interview Cut Hands’ William Bennett is featured in our groundbreakingly awesome “noise issue” (HERE). What follows below is the full transcript. If you’re adventurous enough to you’ll succumb to Bennett’s Afro Noise. What is Afro Noise? William Bennett: This was the name of the debut Cut Hands record, essentially referring to two…

I first read about North via Catherine Yates’ review of What You Were back in 2008, but it wasn’t until I perused our Managing Editor’s writeup of the record in that year’s top 40 that I thankfully got around to listening. Even though it’s been a while since then, once you’ve read last year’s interview…

Woody Weatherman of Corrosion of Conformity has influenced generations of shredders. His career has spanned many phases: the massively influential crossover albums, their unexpected commercial run in the ’90s and the return of the old school lineup in recent years. COC remains as relevant as ever and just released their new record IX. Mr. Weatherman…

Jamie Myers: her voice is the stuff of both fever dreams and Byzantine nightmares. Since getting involved with underground music back in the 90s she has progressed from punk bands to playing bass and singing in Hammer of Misfortune and a guest slot with Wolves in The Throne Room. After returning to Texas to start…

** UK dark rockers Thine have a new full-length out. The Dead City Blueprint is probably an album not on your radar, unless you’ve followed the group since A Town like This back in the late ’90s. Should it be on your radar? Yes, if dark, melodic, melancholic, honest metal-infused rock is in your wheelhouse….

** Anathema’s on the cusp of a breakthrough. Actually, the Liverpudlians have been on said cusp for the better part of 15 years. But that’s neither here nor there. Music is always about right place and right time. That place and time have come for Anathema on, Distant Satellites. Like previous album, Weather Systems, the…

By now, many of you are enjoying Decibel’s August issue, #118.  Perhaps you’re excited because it’s The Godflesh Issue, and the emphatically awesome return of that project is certainly worthy of your enthusiasm.  Maybe you’re psyched about it being The Melvins HOF Issue, a look back on an extraordinary record by an influential band that…

In case you can’t remember that far back, Tombs‘ last record, Path of Totality, was our top album of 2011. Fast forward three years, and the band’s latest release appears to have garnered near-universal acclaim since it dropped earlier this month. So it’s only fitting that guitarist/vocalist Mike Hill’s playlist focuses on something that, in…

None more slaughter, the slaughterest of the slaughter, Nunslaughter have an actual full-length out now after approximately 600 EP’s, singles, and splits. It sounds like Nunslaughter. What more could you ask for? In case you don’t believe me, we have THE ENTIRE ALBUM streaming for you below. Angelic Dread has 31 blasphemous blasts, half of…

No matter how many people think black metal has gone mainstream or become hip because a few dozen bands from Brooklyn have small label deals the reality is that the vast majority of the population doesn’t know a thing about it. They’re listening to .38 Special or Lana Del Rey. If there is a black…

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)…

Godstopper has been a fixture on Toronto’s sludgy/doomy/stoner scene for some time now. Recently, they’ve taken small steps to branch out beyond the city limits. A betting man would wager they’re making that move because they’ve just about had it with Rob Ford’s tarring and feathering of the city’s reputation, the perpetual gridlocked traffic and…

For Fred Grabosky and Evan Void, the dudes behind Philadelphia-based Sadgiqacea, music is only one, albeit rather large, part of their lives. Each is also into art as Grabosky is a freelance illustrator (drawing and inking) while Void, when not also playing in Hivelords and Ominous Black, tattoos at Living Out Loud Tattoo in Lindenwold,…

** 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…

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)…

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…

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….

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…

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)…

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…

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…

** 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…

Semi-rural, semi-suburban Maryland is hardly an obvious spawning ground for gritty black metal.  With Washington D.C. and Baltimore hogging all the attention, and Frederick area bars almost exclusively hosting good-time cover bands of dubious quality, the area’s heavy music scene is pretty damn subdued. Dweller in the Valley drummer/vocalist Dane Olds is a current Frederick,…

Montreal’s kings of noise rock diversity and awesome promo photos, The Great Sabatini (who we have mentioned on this blog previously), have a new album in the starting gate. It’s called Dog Years and you can listen to the whole damn thing below while you read guitarist/vocalist Sean Sabatini discuss the record’s nuts ‘n’ bolts…

When Oli Peters takes his songs about “lucid dreaming, a monster made out of teeth, a king who creates duplicates of himself who then overthrow him, and a guy who feeds himself to his backyard pig” on the road (my favorite part of KSP’s recent profile), he and his Archspire brethren tend to keep the…

It’s not as if Prong ever completely fell off, really, but 2012’s Carved Into Stone nevertheless felt like a return to form in both energy and attack, and now, two years later, comes Ruining Lives, a ferocious, amped, occasionally pretty damn adventurous album that may very well be the band’s best effort since its nineties…

It takes a special band to spend twelve-and-a-half minutes slogging through a freaky-heavy doom bum-out called simply “Darkness,” then decide there’s just more to say on the issue and tuck in for another 14 minutes and call the result “Darkness, Part 2.”  It’s like being lost in a menacing forest devoid of all large predators…

Back in early 2012, Chris Dick sung the praises of Cormorant’s Dwellings. Since the band’s recently released follow-up is yet another quality entry in its still nascent catalog, we asked Nick Cohon to tell us about some of the “darker country music” that he listens to (the guitarist is also rocking a Gov’t Mule Dose…